Are Weapon/Hardsurface Artists In Game Studios Like Activision Using CAD?
polycounter lvl 3
Hello,
Just as the title says. Are weapon artists in these Triple A studios using CAD to save-time? And no, I'm not talking about Junior 3D Hardsurface/Weapon Artists, I'm talking about Senior level here. I'm sure a senior who has a lot of experience can, or probably should be allowed to use the software of her/his choice if it gets the job done faster. I've heard from someone that most outsourcing studios are using CAD programs like MOI3D or Fusion360.
Just as the title says. Are weapon artists in these Triple A studios using CAD to save-time? And no, I'm not talking about Junior 3D Hardsurface/Weapon Artists, I'm talking about Senior level here. I'm sure a senior who has a lot of experience can, or probably should be allowed to use the software of her/his choice if it gets the job done faster. I've heard from someone that most outsourcing studios are using CAD programs like MOI3D or Fusion360.
Replies
Though I've worked in studio's where some have "lied" about experience with particular software, and have installed their own versions of a different package to do the work
Who was that ?
"... that most outsourcing studios"
That's a very bold claim
"... are using CAD programs like MOI3D or Fusion360."
Just because CAD might be suited for a a given task or production, doesn't mean that it is suited for all.
And even though they are both CAD packages, MOI and Fusion are completely different beasts in the way they operate. MOI is very intuitive and is very tightly designed, but it is 100% destructive. Fusion is completely parametric in nature, but comes with an incredibly badly designed UI/UX that can be very detrimental to one's workflow (and sanity) - but of course people who never experienced anything else will be 100% convinced that it is "just fine" and will act as evangelists.
Anyways. All you have to do is to remain curious and willing to use the best workflow possible. And don't worry about things "you've heard" if it doesn't come from people who actually have production experience.
"I'm sure a senior who has a lot of experience can, or probably should be allowed to use the software of her/his choice if it gets the job done faster."
Not necessarily. A studio may be paying for a certain piece of software because it comes with a support package that another doesn't have. Or perhaps a studio has some strict IT policies for software deployment, even if it is free or open source. Every place is different, so don't worry about it. Just focus on doing the best possible work.
possibly, but it may be as simple as they get the CAD drawings from the manufacturer.
@Bozurk I'd say simply focus on being as efficient as possible with mesh-based modeling, while *also* practicing the CAD package you feel the most comfortable with (very likely a pick between of MOI, Fusion and Plasticity. And perhaps Solidworks if you have access to it. There's also Rhino, but MOI is pretty much its spiritual successor).
In my experience MOI is absolutely the most intuitive to pickup and opens up great workflows very fast. Fusion is very powerful but as said I also find in incredibly awfully designed in terms of UX, making some simple operations infuriatingly frustrating to perform. Plasticity seems extremely promising, especially with the way the author seems to understand that CAD applied to game art/scifi fantasy designs involves a lot of freeform input (like drawing guide lines directly in perspective), which is something that both MOI and Fusion are quite poor at by default.
Ie: https://x.com/KazamiXin/status/1844364753248059534
Because in actual day to day practice there are many models that are just an order of magnitude faster and more efficient to build in subdiv rather than in CAD, especially if the provided concept isn't a fully locked technical drawing and if the design will be subject to tweaks along the way. Here's an example from a 2010 3december presentation (art credit Martin Punchev) :
A skilled hardsurface modeller could knock this out in a matter of hours/days, without the need of a supertight 2D concept and with everything being very easy to tweak and stretch at any time. Whereas despite how powerful CAD can be, a MOI/Fusion/Plasticity kiddie would be unable to match this turnover rate and flexibility. Sure enough a CAD model may allow for some repositionning of booleans and editing of fillets, but it absolutely woudn't allow for more organic changes like correcting the rythm of a silhouette or inflating/deflating things here and there. Such tweaks essential for on-the-fly art direction are just not possible with a CAD model *at all*. And 14 years of time hasn't changed that
The same applies to the more recent "straight to final midpoly" workflow too. Cleaning up a CAD model (even coming from a software with a good mesher like MOI) would be a waste of time compared to building things in polies right from the start. If I am not mistaken this seems to be the approach used on the DeadLock characters in their current state.
Tell me you are a maya user without telling me. A lot if times if stuff is built with modifiers its just removing said modifiers to kill support loops.
Making LODs on meshes with a quadlike structure is usually pretty quick and easy, if UVs are also layed out with LODs in mind.
But yeah if everything is kinda locked in, its more manual work to get rid of things that help define the higher subdivs.
It really is all about designs such as this helmet here or mech parts like Overwatch's Diva/Pharah needing to be done (and revised) under strict time constraints. Being able to edit such hard surface designs on the fly either because the modeler didn't initially catch some subtleties or because the design needs some tweaks after reviewing it in 3D (and countless of other reasons related to to the constraints of production) is precisely why CAD can't fully replace SuBD for stylized hardsurface. Combining both is pretty great though.
Now setting aside the editing aspect (which IMHO is self-evident), I would certainly admit that the speed aspect is hard to judge, since not everyone has witnessed every modeler at work. But I do believe that how fast one can knock out a prop is less important than it being easily editable. If anything one big reason why Subdiv isn't going anywhere soon is because the models are just incredibly robust.
To the OP : I'd say just learn both if you haven't already. The barrier to entry is very low now (for poly modeling Blender is free, and for CAD Plasticty is cheap, MOI3D is affordable, and Fusion is, well ... Fusion). All things considered neither is that complicated - polies are polies, and surfaces are surfaces
And besides these two methods, being familiar with trim-based/"mediumpoly" modeling is quite valuable as well - because that too is very robust, and extremely fast.