Because all that stuff just deals with the technicalities of implementing something. But artistic expression is more than just implementation. I'd like to think that my job is more than just being someone's implementation-monkey. That part of the reason I get paid is my own artistic ability.
I think as artists we get too easily caught up in what is/isn't "artistic". Why can't the reason for you getting paid simply be your ability?
I think you're selling yourself short if you think your "artistic" ability is the only thing of value you can offer. If you're not interested in the technical side of things, you shouldn't be in the games industry, you should exhibiting oil paintings in art galleries.
You can't do game art, or really any sort of production art and escape the technical side of it. The whole process is hugely technical, and getting more and more technical as the industry progresses.
in general i know for a fact that a good company like Valve will tend to hire some one who can hand sculpt a 3d likeness rather than someone who only knows how to clean up scan data.
And an artist who can hand sculpt 3d likeness, and has experience working with scan data would be more valuable than either. The more tools you know the better, again, working with scan data is just another tool.
And an artist who can hand sculpt 3d likeness, and has experience working with scan data would be more valuable than either. The more tools you know the better, again, working with scan data is just another tool.
that is a moot point.
someone who can hand sculpt photo-realistic likeness would be more than capable to do clean up work anyways.
3d scan data clean up work isn't that big a deal. anyone who can hand sculpt realistic likeness would probably spend 30 minutes learning how to clean up that pile of shit that scan data is.
like i said before, i done fair amount of cleanup work and i hate it. it is not satisfying and not worth my time.
Because you don't like it, and feel its beneath you to do?
I don't see the logic.
I really find it hard to respect people who refuse to do LODs, or cleanup, or anything else that might seem mundane. It is a job after all, its not all going to be hero assets and sunshine.
once again that has nothing to do with what i am saying.
Maybe I'm being overly snide here. I was probably being a little too fixated on what I was reading into your comments vs what you were actually saying. I'll drop it, I think we've derailed the thread enough at this point. :poly124:
I think you're selling yourself short if you think your "artistic" ability is the only thing of value you can offer. If you're not interested in the technical side of things, you shouldn't be in the games industry, you should exhibiting oil paintings in art galleries.
It's not that I'm not interested in them. It's that I recognize them as means to an end, and not the end in and of itself.
I want to make characters, and the medium I like is game art. That means learning the tools associated with that medium. Just as learning about different types of clay, and different types of sculpting tools and chisels is a requirement for working on a physical sculpt. But I just don't see any value in those tools by themselves.
I'm not going to appreciate the type of marble Michelangelo used when he made David. I appreciate the journey he went through gaining the knowledge required to sculpt David. It's the subject matter, not the tools.
In the case of the Cyberpunk video it's more of a tools question than an art question. It's not about what the person was trying to express, like Michelangelo sculpting a human figure, as much as it is about the tech being used.
You can't do game art, or really any sort of production art and escape the technical side of it. The whole process is hugely technical, and getting more and more technical as the industry progresses.
That's really more of a Strawman argument. It's not like I'm opposed to learning tools or the technical side of things. I don't think that has been part of the conversation here.
In fact, I like writing and reading about shaders. But it's not because I enjoy the shaders themselves. It's because I enjoy knowing just how far things can go in our medium, so that if I ever want to do those things, I know how far I can take it. If one day they come up with something that you just talk to it and it writes you a perfect shader on the spot, I'd love the hell out of it.
(IMO) It's just a job folks, great that you love doing it, great that it gives you opportunities and a nice standard of living; but it doesn't make you 'special' to be an 'artist'. We're just pushing polys or putting coloured pixels down at the end of the day. :thumbup:
someone who can hand sculpt photo-realistic likeness would be more than capable to do clean up work anyways.
Don't agree with you I'm afraid. What you see being done in those photos is a completely different skillset. Like being an animator and/or a motion capture artist, they are completely different skillsets. But being employed as a motion capture artist doesn't make you any less of an animator if you are one... it just means that's just the gig you were able to get at the time.
And another thing we have not considered in this thread is, that the dudes putting this trailer together are actually extremely skilled modellers/texture/shading artists/whatever. There' s a good chance that they are.
(IMO) It's just a job folks, great that you love doing it, great that it gives you opportunities and a nice standard of living; but it doesn't make you 'special' to be an 'artist'. We're just pushing polys or putting coloured pixels down at the end of the day. :thumbup:
Don't agree with you I'm afraid. What you see being done in those photos is a completely different skillset. Like being an animator and/or a motion capture artist, they are completely different skillsets. But being employed as a motion capture artist doesn't make you any less of an animator if you are one... it just means that's just the gig you were able to get at the time.
are you talking from personal experience or just guessing ?
unless you are talking about the actual 3d scanning technicians, the task of scan data cleanup basically involves these following steps in general:
1. scale, position and orient highpoly scan data to match production specifications
2. retoplogy of conform existing topology mesh to scan data
3. rebuild clean highpoly
4. transfer/bake appropriate maps
5. create final product.
all the above task are pretty basic skill set all senior modelers should have in my opinion.
are you talking from personal experience or just guessing ?
unless you are talking about the actual 3d scanning technicians, the task of scan data cleanup basically involves these following steps in general:
1. scale, position and orient highpoly scan data to match production specifications
2. retoplogy of conform existing topology mesh to scan data
3. rebuild clean highpoly
4. transfer/bake appropriate maps
5. create final product.
all the above task are pretty basic skill set all senior modelers should have in my opinion.
From personal non-commercial experience.
Number 2-5 are things a modeller can do yes, but the difficulty and completely different skillset is number one. Being on the set, and being able to use that equipment, making sure everything you need is captured... it's a very technical and co-ordination driven skillset. That goes for animators/mocap dudes and modellers/scanners alike. Very different skillset.
Agreed on the fact that Seniors of their discipline should be schooled in both skillsets though.
I didn't expect my comments would end like this, with such debate.
Like Bigjohn said, i also think the stuff in this trailer is a major technical achievement. And sorry if i don't see artistry here, for me, this has no merit.
And Neox, before you talk, you should think before posting, because you don't know a shit about me. I have been working with scanning data and mudbox/zbrush sculpts and making retopologies several times like to know perfectly the workflow. So... you should keep that "bullshit" word you said about my comments in your pocket if you want a good mood. And BTW, for any reason i own a dual Xeon workstation with a top level Quadro... cough cough.
Imho, making personal attacks is only for low class people.
And again, i say that this tech is quite expensive. You see, I'd like to see all the cyberpunk 2077 game characters from scanning data. I also like the progress.
As for me, i'm focused in creating monsters and creatures mainly, so this doesn't represent for me any danger. I'm constantly using new tools to make my workflow faster and more efficient, so i can say i'm "cheating" using tools like modo, ndo, ddo or substance designer. They make our job easier but they don't do all for us (they can save us hours of photoshop).
However, with a full body scan, you don't need to worry about anatomy, textures, proportions, shapes, nothing. It's like you had a 80% done.
I posted some scanned data from sketchfab, but i'm sure nobody cared, lol.
Just mentioning it because there seems to be a certain amount of 'looking down upon' going on in the thread.
From personal non-commercial experience.
Number 2-5 are things a modeller can do yes, but the difficulty and completely different skillset is number one. Being on the set, and being able to use that equipment, making sure everything you need is captured... it's a very technical and co-ordination driven skillset. That goes for animators/mocap dudes and modellers/scanners alike. Very different skillset.
i am not looking down on anything, i am just being brutally honest. it would be dishonest not to admit that 3d scanning is a cheaper and faster alternative to human artists. that is why it is done in most cases because it makes sense to producers from a budget stand point.
as for no.1 most 3d scanning vendors now days provide you with fully assembled clean data with color map so one does not really have to spend much time to reposition the scan data properly.
i had one project (almost 4 years ago) where the scan data were partial scans that i had to assemble manually and had to guess the proper rotation of separate elements. however, all recent projects from past couple years involved pretty clean and complete scan data.
