Environment art portfolio & modularity?

knak47

In an environment art portfolio how important is it to show that you can work modularly? As of now I am building two full scenes and I was then going to hilight some of the more interesting assets. I am of course going to do a few texture and tri breakdowns for these assets.

Is it important that I include some examples of being "really cheap"? For example, a building textured using one 2048x2048 texture sheet, or is that usually what an art test is for?

Computron

Think about it, the employer is going to be looking for VIDEO GAME ART skills, as well as traditional skills. You are going to need both either way if you want to increase your chances of getting work, so learn to make your art and make it efficiently.

knak47

I get that, that is obvious. I just don't see portfolios hilighting modularity. It's usually here is a sweet asset and then a breakdown of the textures. More often then not the texture breakdown is just one texture sheet for that one bad ass asset. I don't see to many that show, here is a village and this asset is this many tris, this one is that many and they all used this 2048 x 2048 texture sheet.

kio

really, dont worry about it too much. just make it look really good - thats what its all about. dont get lost in such details

Ace-Angel

They really wont care, you simply have to use the stuff that is very much used in the industry not so they will hire you, but because it will look better and they will hire you on that.

Using a 4K texture won't be enough for buildings, so you can say, average a roof with a 1-2K texture pending on detail requirement, and tile, rotate and do everything to make it look good.

Yes, you will show your texture sheets, yes, you will show your wireframe, but all that is for naught if you don't make it look good while still being somewhat feasible in performance regions.

Another example: You make an axe, in a game, an axe will be pretty flat with 1K textures and a simply phong shader. However, in a portfolio, you can make it a couple of polies more expensive (EI: dents can be modeled in that change the silhouette, such as chipped edges) and bump the textures to 2K, as well apply fancy shaders that won't be very usable in games.

So yeah, as Kio said, don't lose your time too much on the most minute of details, just make sure you execute it well with industry standard skills.

knak47

K, Thanks guys.

PredatorGSR

It isn't that important. A modular workflow is just part of a studios pipeline, and there is the expectation that you will have to learn their pipeline anyway so they are prepared for that. What they are usually looking for is that your art skills are polished because that is the hard stuff they don't have time to teach you. It is easy to teach a great artist how to work in their version of modular, but it is hard to make crappy artist a good one.

Having modular experience is a plus, but so is any valuable experience you can talk about in interviews.

megalmn2000

I've been to a talk on the GameArtisans studio, they invited a guy from Eidos. He told us that he uses the modularity technique on a daily basis. But well, if the other guys from this thread say so, just learn it anyways.

Computron

IDK, you are going to need it either way, so why not show them you can do it? it's designed to make your life easier and you will most likely have to use it. It's like not knowing basic art theory at that point.

artquest

I think the real trick is showing creative modularity without giving away the fact that you are using so little to create the final scene. The less repeating the viewer picks up on the better. For instance this is a great example that blew me away with how little was used to create this entire scene, and it looks great too! Here's another example of a scene where almost everything is modular but in the final shot it looks great. It's tricky to achieve that balance. Making a piece of something is easy, placing said pieces into a final environment that looks natural. Not so easy.

Remember this is the games industry, tons of artists are trying to get into it. You have to blow someone away to get noticed. So make it awesome, whether it's modular or not. (but you'll probably save yourself some work if you plan some modularity.)