Some questions from a confused character artist.
polycounter lvl 2
Hello all,
I have been learning to model for a long time and I realize that maybe I should have done this early on but I want to ask some very simple questions that I have struggled to find the answers to. I'll list them out below and would love to hear back from the professionals out there.
I want to be a character artist working on games so bear that in mind with your answers.
What applications do I need in my arsenal? I have heard of a lot of different software and honestly it can all get a little overwhelming. Software I can use pretty comfortably right now include Zbrush, Maya, and Photoshop. I have heard of other software like Topogun, 3d Coat, Substance Painter, and the list goes on. Ultimately, what do the pros usually use?
As a continuation of the previous question, what is the typical workflow for a character artist? I have noticed after working in Zbrush that my models get really dense. What should I do to lessen that? Is the ideal method for Retopology Zbrush or is there a different software I should export my dense model into? After the retopology is done, do I bring that model into substance painter? What is your application workflow and at what point do you switch?
Lastly, how do I decide how many poly's I want to spend on a character model when creating my own character for a portfolio? I would like to know for a high poly and low poly model. I know that these questions have probably been answered before but I was hoping to also be able to ask some more questions in the future in this post and continue my growing knowledge of character art.
Thank You,
Yazen
I have been learning to model for a long time and I realize that maybe I should have done this early on but I want to ask some very simple questions that I have struggled to find the answers to. I'll list them out below and would love to hear back from the professionals out there.
I want to be a character artist working on games so bear that in mind with your answers.
What applications do I need in my arsenal? I have heard of a lot of different software and honestly it can all get a little overwhelming. Software I can use pretty comfortably right now include Zbrush, Maya, and Photoshop. I have heard of other software like Topogun, 3d Coat, Substance Painter, and the list goes on. Ultimately, what do the pros usually use?
As a continuation of the previous question, what is the typical workflow for a character artist? I have noticed after working in Zbrush that my models get really dense. What should I do to lessen that? Is the ideal method for Retopology Zbrush or is there a different software I should export my dense model into? After the retopology is done, do I bring that model into substance painter? What is your application workflow and at what point do you switch?
Lastly, how do I decide how many poly's I want to spend on a character model when creating my own character for a portfolio? I would like to know for a high poly and low poly model. I know that these questions have probably been answered before but I was hoping to also be able to ask some more questions in the future in this post and continue my growing knowledge of character art.
Thank You,
Yazen
Replies
You're on the right path basically.
Outliers for software include Marvelous Designer for cloth simulation, Houdini for procedural mesh generation, etc.
I personally use 3Dcoat for retopology (and handpainted texturing block-ins)
Substance Painter is great for material-based texturing. We use that here at InXile.
Substance Designer, once you get a library of materials going, is EXTREMELY helpful for the length of a project, or future projects. Think about how many times you'll need to use a cotton-weave material, or leather-material.
2) WORKFLOW
Assuming you're working from concept, you're
Sculpting > Retopology > UV > Bake > Texturing.
I don't like using Zbrush's retopology tools for final retopology.
Regarding really dense poly models, have you tried retopologizing your rough sculpts to cleaner meshes so you have a cleaner mesh to work from? Or highpoly modeling your meshes in a 3D package and THEN importing it into Zbrush so you have a lower poly model to bake to from the High Poly alongside a cleaner High poly mesh?
3) TRIANGLE TARGETS|
Depends on what you're doing.
As I see it, there's two extremes:
1) Mobile (1k to 5k for characters, give or take a couple thousand)
2) Everything else (10k and up)
To me, it's about your original concept/idea. Does it need a lot of tris to make it look like the original idea, or could it do with less? Are you increasingly simplifying it from the original idea, or do you need to make ti more complex?
What do you mean by procedural mesh generation?
By handpainted texturing block-ins do you mean drawing directly on your mesh?
What does material-based texturing mean? Is this like texturing metal vs plastic?
I have heard the word Bake before and my understanding of baking is that you take the details of your mesh and transferring them so that they are then represented in your spec and bump maps. I dont know if that is correct and would love to know what that means exactly. The only experience I have with bump and spec maps is my hand-made bump and spec maps.
As for the dense models, I have made a block out of a character in Maya, imported it into zbrush and then sculpted it into a higher res model. The only highpoly modeling I have done is Zbrush. What do you mean by a 3D package?
Sorry for all the simple questions, I am new to the terminology.
Handpainted textures are models with textures that are illustrated, like so:
Material-based texturing is texturing based on real-life materials, so attempting to recreate metal precisely if a particular surface of a model is metal, etc.
"Baking" is the process of projecting highpoly model mesh surfaces down to the UV'd textures of a lower polygon model. Several maps can be baked, including normals, curvature, cavity, ambient occlusion, etc.
By 3D package I mean Maya, 3dsMax, Modo, Cinema4D, Blender, etc