I didn't expect my comments would end like this, with such debate.
Like Bigjohn said, i also think the stuff in this trailer is a major technical achievement. And sorry if i don't see artistry here, for me, this has no merit.
And Neox, before you talk, you should think before posting, because you don't know a shit about me. I have been working with scanning data and mudbox/zbrush sculpts and making retopologies several times like to know perfectly the workflow. So... you should keep that "bullshit" word you said about my comments in your pocket if you want a good mood. And BTW, for any reason i own a dual Xeon workstation with a top level Quadro... cough cough.
Imho, making personal attacks is only for low class people.
And again, i say that this tech is quite expensive. You see, I'd like to see all the cyberpunk 2077 game characters from scanning data. I also like the progress.
As for me, i'm focused in creating monsters and creatures mainly, so this doesn't represent for me any danger. I'm constantly using new tools to make my workflow faster and more efficient, so i can say i'm "cheating" using tools like modo, ndo, ddo or substance designer. They make our job easier but they don't do all for us (they can save us hours of photoshop).
However, with a full body scan, you don't need to worry about anatomy, textures, proportions, shapes, nothing. It's like you had a 80% done.
I posted some scanned data from sketchfab, but i'm sure nobody cared, lol.
Dude i love your work, you are a great modeller, but your opinion is soooo often fundamentally backwards when it goes about technical achievements. No one forces you to use new tech and i doubt there will be great job losses due to this tech, it will just shift jobs in certain fields of the industry, why would someone not use scans of people as a base to work from when the productions aim is photorealism or hyperrealism, its just another toolset or reference, you name it.
No one stops you from preferring one workflow over another - your work, especially the stylized stuff will always be needed, you can't scan those things, unless you model them classically or carve them out of stone, if you feel like it and someone needs that look - great for you.
But there are times when your workflow is not faster, there are times when it is appropriate to just go the sculpting route, especially when it is as flexible as todays tools with dynamesh, voxel sculpting etc. There are also times where the classical modelling is way ahead of sculpting, especially when it comes to clean shapes and such. And there are also times when scanning is more appropriate than other workflows.
But dude look att hose images, head head might be based on a scan, but it is still classical modelling, the pose sure is as well, there are things you can't scan or use as they are on the scans. Tight overlaps like when the arm overlaps the Torso. Her whole outfit has been redone, the face is different from the scanned data. Or just look at the guy, the scan is even just a small reference here, the face is completely redone, not based on the scan at all, the outfit merely follows the scan, the folds are refence but they changed them quite a lot for the final shot. Just look at it.
here is a shot of the scanned untextured pose for the hair creation
and now you say there is no artist needing forming this to the final head they just showed? of course they might have done another scan for the neutral head - still a scan is no final data, if you can get this close a scan is nothing more but a base to work from, you can't let a monkey without experience do this work, just retopo and call it done.
This might work for non important NPC characters without much work afterwards, everything else will still need a bit of work to be invested, to make it look like this does.
However, with a full body scan, you don't need to worry about anatomy, textures, proportions, shapes, nothing. It's like you had a 80% done
you forget, that no human beeign stands in a way the standard rig needs to stay, or is in the proportions people need to keep the memoryimprint low for shared rigs, animations and such.
Good luck with the final scanned wrinkles on clothes in a lot of cases they don't work for current ingame needs, scanned hardsurface stuff can#t compete on a quality level with the good old ways to do it, same goes for sculpting in a lot of cases. I have yet to see the scan that can be transferrred to lowpoly as is and i worked a hell lot with scans from different vendors in the past few months - in future the quality will be better for sure, with more people beeing able to build scanrigs, its not like those modern scanrigs cost a fortune, a lot of stuff can be done with a tight budget in mind. It might not pay of on a per asset base, over the course of one or a few productions it will pay off - yet you will need skilled people to work with that data.
I surely love to do work from scratch, and there is still plenty of work for me, be it creatures, animals, stylized stuff or other things that are just not good at beeing scanned (maybe just yet). and i don't fear for you to lose a job either, but at one point there is just no sense in denying the worth of scans to the artwork of games or films - this is what i called bullshit.
as for no.1 most 3d scanning vendors now days provide you with fully assembled clean data with color map so one does not really have to spend much time to reposition the scan data properly.
Yeah but that's done by somebody with a legitimate skillset, that's all I'm saying. A slightly less demanding one compared to sculpting by hand, yes, probably. But still a very legitimate part of CG. :thumbup:
Anyways, yeah; back to the actual teaser.
EDIT: Thanks for posting those Neox. I'm liking how much we are getting to see of the development for this teaser. Those are pretty bad scans, I'm surprised. Definitely a lot of work was needed to get the finished product from those!
Neox, that's a lower res scan for the hair creation. This is one the high quality scans they did, and it's very probable this model posed for a T or A scan pose (neutral pose):
I have no problems with this tech, i just only said this has no merit, only that.
As you say, a scan is no final data, but we can obtain the textures, wrinkles, etc. from it easily. We only need to use a base mesh for an ultra fast workflow, and reproject the geo for a faster retopo, and if needed "smudge" polygons. The other tasks are baking and not much.
I don't deny the worth of scans. In fact, i hate to see very cool cgs, and later, to see the game with hand crafted characters without the quality of textures, proportions of a scanned model. what the heck, they didn't need to use a cloth system! because the whole video is a simple static diorama with cristal bullets.
The retopologized model may not be identical to the scanned model, but that's is another of the technical problems we have nowadays. Like happens with the tracing of drawings, you can't have a 100% accurate trace. And with the 3d scans is the same. The models are almost the same, and for some parts the wrinkles are identical. And i think it's great for them if the saved a lot of work, but again, i say that this lacks of artistry.
What would you think if i trace the drawing of a recognized artist, i change the weapon and i do a variation of the face placing a helmet?
You may say they need a skilled artist, but i really differ. I know too many people that doesn't know to model properly but they are very good with retopos and topologies.
Neox, that's a lower res scan for the hair creation. This is one the high quality scans they did, and it's very probable this model posed for a T or A scan pose (neutral pose):
I have no problems with this tech, i just only said this has no merit, only that.
As you say, a scan is no final data, but we can obtain the textures, wrinkles, etc. from it easily. We only need to use a base mesh for an ultra fast workflow, and reproject the geo for a faster retopo, and if needed "smudge" polygons. The other tasks are baking and not much.
I don't deny the worth of scans. In fact, i hate to see very cool cgs, and later, to see the game with hand crafted characters without the quality of textures, proportions of a scanned model. what the heck, they didn't need to use a cloth system! because the whole video is a simple static diorama with cristal bullets.
The retopologized model may not be identical to the scanned model, but that's is another of the technical problems we have nowadays. Like happens with the tracing of drawings, you can't have a 100% accurate trace. And with the 3d scans is the same. The models are almost the same, and for some parts the wrinkles are identical. And i think it's great for them if the saved a lot of work, but again, i say that this lacks of artistry.
What would you think if i trace the drawing of a recognized artist, i change the weapon and i do a variation of the face placing a helmet?
You may say they need a skilled artist, but i really differ. I know too many people that doesn't know to model properly but they are very good with retopos and topologies.
