Improving Workflow??
polycounter lvl 18
What has all your experiences been to help you the most with improving your speed and workflow without reducing your work quality greatly or burning yourself out. (Or causing RS injuries from working the same way too long).
So far with what little experience I have thus far, trying to remember all the shortcut keys, and stopping myself from going overboard on detail when its something that will never be seen or working at the pixel level. Still hard to make that call though.
What about you all?
So far with what little experience I have thus far, trying to remember all the shortcut keys, and stopping myself from going overboard on detail when its something that will never be seen or working at the pixel level. Still hard to make that call though.
What about you all?
Replies
Deadlines! (Except that can burn you out and give terrible RSI...)
But seriously, it really has been that for me. Especially when clients say, " I need an A1 render by tomorrow, is that okay?"...or when you spend ages fixing technical problems like FG radius and getting it looking smooth and getting good AO and you think everything looks great....then the client picks out, "hey, that floor should be more creamy, can you make it more yellowish" or "those leaves should be more brown".
I guess just last minute changes that put you under the pump generally. It really gets you workflow as quickly as possible when you have short deadlines but at the same time if you plan for them you can be prepared and that's good.
For me personally, my biggest issue is letting detail go. I'm a detail whore, no doubt. I always stress details from the getgo, instead of flushing out the shape and rough details like I should. This is a constant battle for me, but I've been getting better with it.
As for sheer speed, I use my personnel time at home to find ways to increase my speed. Testing different scripts, techniques, etc - see if they could apply to the things I work on each day. It's helped quite a bit.
Learn scripting
Yep. I'm a reformed perfectionist. In the past I could spend the majority of my time perfecting 1-2 things. Going over them again and again. It sunk in when I was re-working something and I showed it to my wife. She said "it looks nice, but whats different?". I realized the crap I stress out about doesn't matter to the average person... It's good to be hyper vigilant but you need to know the point that what your doing isn't paying off.
I recommend recording your steps by writing them down and how much time each piece took you. Creation, unwrapping, creating/materials. Nothing fancy like a tutorial or anything but it will help to see your process and find the weak areas. Might help to record your progress and play it back at double speed to find areas that need work.
Learning maxscript has sped up so many things not only for me but the artists around me. But I have to balance how much time I spend on a script vs how much time it will save me and I always search for script that already addresses the same issue first so I don't waste time.
It's hard for people to be specific about things that sped up their work flows since everyone works differently and struggles with different things.
This might not be as easy in a work situation but being tired usually costs me the most time.
I'll work on a model, almost done...gotta finish... I start pushing. Weld verts or something a little carelessly, keep working, get alot done, then notice that I welded some verts that weren't supposed to be.
Arghh......
- careful planning/use/ask for clear concepts
- reuse/work with tiles
- learn scripting/use scripts -> a script does what a computer does best: repeative work with no flaws
and an important point:
artists usually always puts way too much work in the details, but the big picture is soo much more important and often lacks. our experience shows that the average gamer just sees the overall picture and that't it. it's a thing we always fight with at work, but if you're honest to yourself, you find yourself way to often make things extra nice and give it that extra touch up, which results in a 1% better result. but costs 10% of your time budget.
i really don't like this idea, too and i know other artists can see the effort/quality, but the gamer does not. especially playing the game and not watching screens.
Yep, I think there are still way too many professional game artists who fall foul of this - they spend 10% (or more) extra time on something that only looks 1% (or less) better, which hurts the project as a whole.
Spend ages perfecting stuff for your personal work, and just make stuff which fits the game when working professionally - 99% of your gamer audience will never notice that extra time you put into stuff, so it's not really necessary.
Note that this is not the same thing as doing crappy work quickly and not caring about it since it's just for some work project - you should still care about your work for a game (since that care WILL show), but learn to realise where the line is between wasting time on unnecessary polish, and spending time integrating a piece into the whole scene/game.
Copy and paste and copy and paste - it's not just re-using, it's establishing a visual theme and materials palette
I always try to do things in bulk.
Instead of chamfering each edge individually you should select groups of edges and chamfer them in one go.
So you should try to do your assets in passes where you're refining across the asset rather than perfecting one section of the asset. This means you can often do tasks on multiple spots at once and save yourself the extra time.
Number 1 scenario in my head is when a client comes back to me after asset has gone all the way to texture phase and im ready to clean seams and call it done, then asks for a uv change. god thats annoying, but it happens and i had to figure out ways to salvage my work instead of scraping my textures and going back to baking phase.
Breaking your work flow down to the most basic of tools/commands will do wonders for how fast you can put things out while maintaining a high level of quality.
You want to build confidence in what you do. You do this by getting yourself to a level where you can make great artwork with the most basic of tools.
This is I think one of the biggest things to being able to work fast.
Recycling old stuff is fine. But you have to be careful. You don't want to become dependent on old geometry/textures to get you started or to finish off portions of your work. This causes stagnation. You want to be constantly improving.
It is possible to build things from scratch and still make tight deadlines. And this is an important skill to have. But a lot of this comes from experience and going back to the point I made earlier about going back to the basics. Not everything you make can be put together with old stuff. So be prepared.
At the end of the day it isn't something you can make a list of and boom! you're fast and making shit. It'll come naturally with experience. Don't think of it as "Problem A is solved with solution B"
Throughout your career you'll encounter crucial circumstances where you'll be forced to re-evaluate how you work and improve.