Hourences knows his shit, you will learn a ton by following his tutorial materials. Anything by him is highly recommended.
Also I altered your thread title a little, from "unreal solus project" to "Hourences - Unreal Solus Project". His is a known name in the game art community, and capitalization improves the chances of your thread being opened and responded to.
What you are describing is not a universal workflow though. In fact I wouldn't even say it's common. The level design pipeline is very different from one game team to the next.
The thing is that in order to save time, game companies thought it was best to have level designers who just do level design and environment artist who just make art. The level design will spend at least 2 weeks designing a level and later it might take 3 months or a year for artists to add art to the level. And I personally think it's inefficient, a lot of time get wasted, and there is a lot to learn from how Hourences makes his stuff. Or why it's important for employees to be multi-specialists rather than just specialists. Not all studios would benefit from such methods, but many would.
Splitting level design from env art is perfectly reasonable for any company larger then a hand full of of people. I worked as a level designer. It doesn't take two weeks but months to build a proper level with all its iterations, scripting gameplay, optimization, bug fixing etc. As an env artists nowadays i barely find any time to work on level design stuff and i'm glad we have other people for it. Perhaps you think of placing assets as env art but to me that's part of level design aswell. Ther's semantic differences from studio to studio. Some only consider grey boxing and scripting the level design.
Hourences knows his shit, you will learn a ton by following his tutorial materials. Anything by him is highly recommended.
Also I altered your thread title a little, from "unreal solus project" to "Hourences - Unreal Solus Project". His is a known name in the game art community, and capitalization improves the chances of your thread being opened and responded to.
Thanks Eric. my bad
So basically I'm getting the sense that Hourences' process isn't common, and that game design is generally highly split into smaller areas of expertise. It seems to me that it would be better for the game if the process was more collaborative at least between artists and level designers. A bit of back and forth sharing of ideas.
First of all my
videos are getting a bit old so it is entirely up to you to decide for
yourself. The price is reasonable I think, and the feedback has been
really good, but I made these 2 years ago with UE4.0 so it is getting
old. Due to lack of time I am unable to produce any new videos, or
update the current ones, but I am keeping them online for those who
would like to go through what is still a (IMO) well explained intro set
of tutorials + you get sample content to go with it.
Some of the
things I do are weird indeed, but I think a lot of artists I met over
the years tend to be very stuck in how they do things rather than the
result. It often becomes more about the process, a rigid pipeline that
must be followed, even if there are other out-of-the-box ways of doing
things possible. As game developers we are ultimately all about making
games. And modeling X or Y is just the means to that end. So I hope that
my ways of approaching things, and my creative solutions helps people
to think outside the standard pipelines.
That being said, I would
not say my process is uncommon. I do a lot on my own. For The Solus
Project I have done half of all the levels, all gameplay scripting, the
art style, 40% about of all art assets, all art optimization, almost all
FX, all tech art, all lighting etc. If I would have worked in a 200
man team, would I have done the same on their game? Nope. But that is
the point also. You cannot compare the process of a big studio to an
indie team with ~5 people. All indie games out there that have just a
handful of people will have their developers do a wide range of things. And
just like you cannot scale up my approach to a 200 people team, you
also cannot scale down the approach of a 200 people team to a small
indie company. Again, it is about getting your specific game, with your
specific team and set of disciplines done, so whatever gets you there
goes. As a developer I think you ideally should learn how to deal with
both situations, because it'll enrich you and give you a wider
perspective on things.
Honestly Hourences, 2 years old or not, these videos are still very much relevant for a lot of stuff and serve as a good intro to Unreal between other things. I picked up a lot watching them and I will buy anything you will release. I really like the way you work, it works perfectly for hobbyists like me - one man team. Thanks a lot for making them and here's hoping you make more in the future. Epic should hire you to make video series for them. I wish your school did online courses, I'd definitely enroll.
Replies
Also I altered your thread title a little, from "unreal solus project" to "Hourences - Unreal Solus Project". His is a known name in the game art community, and capitalization improves the chances of your thread being opened and responded to.
So basically I'm getting the sense that Hourences' process isn't common, and that game design is generally highly split into smaller areas of expertise. It seems to me that it would be better for the game if the process was more collaborative at least between artists and level designers. A bit of back and forth sharing of ideas.
First of all my videos are getting a bit old so it is entirely up to you to decide for yourself. The price is reasonable I think, and the feedback has been really good, but I made these 2 years ago with UE4.0 so it is getting old. Due to lack of time I am unable to produce any new videos, or update the current ones, but I am keeping them online for those who would like to go through what is still a (IMO) well explained intro set of tutorials + you get sample content to go with it.
Some of the things I do are weird indeed, but I think a lot of artists I met over the years tend to be very stuck in how they do things rather than the result. It often becomes more about the process, a rigid pipeline that must be followed, even if there are other out-of-the-box ways of doing things possible. As game developers we are ultimately all about making games. And modeling X or Y is just the means to that end. So I hope that my ways of approaching things, and my creative solutions helps people to think outside the standard pipelines.
That being said, I would not say my process is uncommon. I do a lot on my own. For The Solus Project I have done half of all the levels, all gameplay scripting, the art style, 40% about of all art assets, all art optimization, almost all FX, all tech art, all lighting etc.
If I would have worked in a 200 man team, would I have done the same on their game? Nope. But that is the point also. You cannot compare the process of a big studio to an indie team with ~5 people. All indie games out there that have just a handful of people will have their developers do a wide range of things.
And just like you cannot scale up my approach to a 200 people team, you also cannot scale down the approach of a 200 people team to a small indie company. Again, it is about getting your specific game, with your specific team and set of disciplines done, so whatever gets you there goes. As a developer I think you ideally should learn how to deal with both situations, because it'll enrich you and give you a wider perspective on things.