I think you would be shocked to know how many well known artists dating back to the 90's have relied heavily on scans. Even the latest team on Hulk in Avengers at ILM. People on Left 4 Dead at Valve. Weta team on Avatar, TinTin, LOTR, Hobbit. CLU and Button at DD. People who do figures for companies like Hot Toys or Gentle Giant. Well known, respected artists. Most freelancers don't even credit that they use scans in their work. The list is endless.
It happens and will continue to do so. Because it saves time and money and adds realism that can only be achieved by highly skilled (even savant type) artists. Which are very rare, there are probably only a handful in the world that can do it to the same degree as scanned data and certainly not as fast.
I can scan 100x poses in an hour. Gigapixels of colour, very detailed. Delivered the next day. 100x of expression in an hour, delivered the next day, aligned and ready to be used to rig with. No one could achieve that in that amount of time and at nearly 1:1 comparison in realism. This saves hours and hours, weeks, months! of manual labor but the data still needs allot of work by highly skilled artists. The type of artists who work at those studios above I mentioned.
Of course anyone can use scanned data and process it but it doesn't mean it will be as good. You need to understand human anatomy and be a good artist.
I say to my clients, scanned data is only as good as the artist using it.
A few people here have mentioned they have worked with scanned data. Please post examples of how well the clean up and cross transfer turned out.
sorry lee, still under NDA, you know that story...
but at one point i would love to build my own rig, i don't mind working with scans or with this tech in general, as i also think that it helps a great deal to learn things for my personal work.
@uncle: i don't think it is awful, there are some very valid statements in here, and stuff quite a bunch of artists can learn from those pictures, we might not all agree on everyone opinions, but this doesn't mean its a worthless discussion.
sorry lee, still under NDA, you know that story...
but at one point i would love to build my own rig, i don't mind working with scans or with this tech in general, as i also think that it helps a great deal to learn things for my personal work.
I agree. To me, there is no better way to learn anatomy than to study it mm by mm in a 3-Dimensional space. Imagine what it will be like when we have sculpting haptics, Leap type tracking and Oculus Rift VR type sculpting or modelling support. You will be able to 'hands on' study and improve in a virtual space. No more keyboard, or monitor, just a cubicle, your hands and VR. But I digress.
Studying scans is a great compliment to being taught anatomy, it's just scans aren't an interpretation by another human. They are the real thing.
@uncle: i don't think it is awful, there are some very valid statements in here, and stuff quite a bunch of artists can learn from those pictures, we might not all agree on everyone opinions, but this doesn't mean its a worthless discussion.
Agreed. I think the fact this teaser has sparked debate, not just about techniques used but also content (scantily clad woman etc etc), means it did its job effectively. A piece of Art
Like cd projekt red did with Platige and like Platige did with infinite-realities. It was needed 3 companies for the production of this video, 3 companies!.
That's efficiency.
CD Projekt does not need a permanent CGI staff for the 1 trailer per year maximum that they need.
Platige does not need a scanner for the occasional project that involves creating realistic humans (they work primarily in commercials).
All 3 companies specialize, and do that type of thing better than a jack-of-all-trades studio.
In all my years of work, the workflow of "sculpt and then retopo" takes more time than the linear workflow of "concept-model-sculpt small details and end of story".
That is strange to me, as the concept-retopo workflow has sped up our work a lot, and it creates far better results as well.
These are 20+ thousand quad polys per head. The wires you can see are not subdivided, those are the actual control meshes that the facial blendshapes are created with.
Retopo on an existing and approved head sculpt for such characters takes just a few days, BTW. Modeling from scratch could take a month.
Someone that only use Zbrush is not good for a company if he doesn't know how to model properly.
We have a separate sculptor team and a character modeling team (although most of the modelers can and do sculpt as well). Some of our sculptors who don't know shit about topology are incredibly talented and it'd be seriously stupid not to hire them.
It also takes like 2-3 days to get a head concept ready for client approval, and then another 3 to build a high res animation mesh on top.
If it's not a hero character and we can re-use generic basemeshes, it takes even less.
BTW, retopology tools are quite advanced nowadays, and you can do the job very fast
Again, that depends on the content.
If you wanna make characters like the ones in the Hobbit, with that level of facial animation, then auto retopo tools will not be of much help, you'll need good people instead. And some crazy mad genius sculptors, too.
Games are, of course, different, but the workflow is converging with more powerful hardware every day. PS4/Xbox3 games will probably move in this direction as seen in Weta's work, too.
No matter how cool this trailer is, it tells me nothing about how the game will look or play(other than general themes). That's my biggest complaint.
Actually most of our clients take a lot of care to make sure the CG trailer does not hint at stuff you can't do in the game; and they do like to have action that is in fact indicative of ingame features.
Even in the first AC2 trailer we did... In the game, you were able to hire prostitutes to distract enemies, you were able to disarm enemies, you did have a gun and so on.
i dont get your point. my point is 3d scanning is cheap. it is done for a reason because it is cheap to save cost. that is why it doest deserve same respect as hand crafted model.
Not really true either. 3D scanning can actually cost you more. But it can also give you very high quality results that are lifelike.
Yeah, and also remember my points about extra costs for hiring talent, make-up, props/clothing, traveling to the studio and so on. These can all vary from project to project.
Yeah, and also remember my points about extra costs for hiring talent, make-up, props/clothing, traveling to the studio and so on. These can all vary from project to project.
So can the cg art talent that you would normally hire to build the content with from scratch. Which varies from country to country. Also depends how fast they are and not including the time it would take to dress and photograph the model/actor who would be duplicated, that still costs money. Unless they are hand built in the sense of totally synthetic.
Imagine a top of the line CG artist sculpting 100x likeness expressions or body poses (as an example) So the cost of them, per month. As apposed to doing it in a few days at the cost of the scan and talent session to capture. There is a trade off, it's just finding the right balance and depends on what level of realism/quality you need.
I don't see scanning as a bad thing - doing it all by hand is already too expensive, look at all the projects that can't break-even after 1 million sales or all the team layoffs and studio shutdowns.
The most jarring thing about the Mass Effect games where the contrast between the characters based on real people and generic NPCs. What if you could fill out that NPC roster with a quick casting call?
Er, scanned expressions won't get you 100% the way either, at least none of the productions I've heard about have managed to do that. I think I've mentioned this to you - ILM, Digital Domain, Double Negative and MPC were all using Mova's system to get their expression scans, but these movies from 2012 all started production in 2011-2010. Maybe today they'd use some other tech, we don't know.
And Weta of course had no actor to scan for the goblin king or Azog
Also, if you're to build a CGI human for a movie production, scanning expressions is usually a part of the job - because usually the actor's 100% likeness is not what the studio needs, they could simply film that. So it's either a younger or older variation or an alien or a Hulk, so the scanned data is just a reference for the artists.
Cinematics and games are more likely to utilize this technology in the future. But even there you need to modify the scan data... I think the 343 and Axis guys can have more to say about this though, as there are a lot of scans used in both the Halo 4 video game and the Spartan Ops cinematics.
But this part is one level beyond the scopes of this trailer, here there weren't many expressions used.
The most jarring thing about the Mass Effect games where the contrast between the characters based on real people and generic NPCs. What if you could fill out that NPC roster with a quick casting call?
As far as I know they scanned the ME1 hero characters - Shepard, Kaidan, Liara etc.
Then for ME2 and 3 I'm not sure if Kolby Jukes has used scans for Miranda or the TV reporter woman.
As for the other NPCs it was a cost issue I think - spending an hour in the face generator can never be beaten even by scanning.
Er, scanned expressions won't get you 100% the way either, at least none of the productions I've heard about have managed to do that. I think I've mentioned this to you - ILM, Digital Domain, Double Negative and MPC were all using Mova's system to get their expression scans, but these movies from 2012 all started production in 2011-2010. Maybe today they'd use some other tech, we don't know.
