Question about how professionals use references
Hello,
I've been modeling firearms for video games for a few projects now and occasionally I run into a problem where I just can't seem to find a reference for something no matter how hard I look. It's usually just some tiny detail or small internal component. So with no reference I end up just winging it on how I think it might be in real life. In the professional studios how do they gather reference typically? I would imagine they would coordinate in advance with people who can show them the objects or firearms they're trying to include so they can take plenty of pictures, record audio, and handle it themselves, but I'm just guessing. I find it hard to believe they would just go off pictures on the internet...
Anyone have any experience with this?
Thanks.
Replies
In the pro studios they gather references in IRL a lot of the time. For example flying out to locations and taking tens of thousands of pictures.
For complicated mechanical objects, i find it helps to know the names of every part and their function. Makes searching for reference easier too.
When you're searching for image references online what search engines do you use? For me google image search has been awful for about a decade at least. Surprisingly Bing/duckduckgo are pretty good. Flickr is still plugging away too.
This is about what I expected except for the end, which honestly has me laughing. Never in a million years would I have considered that. Yeah, I use Google Chrome. Is Firefox any different? I could try those when I get home. Who would've thought in 2022 Bing would be the answer.
Thanks for the help!
For stuff like the inside of things, or weird parts, definitely do a serious search for hobbyist sites (all my most useful reference has come from enthusiast or collectors who maintain a copy of, like, their old geocities or something LOL), and seconding Flickr too. Lots of weird little collections of stuff there.
I would say for many middle-size games, it is as simple as the artists pretty much wing it and hope noone notices though, haha. A lot of things in gamedev are a bit like that, and theres the chronic industry problem of poor time management, so I think that attitude kind of tends to follow it. If you don't have time to find a real life version of the thing, let alone travel to find it, LET ALONE the current work from home/potentially limited travel thanks to Covid... you make do with internet pictures + concept art if it's not exactly 1-to-1 realistic.
For many games you can't make a gun too realistic. If you copied the gun design exactly you would get sued by the manufacturer. So I've worked on projects where we had to modify each gun to make it not exactly like the real thing. The same thing applies to cars, furniture, and anything that's currently sold and has a design patent.
Some games will have licensing deals so certain brands of weapon (or cars?) can be exact but usually the vast majority of objects cannot be exact. If you do have a licensing deal you will get information from the manufacturer on how they want whatever it is to look.
Chrome and Firefox are browsers, not search engines. dur23 was suggesting you try different search engines.
As someone that was engineering person before I dabbled in computer graphics I approve 200%. If you have general idea how parts in mechanical device work, and how they would be manufactured in real life (lathe/router/whatever), it not only makes it more believable if you have to wing it, it makes it make sense - nobody will point out that your screw placement is 1 mm off, but there will be a nerd that will point out you can't load a bullet into the gun as it's currently presented;)
One of the best resources is looking for items on eBay. For things like guns or other stuff that can't be sold on eBay, try specialty auction sites. Generally, the listings will contain many images taken from a variety of angles, often of relatively good quality.
for weapons, I find the very best resource is auction websites. they take such detailed, huge photos in many angles showing all the parts. some even talk about the function. I haven't tried auction sites for other things, but I imagine there are many types of objects to be found on such sites.
similarly antique sale sites are good resource for vintage furniture and such like and stuff like this