Efficiency vs Complexity

edwardE

I, like many others around the boards, am working on a demo reel to take a stab (or two or five) at getting into the industry. As the year has passed and I've seen what industry professionals consider good demo reels, what's not so good, what's interesting and what's not, I've gained what I think is a decent understanding of how to make a demo reel that will catch attention.

However, one subject that there seem to be mixed ideas on is efficiency versus complexity in a demo reel. By this, I mean the ability to show you can reduce complex objects to simplified forms by 'cheating' with alpha cards and the like that still look good, or showing that you can model the entirety of that fancy fence and make it look indistinguishable from real life with little care for technical budget.

For those of you who've made it in the industry and gotten to know the ins and outs of things; in your experience with those in positions to hire, when they review reels, what do they care about most?

Do they want to see how accurately you can model from life, or that you can model from life in a game-ready, believable solution? Do they really care about your technical knowledge of what makes a model efficient, or do they focus more on the 'artistic' side of it? Or perhaps it's beyond that and they are simply looking at your overall vision, regardless of which path you take?


I'm just looking for some other opinions on this, as I hear mixed things. Personally, I've decided to keep my models as efficient as I can muster, while keeping a level of visual believability comparable to that of modern games. I try to reduce my geometry as much as possible while retaining silhouettes and keeping to any other requirements, and I always look into baking things into textures if feasible. But as a result, it does take some additional time to do this stuff compared to if I took a less budget-conscience way.

Am I wasting my time (or some of it) by going to some of these lengths to make efficient assets? Keep in mind, I'm wondering this particular instance in a purely "will this actually help me get a job" aspect - I know that it will help me once I've already gotten that job.

Thanks for your input in advance - sorry for the textwall!

Neo_God

well I'm assuming you mean Games Industry when you say "Industry". I would assume it's a good to have both as long as they coincide with game art in some way. Especially with the way some of todays standards are for game modeling, being able to model high poly meshes is good for normal mapping, and being able to model a super efficient mesh that still looks great is also a great skill to have. What is even better is if you show a model that is normal mapped that is also very efficient, and the high res mesh you used to generate the normal map from.

It all really depends what sort of games you're shooting for, if you don't really care, then I would say do all sorts of stuff, make a nice meaty portfolio that shows you are versatile with your skills.

Tumerboy

Totally depends on the company you're applying to. Idealy, you would always cater your reel/portfolio to the ONE company that you're applying to RIGHT NOW. Obviously that's very unrealistic.

It's probably good to have a bit of both in your portfolio, if you're applying to various companies that do totally different types of games.

We're usually looking for someone who is a good artist first and foremost. Polycounts, and the like, while important, aren't as important as the talent to make them look good. If you're good, it shouldn't matter if you have 500 polys, or 500,000, you should always be able to make something appealing and compelling. We make MMOs, and so our poly counts and texture limits are a bit more last gen, compared to new FPS or single player action games. So we like to see that you can deal with some lower poly stuff. We don't care if you can make a great crate with 5,000 polys, can you do it with 500? 100? 12? Lastly, I think Environment art gets lumped together a lot, but there tends to be two types, Prop modelers, and Layout Artists. So, do you prefer to make all the crates, barrels, hedgehogs, etc. that get used to fill up the level? Or do you prefer to actually assemble the pieces and layout the level? If you're the first, then show more props and objects. If you're the latter, show more finished environments that would be usable in game. If you're making a full environment, think about what type of game it's for. If it's an FPS, then you can probably leave the roofs off of buildings, etc. If it's an MMO, you'll probably need those roofs, and you'll want to think about having 5, 10, 20 people running through the area you're making.

So. . . while you can't necessarily cater to every company, you can figure out what you WANT to do, and cater your reel to that.

Hope that helps.

edwardE

Thanks a bunch for the replies; they definitely make sense. My top interests for games to work on are in fact MMOs and handheld games, so this is a good thing to hear for me. I'll try to work some higher poly stuff in if I have the time between my bigger projects as more of a "yes, I can do this" deal, but my calling is definitely in lower poly, technical simplicity and painted maps.

Thanks again! If anyone else wants to add in, do so!

Tumerboy

Ya, center your reel around what you really love to do, and then add in a few extras to round it out when you can.