Er? :poly142: Of course not but they help and save time. Mova is an incredibly dated system.
And Weta of course had no actor to scan for the goblin king or Azog .
Of course they did! Barry Humphries - Great Goblin, Manu Bennett - Azog
No doubt they scanned them the same way they did actors for Avatar. They obviously don't use the exact likeness from the scan but it helps to figure out the expressions and how their faces react. Come on Tamas you know that.
Also, if you're to build a CGI human for a movie production, scanning expressions is usually a part of the job - because usually the actor's 100% likeness is not what the studio needs, they could simply film that. So it's either a younger or older variation or an alien or a Hulk, so the scanned data is just a reference for the artists.
As for the other NPCs it was a cost issue I think - spending an hour in the face generator can never be beaten even by scanning.
Eventually companies will utilize scans to build a repository for just that purpose Research institutes already do it for full body analysis.
I can't speak about 343 or Axis but I've been working with some other companies who specialize in Face rigging, and I have seen some of their in game rigs driven using a newer type of 3D scan FACS analysis technique from this 360 rig at IR. I think we are going to see quite a shift in quality with regards to in game face animation in the next year or so. More so than was seen in the recent offline rendered Halo cinematics. Bold claim I know.. I will just have to eat my hat!
As far as I know they scanned the ME1 hero characters - Shepard, Kaidan, Liara etc.
Then for ME2 and 3 I'm not sure if Kolby Jukes has used scans for Miranda or the TV reporter woman.
As for the other NPCs it was a cost issue I think - spending an hour in the face generator can never be beaten even by scanning.
that is sad really, why hire top talent like Kolby and have them clean up scan data ?
i would rather see his hand sculpted work over scan data derived work any day.
at this rate, more and more modelers will spend time cleaning up scan data just like lot of animators now days spend time cleaning up mocap data.
that is sad really, why hire top talent like Kolby and have them clean up scan data ?
i would rather see his hand sculpted work over scan data derived work any day.
at this rate, more and more modelers will spend time cleaning up scan data just like lot of animators now days spend time cleaning up mocap data.
Utter nonsense. MM your all doomsday! I suppose you believed in 2012 and the rapture?
Artists can do many things that software and hardware alone cannot. I would bet money on it that Kolby could do the same work, quite easily without any scanned data but no doubt the client/bosses above required it.
Utter nonsense. MM your all doomsday! I suppose you believed in 2012 and the rapture?
Artists can do many things that software and hardware alone cannot. I would bet money on it that Kolby could do the same work, quite easily without any scanned data but no doubt the client/bosses above required it.
is my english that bad that people fail to understand my point ?
i meant Kolby is more than capable of doing awesome work, so why have him clean up scan data ? you pretty much made my point while failing to understand my point.
my problem is the client/bosses opting for scan data rather than using their talent Kolby to their full capability.
btw, yea you have me figured out completely. i am a dooms day believer wearing tin foil on my head right now and i believe in all sort of conspiracies too. how about you ?
anyways, i am done talking about this since some of you fail to understand a simple thing and rather over analyze it to death.
sure we all use reference in one way or another. difference is in general those references are 5-10% of the whole work while 3d scanning is 50-80% of the whole work.
3d scanning is nothing to be very proud of as an artist. it does lot of the work for you. as simple as that.
at the end of the day, I am sure Kolby is more proud of his work on any asset he did from scratch than any work he did based on scan data. that is all what i am concerned about.
is my english that bad that people fail to understand my point ?
i meant Kolby is more than capable of doing awesome work, so why have him clean up scan data ? you pretty much made my point while failing to understand my point.
my problem is the client/bosses opting for scan data rather than using their talent Kolby to their full capability.
btw, yea you have me figured out completely. i am a dooms day believer wearing tin foil on my head right now and i believe in all sort of conspiracies too. how about you ?
anyways, i am done talking about this since some of you fail to understand a simple thing and rather over analyze it to death.
sure we all use reference in one way or another. difference is in general those references are 5-10% of the whole work while 3d scanning is 50-80% of the whole work.
3d scanning is nothing to be very proud of as an artist. it does lot of the work for you. as simple as that.
at the end of the day, I am sure Kolby is more proud of his work on any asset he did from scratch than any work he did based on scan data. that is all what i am concerned about.
I understand your point(s) just fine. It's cool, your negativity came across a few pages back.
Scanning is a tool, just like an image viewer, Google, a wacom or a mouse.
sure we all use reference in one way or another. difference is in general those references are 5-10% of the whole work while 3d scanning is 50-80% of the whole work.
3d scanning is nothing to be very proud of as an artist. it does lot of the work for you. as simple as that.
I traveled the hard path for years, succeeded and got bored of it. Automating part of the process is an absolute joy. Especially in production, under budget and time constraints.
Your limited experience comes across a great deal here. I can't really gauge much about your actual experience as there is no info on your Profile page. So your anonymity speaks for itself.
Halo 4's ingame facial animation system produces quite amazing results already. Can't wait to see what 343 can do on the new consoles...
As for Weta scanning the actors, don't think it's much use for creatures... They shoot footage and photos, but I haven't heard or seen anything about scans. Same for Avatar.
They did take photographs to use as textures on the avatars themselves to recreate the pore structure, though.
I'm not going to get into the discussion on on the pros and cons of scanning but MM is a great artist with tons of experience and probably one of the few people here who could do what he says.
Halo 4's ingame facial animation system produces quite amazing results already. Can't wait to see what 343 can do on the new consoles...
As for Weta scanning the actors, don't think it's much use for creatures... They shoot footage and photos, but I haven't heard or seen anything about scans. Same for Avatar.
They did take photographs to use as textures on the avatars themselves to recreate the pore structure, though.
There are some shots floating around of them scanning Sigourney and Sam for Avatar, using their own scanner and the USC ICT. So it would seems crazy not to do the same for creatures in the Hobbit (maybe not USC ICT) simple and quick. Very useful for reference. I'm speculating for Hobbit though.
I'm not going to get into the discussion on on the pros and cons of scanning but MM is a great artist with tons of experience and probably one of the few people here who could do what he says.
Who is he? sorry I'm new to these parts.
I would genuinely love to see your work MM. EDIT**
Ah yes Mashru Mishu, I know now. You have some great work but it has a very game type feel to it. Not so much realism, which is inherent with allot of hand built work. No offense but it comes back to my whole point about scanning. Speed, budget and realism. If that's what a client needs.
I said, I don't know if he used scans at all. Or if it was hand sculpted.
You should ask him instead of making presumptions
It says right there on the CGHub page also other places for previous projects on his old site. One of a few artists who has mentioned the use of scans. Some don't.
I find this whole discussion pretty silly.
First, if you didn't make the concept for your 3d model, you didn't do anything creative to begin with, the majority of 3D artists are not artists at all, they are glorified carpenters working off an artists blueprint. so who gives a shit if it was done by hand or by a computer? its monkey work, yes some carpenters are better at others at their craft, but they are still craftsmen, not artists.
Secondly, its the end result of a work that matters in the end, not the process, not the steps you took to get there, not one small piece of a larger work. I am sure most of you would like to put yourselves on a pedestal as creative geniuses and savants, but in reality your cogs in a team that produce a product for mass consumption and very little real art is ever made.
their are exceptions but very, very few.
Its fine if you respect hand crafted work, but please stop acting as if there is any "artistry" in someone copying a concept image that was art directed by someone that didn't draw it, and approved by a creative director that doesn't even know how to draw. Its a craft like cross stitch or woodcarving. If your lucky at the end the final product, the final game, the final film, that might be considered art, not your shitty little contribution. get over yourself.
