Engine Turntables and Tools?
hi there first post!,
I have a few questions about presenting game res characters and tools. I have been working as a professional character artist in the film industry for about 7 years now. my main tools are mudbox / zbrush and maya. I do most of my rendering in mentalray for turntables etc. I would like to start setting up some characters in a engine. to compare the quality and workflow with maya/mentalray. and get some understanding of a professional workflow for setting up shaders and maps. mess around with the animation and lighting options etc. and do some turntable at some point. so I have a few questions.
is there a standaed tool/engine's i should use? like maya or max is standard for professional film work. I see the Unreal Engine and editor look like an option. Aside from inhouse studio tools what editor/engine's/tools should i look at. NO flame war plz
can you render still frame turntables from the engine? I useually do a 200-300 frame turntable and adjust in shake. I see a lot game models rendered in mentalray. so is that standard practice? I will render in mr anyways but it would be nice to spit out renders from the engine.
does the engine/editor have hooks to maya? I would guess the more mainstream options have some connection to maya at this point. for models/animation etc.
hope that was not to long winded. thanks!
I have a few questions about presenting game res characters and tools. I have been working as a professional character artist in the film industry for about 7 years now. my main tools are mudbox / zbrush and maya. I do most of my rendering in mentalray for turntables etc. I would like to start setting up some characters in a engine. to compare the quality and workflow with maya/mentalray. and get some understanding of a professional workflow for setting up shaders and maps. mess around with the animation and lighting options etc. and do some turntable at some point. so I have a few questions.
is there a standaed tool/engine's i should use? like maya or max is standard for professional film work. I see the Unreal Engine and editor look like an option. Aside from inhouse studio tools what editor/engine's/tools should i look at. NO flame war plz
can you render still frame turntables from the engine? I useually do a 200-300 frame turntable and adjust in shake. I see a lot game models rendered in mentalray. so is that standard practice? I will render in mr anyways but it would be nice to spit out renders from the engine.
does the engine/editor have hooks to maya? I would guess the more mainstream options have some connection to maya at this point. for models/animation etc.
hope that was not to long winded. thanks!
Replies
1.) DX realtime shader in Maya or Max's viewport
2.) Marmoset Toolbag:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=61346
3.) any popular game engine (Crysis, Source, Unreal 3)
whereas Crysis seems to be very easy for WYSIWYG realtime feedback
turntables are something very classy from the film/ render industry imo. What however also matters are how the model do function, like their rigging, skinning, shaders, texture space efficiency and lots of other specific stuff. So showcasing a character walking or being interactive already in a engine might be a plus.
at this point i'm looking at this as a "fun" personal project to get some understanding of the workflow for games. setting up a "efficient" model and all the technicle details i will prob get into once i get a few models set up. its hard to get that sort of stuff untill you start breaking things.
out of the 3 engines you listed do you think one has a standout set of editing tools for shader setup and character/model display?
Marmoset does look interesting btw.
- Unreal seems to be the most discussed and used (lots of tutorials, training DVD's, biggest knowledge base)
- Crysis recently proved to be an impressive tool for artists
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/scene-movie-competition/9540-scene-movie-results.html
the first and last place were done booth in the Crysis sandbox editor
- marmoset is in favor in this community + it looks usually a lot better as Unreal and is designed from the ground up for artists to get the models in a realtime engine.
but I still think that lots of stuff can be done in maya or Max alone as well using realtime shaders, some great threads about that:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=49920
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=62006
you save yourself a lot of trouble of importing/ exporting stuff and it might even look 1:1 compared to a real time engine.
yes there are 3rd party grabbers and often build in functionality that dumbs bitmaps in a sequence after you recored a game demo (which it executes in non real time after that and writes the footage). In many cases it should however be possible to render out an animation or a sequence of images especially for any popular engine since all the tournament recordings and fan movies are done that way.
your info is very helpful.