Looking for help
polycounter lvl 5
I am trying to find some good resources for learning how to make environment art. Techniques and workflows for producing environment art for games, I cannot find anything.
I have bought a few tutorials off of Gumroad and also have bought some other stuff from Gnomon Workshop. There is one course I really like the look off which is environments with David Baldwin on CGSociety but it is no longer running
Does anyone know of any good learning resources or tutorials or courses that are just for game environments?
I have bought a few tutorials off of Gumroad and also have bought some other stuff from Gnomon Workshop. There is one course I really like the look off which is environments with David Baldwin on CGSociety but it is no longer running
Does anyone know of any good learning resources or tutorials or courses that are just for game environments?
Replies
https://gumroad.com/erikjakobsen_art
Also FuturePoly's channel on Youtube. While the course they offer is not free, they did put quite a number of their lessons for free on Youtube. Really excellent resources.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Futurepoly
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Category:Environment
It's not just level design/environment art, but absolutely worth reading from the first page to the last as it helps you to comprehand a lot of stuff that will affect anything that you do in game art. You might not be going to apply all of it 1:1 on your own stuff, but never the less, it is key knowledge and ideas for high quality work - no matter what you specialize upon in the end.
It's incredible how much knowledge this industry shares for free.
I use Maya LT and Erik has a ton of custom shelfs and icons that makes it really difficult for me to follow, I will one day complete that though as I get more comfortable in Maya LT
@Eric Chadwick. I did check the wiki and there is defo some brilliant stuff on there, I learnt a lot of things from there and found myself using Zbrush a lot more after checking out a popular workflow from Tate Mosesian where artists sculpt their textures in Zbrush and grab the maps out of Zbrush using different matcaps, its a very nice workflow and I am still testing it out and finding out the kinks and getting comfortable with it, I have been trying out bricks, rocks, concrete etc.
@Biomag. I have read that magazine its very informative, I still class myself as a beginner at 3D modelling, even though I have been doing it for around 2 years now. I think I am at a level where I can start trying stuff out and slow down on learning all the basics like UV mapping, 3D jargon, topology etc. I have picked all this up through learning at home with Digital Tutors and I have invested a horde of money into software and hardware (graphics tablets and pens etc.)
Thanks for all the information though guys, searching for environment tutorials for games is difficult its hard to find information for a complete beginner, it seems that there is a ton of tutorials and courses for character development but not a lot for environment. I love learning, it's become and addiction for me lol sometimes I find myself over thinking things believing there is more to something when there isn't (I went through that phase with UV mapping lol). I will keep searching and checking the wiki
With characters you quickly can sum up the basics - and they are always the same, no matter what style, setting or whatever else. Anatomy, silhouette, archetypes,... it always comes down to the same things.
When you talk about environment art you have to be more specific what kind of advice you need. Why? Because there are so many things to consider - what are you working on? Some small dungon or a huge open valley? Do you need to limit yourself because of performance or can you use advanced shaders to enchance your modularity? Are you also doing the lighting? How does the gameplay effect the environment? Do you have to keep certain mechanics in mind? And you definitely should have a sense of compositions to make the whole picture look good.
But the good thing is - you don't need a specific enviornment workflow, to improve your enviornment knowledge. Learn composition and lighting from not game related sources - the rules are the same. UV-layouts, baking, texturing, sculpting - they don't differ that much in their basics no matter what you do - character, props or modular environments. You can learn it from any source as we all have to define materials, model the shapes, bake that things...
Key is just to understand what your task is and only then think about what workflows will get you there. You will always have to adapt your workflow to some extent to the project at hands. In many ways modularity and its grid-approach seems to me to be the basic of good environment art for games. So learn and comprehand this part and everything else will then fall into it place naturally as soon as you learn a new thing. The technology is changig constantly, so the workflows keep changing, but if you understand the basics of it, you can easily find the right solution based on project, technology and resources at hand.
I guess if you ask specific questions this boards will be able to help you finetune the workflow.
In regards to what I am trying to accomplish. I am making a game and the environment theme is a catacombs (not a dungeon, think Paris Catacombs). I want it to be highly modular so all the parts snap together like lego in the game engine I am using. I have started simple shapes in Maya LT, things like arches and tunnels, crawlspaces, they all fit to the grid 256 x 256 I have UV mapped all the modular parts.
I am hoping to use the same workflow that Tate Mosesian shows on the Zbrush Classroom to compose my textures inside of Zbrush, once I have done my sculpts for my materials I will get them out of Zbrush and use something like Mindtex or Bitmap2Material to get my different maps.
Thats the workflow I am looking to achieve and learn.
Lowpoly environment models in Maya > Highpoly sculpts and texture composition in Zbrush (using Tate's workflow) > Get various maps from the diffuse texture using Bitmap2Material or Mindtex.