There are some shots floating around of them scanning Sigourney and Sam for Avatar, using their own scanner and the USC ICT.
The creatures in Hobbit, even Gollum, are far more different from the actors than the avatars in Avatar. In my - far more limited - experience you can't really go far with a direct reproduction of the actor, it'll look very bad on a creature with different facial features and proportions.
Then again, we can't know for sure, maybe they did use scans - as far as I know Weta has the tools on site so why not see if it helps a bit.
But I still think that a combination based system is better done by hand...
But now that you say it I do recall some actor being scanned in a lightstage, although I still tend towards skin pore details. And Legacy Effects did their expression studies based on photographs only as it seems. http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/img/interviews/spatton/thumb03.jpg
It says right there on the CGHub page also other places for previous projects on his old site.
You're right it says so about the ME3 model. Not so about the ME2 one though.
First, if you didn't make the concept for your 3d model, you didn't do anything creative to begin with
...
...
In some ways you're right, but in others you're very far from it.
Monkey work it certainly is not. You need a modeler with a very very good eye to interpret a 2D concept and keep the silhouettes and other characteristics intact, make it look good and all.
There are very few people who can do that... Sure, even less who could do the concept, but that is why we have these kinds of workflows. Quick and dirty concept work first by a few guys, more detailed development work by a larger team, then actual 3D asset creation by an even bigger team. It's good, it works, and everyone is a necessary part to create the result.
The creatures in Hobbit, even Gollum, are far more different from the actors than the avatars in Avatar. In my - far more limited - experience you can't really go far with a direct reproduction of the actor, it'll look very bad on a creature with different facial features and proportions.
Then again, we can't know for sure, maybe they did use scans - as far as I know Weta has the tools on site so why not see if it helps a bit.
But I still think that a combination based system is better done by hand...
But now that you say it I do recall some actor being scanned in a lightstage, although I still tend towards skin pore details. And Legacy Effects did their expression studies based on photographs only as it seems. http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/img/interviews/spatton/thumb03.jpg
You're right it says so about the ME3 model. Not so about the ME2 one though.
I find this whole discussion pretty silly.
First, if you didn't make the concept for your 3d model, you didn't do anything creative to begin with, the majority of 3D artists are not artists at all, they are glorified carpenters working off an artists blueprint. so who gives a shit if it was done by hand or by a computer? its monkey work, yes some carpenters are better at others at their craft, but they are still craftsmen, not artists.
Secondly, its the end result of a work that matters in the end, not the process, not the steps you took to get there, not one small piece of a larger work. I am sure most of you would like to put yourselves on a pedestal as creative geniuses and savants, but in reality your cogs in a team that produce a product for mass consumption and very little real art is ever made.
their are exceptions but very, very few.
Its fine if you respect hand crafted work, but please stop acting as if there is any "artistry" in someone copying a concept image that was art directed by someone that didn't draw it, and approved by a creative director that doesn't even know how to draw. Its a craft like cross stitch or woodcarving. If your lucky at the end the final product, the final game, the final film, that might be considered art, not your shitty little contribution. get over yourself.
I really strongly disagree with this. I understand that we are part of a production line but there is so much artistry that goes on during the 3d development stage, I actually cant believe you wrote that as a character artist. When you work from a concept you make it your own, be it your style or through design resolutions that the concept artist had never even thought of. one artists cloth work will be completely different from anothers and you hardly ever copy concept artists cloth flow as it hardly ever matches up in 3d. We are not glorified tracers.
as to the discussion I love looking at scan data, the marvelous designer stuff, its amazing reference, but I also dislike it somewhat. I understand the results but something urks me which is almost impossible to explain why. I think as last year I started pushing my anatomy and cloth work so much that I dont want to be replaced by it haha, its also the thought that anyone can come up with amazing works but not actually know about anatomy, cloth flow or cloth dynamics etc. I understand they must know some but they dont need scott eaton level anatomy skills. The good thing is my professional work has been mistaken as scan data so I might be able to fake it haha.
the trailer was really cool though now I know its scan data though I still think its kickass but slightly less impressed.
I find this whole discussion pretty silly.
First, if you didn't make the concept for your 3d model, you didn't do anything creative to begin with, the majority of 3D artists are not artists at all, they are glorified carpenters working off an artists blueprint. so who gives a shit if it was done by hand or by a computer? its monkey work, yes some carpenters are better at others at their craft, but they are still craftsmen, not artists.
Secondly, its the end result of a work that matters in the end, not the process, not the steps you took to get there, not one small piece of a larger work. I am sure most of you would like to put yourselves on a pedestal as creative geniuses and savants, but in reality your cogs in a team that produce a product for mass consumption and very little real art is ever made.
their are exceptions but very, very few.
Its fine if you respect hand crafted work, but please stop acting as if there is any "artistry" in someone copying a concept image that was art directed by someone that didn't draw it, and approved by a creative director that doesn't even know how to draw. Its a craft like cross stitch or woodcarving. If your lucky at the end the final product, the final game, the final film, that might be considered art, not your shitty little contribution. get over yourself.
I actually cant believe you wrote that as a character artist.
I used to think differently when i was only a character artist, but since i have started i have done tech art, animation, lighting, environments, design, and have had artwork in the Hammer museum's Los Angeles biennial. Looking back i find my original role a lot less important than i did when i started, because that's the only part of the process i had an intimate knowledge of.
A character model is nothing without a strong concept, i don't care how great an artist you are, if you are directed to make a shit concept it will be a shit model. If lighting artists don't light it well it will be a shit looking character model. If animators do a shitty job animating it, its all worthless. The actual character model is a small part of a bigger picture, and the steps taken to make it are insignificant.
If you only wear one hat in production its easy to be blinded of all the factors needed to create something. I find at most game companies i have worked for, everyone seems to think their job is of the utmost importance to the final product. The reality however is that is not the case.
Replies
I think as artists we get too easily caught up in what is/isn't "artistic". Why can't the reason for you getting paid simply be your ability?
I think you're selling yourself short if you think your "artistic" ability is the only thing of value you can offer. If you're not interested in the technical side of things, you shouldn't be in the games industry, you should exhibiting oil paintings in art galleries.
You can't do game art, or really any sort of production art and escape the technical side of it. The whole process is hugely technical, and getting more and more technical as the industry progresses.
And an artist who can hand sculpt 3d likeness, and has experience working with scan data would be more valuable than either. The more tools you know the better, again, working with scan data is just another tool.
that is a moot point.
someone who can hand sculpt photo-realistic likeness would be more than capable to do clean up work anyways.
3d scan data clean up work isn't that big a deal. anyone who can hand sculpt realistic likeness would probably spend 30 minutes learning how to clean up that pile of shit that scan data is.
like i said before, i done fair amount of cleanup work and i hate it. it is not satisfying and not worth my time.
Because you don't like it, and feel its beneath you to do?
I don't see the logic.
I really find it hard to respect people who refuse to do LODs, or cleanup, or anything else that might seem mundane. It is a job after all, its not all going to be hero assets and sunshine.
what i meant is when making a character solely based on scan data, i dont find that work nearly as satisfying as making it myself.
i create LODs, i actually like making LODs, doing UVs, etc etc.
using 3d scan data is cheap alternating, which is why it is not as valuable as commissioning an artist to do the same by hand.
why is it so hard to understand that ?
Yeah I think most people would agree. If given the choice I would prefer to do something from scratch as well.
However, this is more personal preference, and I wouldn't say it in any way nullifies the importance of knowing other methods.
where did i say anything about "importance of knowing other methods".
3d scan data clean up process is something that any good 3d modeler can adapt to in matter of hours.
once again that has nothing to do with what i am saying.
Maybe I'm being overly snide here. I was probably being a little too fixated on what I was reading into your comments vs what you were actually saying. I'll drop it, I think we've derailed the thread enough at this point. :poly124:
This thread is fun.
I want to make characters, and the medium I like is game art. That means learning the tools associated with that medium. Just as learning about different types of clay, and different types of sculpting tools and chisels is a requirement for working on a physical sculpt. But I just don't see any value in those tools by themselves.
I'm not going to appreciate the type of marble Michelangelo used when he made David. I appreciate the journey he went through gaining the knowledge required to sculpt David. It's the subject matter, not the tools.
In the case of the Cyberpunk video it's more of a tools question than an art question. It's not about what the person was trying to express, like Michelangelo sculpting a human figure, as much as it is about the tech being used.
The tech is cool. It's just not my cup of tea.
That's really more of a Strawman argument. It's not like I'm opposed to learning tools or the technical side of things. I don't think that has been part of the conversation here.
In fact, I like writing and reading about shaders. But it's not because I enjoy the shaders themselves. It's because I enjoy knowing just how far things can go in our medium, so that if I ever want to do those things, I know how far I can take it. If one day they come up with something that you just talk to it and it writes you a perfect shader on the spot, I'd love the hell out of it.
(IMO) It's just a job folks, great that you love doing it, great that it gives you opportunities and a nice standard of living; but it doesn't make you 'special' to be an 'artist'. We're just pushing polys or putting coloured pixels down at the end of the day. :thumbup:
Don't agree with you I'm afraid. What you see being done in those photos is a completely different skillset. Like being an animator and/or a motion capture artist, they are completely different skillsets. But being employed as a motion capture artist doesn't make you any less of an animator if you are one... it just means that's just the gig you were able to get at the time.
And another thing we have not considered in this thread is, that the dudes putting this trailer together are actually extremely skilled modellers/texture/shading artists/whatever. There' s a good chance that they are.
true but irrelevant to this discussion.
are you talking from personal experience or just guessing ?
unless you are talking about the actual 3d scanning technicians, the task of scan data cleanup basically involves these following steps in general:
1. scale, position and orient highpoly scan data to match production specifications
2. retoplogy of conform existing topology mesh to scan data
3. rebuild clean highpoly
4. transfer/bake appropriate maps
5. create final product.
all the above task are pretty basic skill set all senior modelers should have in my opinion.
Just mentioning it because there seems to be a certain amount of 'looking down upon' going on in the thread.
From personal non-commercial experience.
Number 2-5 are things a modeller can do yes, but the difficulty and completely different skillset is number one. Being on the set, and being able to use that equipment, making sure everything you need is captured... it's a very technical and co-ordination driven skillset. That goes for animators/mocap dudes and modellers/scanners alike. Very different skillset.
Agreed on the fact that Seniors of their discipline should be schooled in both skillsets though.
for production though why bother. no ones going to care how it was made.
Weeeeell... I would personally agree with him there... it is a different skillset, but one may or may not be harder than the other.
Agreed.
Like Bigjohn said, i also think the stuff in this trailer is a major technical achievement. And sorry if i don't see artistry here, for me, this has no merit.
And Neox, before you talk, you should think before posting, because you don't know a shit about me. I have been working with scanning data and mudbox/zbrush sculpts and making retopologies several times like to know perfectly the workflow. So... you should keep that "bullshit" word you said about my comments in your pocket if you want a good mood. And BTW, for any reason i own a dual Xeon workstation with a top level Quadro... cough cough.
Imho, making personal attacks is only for low class people.
And again, i say that this tech is quite expensive. You see, I'd like to see all the cyberpunk 2077 game characters from scanning data. I also like the progress.
As for me, i'm focused in creating monsters and creatures mainly, so this doesn't represent for me any danger. I'm constantly using new tools to make my workflow faster and more efficient, so i can say i'm "cheating" using tools like modo, ndo, ddo or substance designer. They make our job easier but they don't do all for us (they can save us hours of photoshop).
However, with a full body scan, you don't need to worry about anatomy, textures, proportions, shapes, nothing. It's like you had a 80% done.
I posted some scanned data from sketchfab, but i'm sure nobody cared, lol.
i am not looking down on anything, i am just being brutally honest. it would be dishonest not to admit that 3d scanning is a cheaper and faster alternative to human artists. that is why it is done in most cases because it makes sense to producers from a budget stand point.
as for no.1 most 3d scanning vendors now days provide you with fully assembled clean data with color map so one does not really have to spend much time to reposition the scan data properly.
i had one project (almost 4 years ago) where the scan data were partial scans that i had to assemble manually and had to guess the proper rotation of separate elements. however, all recent projects from past couple years involved pretty clean and complete scan data.
Dude i love your work, you are a great modeller, but your opinion is soooo often fundamentally backwards when it goes about technical achievements. No one forces you to use new tech and i doubt there will be great job losses due to this tech, it will just shift jobs in certain fields of the industry, why would someone not use scans of people as a base to work from when the productions aim is photorealism or hyperrealism, its just another toolset or reference, you name it.
No one stops you from preferring one workflow over another - your work, especially the stylized stuff will always be needed, you can't scan those things, unless you model them classically or carve them out of stone, if you feel like it and someone needs that look - great for you.
But there are times when your workflow is not faster, there are times when it is appropriate to just go the sculpting route, especially when it is as flexible as todays tools with dynamesh, voxel sculpting etc. There are also times where the classical modelling is way ahead of sculpting, especially when it comes to clean shapes and such. And there are also times when scanning is more appropriate than other workflows.
But dude look att hose images, head head might be based on a scan, but it is still classical modelling, the pose sure is as well, there are things you can't scan or use as they are on the scans. Tight overlaps like when the arm overlaps the Torso. Her whole outfit has been redone, the face is different from the scanned data. Or just look at the guy, the scan is even just a small reference here, the face is completely redone, not based on the scan at all, the outfit merely follows the scan, the folds are refence but they changed them quite a lot for the final shot. Just look at it.
here is a shot of the scanned untextured pose for the hair creation
and now you say there is no artist needing forming this to the final head they just showed? of course they might have done another scan for the neutral head - still a scan is no final data, if you can get this close a scan is nothing more but a base to work from, you can't let a monkey without experience do this work, just retopo and call it done.
This might work for non important NPC characters without much work afterwards, everything else will still need a bit of work to be invested, to make it look like this does.
you forget, that no human beeign stands in a way the standard rig needs to stay, or is in the proportions people need to keep the memoryimprint low for shared rigs, animations and such.
Good luck with the final scanned wrinkles on clothes in a lot of cases they don't work for current ingame needs, scanned hardsurface stuff can#t compete on a quality level with the good old ways to do it, same goes for sculpting in a lot of cases. I have yet to see the scan that can be transferrred to lowpoly as is and i worked a hell lot with scans from different vendors in the past few months - in future the quality will be better for sure, with more people beeing able to build scanrigs, its not like those modern scanrigs cost a fortune, a lot of stuff can be done with a tight budget in mind. It might not pay of on a per asset base, over the course of one or a few productions it will pay off - yet you will need skilled people to work with that data.
I surely love to do work from scratch, and there is still plenty of work for me, be it creatures, animals, stylized stuff or other things that are just not good at beeing scanned (maybe just yet). and i don't fear for you to lose a job either, but at one point there is just no sense in denying the worth of scans to the artwork of games or films - this is what i called bullshit.
Yeah but that's done by somebody with a legitimate skillset, that's all I'm saying. A slightly less demanding one compared to sculpting by hand, yes, probably. But still a very legitimate part of CG. :thumbup:
Anyways, yeah; back to the actual teaser.
EDIT: Thanks for posting those Neox. I'm liking how much we are getting to see of the development for this teaser. Those are pretty bad scans, I'm surprised. Definitely a lot of work was needed to get the finished product from those!
I have no problems with this tech, i just only said this has no merit, only that.
As you say, a scan is no final data, but we can obtain the textures, wrinkles, etc. from it easily. We only need to use a base mesh for an ultra fast workflow, and reproject the geo for a faster retopo, and if needed "smudge" polygons. The other tasks are baking and not much.
I don't deny the worth of scans. In fact, i hate to see very cool cgs, and later, to see the game with hand crafted characters without the quality of textures, proportions of a scanned model. what the heck, they didn't need to use a cloth system! because the whole video is a simple static diorama with cristal bullets.
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Cyberpunk-2077/6573211
The retopologized model may not be identical to the scanned model, but that's is another of the technical problems we have nowadays. Like happens with the tracing of drawings, you can't have a 100% accurate trace. And with the 3d scans is the same. The models are almost the same, and for some parts the wrinkles are identical. And i think it's great for them if the saved a lot of work, but again, i say that this lacks of artistry.
What would you think if i trace the drawing of a recognized artist, i change the weapon and i do a variation of the face placing a helmet?
You may say they need a skilled artist, but i really differ. I know too many people that doesn't know to model properly but they are very good with retopos and topologies.
I think you would be shocked to know how many well known artists dating back to the 90's have relied heavily on scans. Even the latest team on Hulk in Avengers at ILM. People on Left 4 Dead at Valve. Weta team on Avatar, TinTin, LOTR, Hobbit. CLU and Button at DD. People who do figures for companies like Hot Toys or Gentle Giant. Well known, respected artists. Most freelancers don't even credit that they use scans in their work. The list is endless.
It happens and will continue to do so. Because it saves time and money and adds realism that can only be achieved by highly skilled (even savant type) artists. Which are very rare, there are probably only a handful in the world that can do it to the same degree as scanned data and certainly not as fast.
I can scan 100x poses in an hour. Gigapixels of colour, very detailed. Delivered the next day. 100x of expression in an hour, delivered the next day, aligned and ready to be used to rig with. No one could achieve that in that amount of time and at nearly 1:1 comparison in realism. This saves hours and hours, weeks, months! of manual labor but the data still needs allot of work by highly skilled artists. The type of artists who work at those studios above I mentioned.
Of course anyone can use scanned data and process it but it doesn't mean it will be as good. You need to understand human anatomy and be a good artist.
I say to my clients, scanned data is only as good as the artist using it.
A few people here have mentioned they have worked with scanned data. Please post examples of how well the clean up and cross transfer turned out.
Then later you find out scans were used. This made me chuckle. Even your highly trained eye didn't realize at first
but at one point i would love to build my own rig, i don't mind working with scans or with this tech in general, as i also think that it helps a great deal to learn things for my personal work.
@uncle: i don't think it is awful, there are some very valid statements in here, and stuff quite a bunch of artists can learn from those pictures, we might not all agree on everyone opinions, but this doesn't mean its a worthless discussion.
I agree. To me, there is no better way to learn anatomy than to study it mm by mm in a 3-Dimensional space. Imagine what it will be like when we have sculpting haptics, Leap type tracking and Oculus Rift VR type sculpting or modelling support. You will be able to 'hands on' study and improve in a virtual space. No more keyboard, or monitor, just a cubicle, your hands and VR. But I digress.
Studying scans is a great compliment to being taught anatomy, it's just scans aren't an interpretation by another human. They are the real thing.
Agreed. I think the fact this teaser has sparked debate, not just about techniques used but also content (scantily clad woman etc etc), means it did its job effectively. A piece of Art
That's efficiency.
CD Projekt does not need a permanent CGI staff for the 1 trailer per year maximum that they need.
Platige does not need a scanner for the occasional project that involves creating realistic humans (they work primarily in commercials).
All 3 companies specialize, and do that type of thing better than a jack-of-all-trades studio.
That is strange to me, as the concept-retopo workflow has sped up our work a lot, and it creates far better results as well.
If your experience is different, it probably has to do more with the type of content you're building.
Photorealistic characters for animation are incredibly hard to just box model (or edge extrude or whatever). I challenge you to build basemeshes like these from scratch without a concept sculpt first:
http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2013/01/16/hobbit-fx-wiz-joe-letteri-on-gollum-the-goblin-king-and-azog/
These are 20+ thousand quad polys per head. The wires you can see are not subdivided, those are the actual control meshes that the facial blendshapes are created with.
Retopo on an existing and approved head sculpt for such characters takes just a few days, BTW. Modeling from scratch could take a month.
We have a separate sculptor team and a character modeling team (although most of the modelers can and do sculpt as well). Some of our sculptors who don't know shit about topology are incredibly talented and it'd be seriously stupid not to hire them.
It also takes like 2-3 days to get a head concept ready for client approval, and then another 3 to build a high res animation mesh on top.
If it's not a hero character and we can re-use generic basemeshes, it takes even less.
Again, that depends on the content.
If you wanna make characters like the ones in the Hobbit, with that level of facial animation, then auto retopo tools will not be of much help, you'll need good people instead. And some crazy mad genius sculptors, too.
Games are, of course, different, but the workflow is converging with more powerful hardware every day. PS4/Xbox3 games will probably move in this direction as seen in Weta's work, too.
Actually most of our clients take a lot of care to make sure the CG trailer does not hint at stuff you can't do in the game; and they do like to have action that is in fact indicative of ingame features.
Even in the first AC2 trailer we did... In the game, you were able to hire prostitutes to distract enemies, you were able to disarm enemies, you did have a gun and so on.
Not really true either. 3D scanning can actually cost you more. But it can also give you very high quality results that are lifelike.
That of course depends who you use! Like USC ICT Lightstage or OTOY, useful data but rather costly (and not currently in 360 degrees!)
So can the cg art talent that you would normally hire to build the content with from scratch. Which varies from country to country. Also depends how fast they are and not including the time it would take to dress and photograph the model/actor who would be duplicated, that still costs money. Unless they are hand built in the sense of totally synthetic.
Imagine a top of the line CG artist sculpting 100x likeness expressions or body poses (as an example) So the cost of them, per month. As apposed to doing it in a few days at the cost of the scan and talent session to capture. There is a trade off, it's just finding the right balance and depends on what level of realism/quality you need.
The most jarring thing about the Mass Effect games where the contrast between the characters based on real people and generic NPCs. What if you could fill out that NPC roster with a quick casting call?
And Weta of course had no actor to scan for the goblin king or Azog
Also, if you're to build a CGI human for a movie production, scanning expressions is usually a part of the job - because usually the actor's 100% likeness is not what the studio needs, they could simply film that. So it's either a younger or older variation or an alien or a Hulk, so the scanned data is just a reference for the artists.
Cinematics and games are more likely to utilize this technology in the future. But even there you need to modify the scan data... I think the 343 and Axis guys can have more to say about this though, as there are a lot of scans used in both the Halo 4 video game and the Spartan Ops cinematics.
But this part is one level beyond the scopes of this trailer, here there weren't many expressions used.
As far as I know they scanned the ME1 hero characters - Shepard, Kaidan, Liara etc.
Then for ME2 and 3 I'm not sure if Kolby Jukes has used scans for Miranda or the TV reporter woman.
As for the other NPCs it was a cost issue I think - spending an hour in the face generator can never be beaten even by scanning.
Er? :poly142: Of course not but they help and save time. Mova is an incredibly dated system.
Of course they did! Barry Humphries - Great Goblin, Manu Bennett - Azog
No doubt they scanned them the same way they did actors for Avatar. They obviously don't use the exact likeness from the scan but it helps to figure out the expressions and how their faces react. Come on Tamas you know that.
Exactly.
Eventually companies will utilize scans to build a repository for just that purpose
I can't speak about 343 or Axis but I've been working with some other companies who specialize in Face rigging, and I have seen some of their in game rigs driven using a newer type of 3D scan FACS analysis technique from this 360 rig at IR. I think we are going to see quite a shift in quality with regards to in game face animation in the next year or so. More so than was seen in the recent offline rendered Halo cinematics. Bold claim I know.. I will just have to eat my hat!
http://cghub.com/images/view/231212/
that is sad really, why hire top talent like Kolby and have them clean up scan data ?
i would rather see his hand sculpted work over scan data derived work any day.
at this rate, more and more modelers will spend time cleaning up scan data just like lot of animators now days spend time cleaning up mocap data.
Utter nonsense. MM your all doomsday! I suppose you believed in 2012 and the rapture?
Artists can do many things that software and hardware alone cannot. I would bet money on it that Kolby could do the same work, quite easily without any scanned data but no doubt the client/bosses above required it.
is my english that bad that people fail to understand my point ?
i meant Kolby is more than capable of doing awesome work, so why have him clean up scan data ? you pretty much made my point while failing to understand my point.
my problem is the client/bosses opting for scan data rather than using their talent Kolby to their full capability.
btw, yea you have me figured out completely. i am a dooms day believer wearing tin foil on my head right now and i believe in all sort of conspiracies too. how about you ?
anyways, i am done talking about this since some of you fail to understand a simple thing and rather over analyze it to death.
sure we all use reference in one way or another. difference is in general those references are 5-10% of the whole work while 3d scanning is 50-80% of the whole work.
3d scanning is nothing to be very proud of as an artist. it does lot of the work for you. as simple as that.
at the end of the day, I am sure Kolby is more proud of his work on any asset he did from scratch than any work he did based on scan data. that is all what i am concerned about.
I understand your point(s) just fine. It's cool, your negativity came across a few pages back.
Scanning is a tool, just like an image viewer, Google, a wacom or a mouse.
I traveled the hard path for years, succeeded and got bored of it. Automating part of the process is an absolute joy. Especially in production, under budget and time constraints.
Your limited experience comes across a great deal here. I can't really gauge much about your actual experience as there is no info on your Profile page. So your anonymity speaks for itself.
As for Weta scanning the actors, don't think it's much use for creatures... They shoot footage and photos, but I haven't heard or seen anything about scans. Same for Avatar.
They did take photographs to use as textures on the avatars themselves to recreate the pore structure, though.
I said, I don't know if he used scans at all. Or if it was hand sculpted.
You should ask him instead of making presumptions
There are some shots floating around of them scanning Sigourney and Sam for Avatar, using their own scanner and the USC ICT. So it would seems crazy not to do the same for creatures in the Hobbit (maybe not USC ICT) simple and quick. Very useful for reference. I'm speculating for Hobbit though.
Who is he?
I would genuinely love to see your work MM. EDIT**
Ah yes Mashru Mishu, I know now. You have some great work but it has a very game type feel to it. Not so much realism, which is inherent with allot of hand built work. No offense but it comes back to my whole point about scanning. Speed, budget and realism. If that's what a client needs.
It says right there on the CGHub page
First, if you didn't make the concept for your 3d model, you didn't do anything creative to begin with, the majority of 3D artists are not artists at all, they are glorified carpenters working off an artists blueprint. so who gives a shit if it was done by hand or by a computer? its monkey work, yes some carpenters are better at others at their craft, but they are still craftsmen, not artists.
Secondly, its the end result of a work that matters in the end, not the process, not the steps you took to get there, not one small piece of a larger work. I am sure most of you would like to put yourselves on a pedestal as creative geniuses and savants, but in reality your cogs in a team that produce a product for mass consumption and very little real art is ever made.
their are exceptions but very, very few.
Its fine if you respect hand crafted work, but please stop acting as if there is any "artistry" in someone copying a concept image that was art directed by someone that didn't draw it, and approved by a creative director that doesn't even know how to draw. Its a craft like cross stitch or woodcarving. If your lucky at the end the final product, the final game, the final film, that might be considered art, not your shitty little contribution. get over yourself.
The creatures in Hobbit, even Gollum, are far more different from the actors than the avatars in Avatar. In my - far more limited - experience you can't really go far with a direct reproduction of the actor, it'll look very bad on a creature with different facial features and proportions.
Then again, we can't know for sure, maybe they did use scans - as far as I know Weta has the tools on site so why not see if it helps a bit.
But I still think that a combination based system is better done by hand...
But now that you say it I do recall some actor being scanned in a lightstage, although I still tend towards skin pore details. And Legacy Effects did their expression studies based on photographs only as it seems.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/img/interviews/spatton/thumb03.jpg
You're right it says so about the ME3 model. Not so about the ME2 one though.
In some ways you're right, but in others you're very far from it.
Monkey work it certainly is not. You need a modeler with a very very good eye to interpret a 2D concept and keep the silhouettes and other characteristics intact, make it look good and all.
There are very few people who can do that... Sure, even less who could do the concept, but that is why we have these kinds of workflows. Quick and dirty concept work first by a few guys, more detailed development work by a larger team, then actual 3D asset creation by an even bigger team. It's good, it works, and everyone is a necessary part to create the result.
You can see a glimpse of their medical grade scanner here - http://www.cnet.com.au/avatar-behind-the-scenes-at-weta-digital_p22-339307487.htm#image21 on page 4. There are also shots of Zoe, Stephen Lang and Sam in the Lighstage, floating around the net.
Ahh understood about ME2, my bad.
I really strongly disagree with this. I understand that we are part of a production line but there is so much artistry that goes on during the 3d development stage, I actually cant believe you wrote that as a character artist. When you work from a concept you make it your own, be it your style or through design resolutions that the concept artist had never even thought of. one artists cloth work will be completely different from anothers and you hardly ever copy concept artists cloth flow as it hardly ever matches up in 3d. We are not glorified tracers.
as to the discussion I love looking at scan data, the marvelous designer stuff, its amazing reference, but I also dislike it somewhat. I understand the results but something urks me which is almost impossible to explain why. I think as last year I started pushing my anatomy and cloth work so much that I dont want to be replaced by it haha, its also the thought that anyone can come up with amazing works but not actually know about anatomy, cloth flow or cloth dynamics etc. I understand they must know some but they dont need scott eaton level anatomy skills. The good thing is my professional work has been mistaken as scan data so I might be able to fake it haha.
the trailer was really cool though
Jesus. I need to stop coming to this thread.
I used to think differently when i was only a character artist, but since i have started i have done tech art, animation, lighting, environments, design, and have had artwork in the Hammer museum's Los Angeles biennial. Looking back i find my original role a lot less important than i did when i started, because that's the only part of the process i had an intimate knowledge of.
A character model is nothing without a strong concept, i don't care how great an artist you are, if you are directed to make a shit concept it will be a shit model. If lighting artists don't light it well it will be a shit looking character model. If animators do a shitty job animating it, its all worthless. The actual character model is a small part of a bigger picture, and the steps taken to make it are insignificant.
If you only wear one hat in production its easy to be blinded of all the factors needed to create something. I find at most game companies i have worked for, everyone seems to think their job is of the utmost importance to the final product. The reality however is that is not the case.