How long do your 3D projects take to complete?

MagicMeister · Aug 13 2025

Just a general question for the community. If you could, please describe what kind of 3D art you make while answering. I'll give an example from my own process:

so far, I think I spend anywhere from 150-200 hours on making a single real time game character. That includes the high poly sculpt, the retopo, UV unwrap, texturing, posing (sometimes rigging) and rendering.

I'm asking not only out of curiosity, but also because I want to get faster. I would wager that there are artists out there that can produce the same quality or (hopefully) much better quality than I do in half the time.

poopipe · Aug 13 2025

ive been working on a robot for 18 years now ..

more seriously - pre-substance painter our outsource partners would produce a set of modular assets (average 10-12 pieces) mapped, textured and lodded (5-7 handmade lods) in 20 days with feedback.
This was first-party AAA content for ps4

speed comes from making good decisions quickly - that comes from experience. concentrate on being good for now - you'll only get faster

Lt_Commander · Aug 14 2025

It depends on the goals. If the main purpose is to learn and improve with the end product being a portfolio piece, time isn't the real constraint - it can take months or years to finish a project because part of it was to learn sculpting or grooming, or other core skills that themselves are adventures in their own right.

If you want to focus on speed, have a set idea that you know you can execute on, retread only skills you're comfortable with, and hit go. Start with a very solid concept, record hours on the clock, and find areas to improve. That said, it's relatively low utility as a standalone exercise because that's something you can get paid for in the form of contract work. Like poopipe said, if you're not good enough to do that yet, just focus on building skills first.

sacboi · Aug 14 2025

For instance hard surface automotive content e.g. Gran Turismo PS3, their vehicles we're generally 500k tri count so fairly comparable to budgets nowadays mitigating potential efficiency bottlenecks excluding evolving tech, remains fundamentally unchanged i.e. well thought out topology, uv's, LODS...etc

As already shared proficiency comes with experience - I'd recommend following that advice albeit start small then gradually build complexity.

MagicMeister · 3:49AM

poopipe said:

speed comes from making good decisions quickly - that comes from experience. concentrate on being good for now - you'll only get faster

That's what I've started to pick up on. When I first really got into 3D and making ambitious projects, I felt like the time that it took was just "baked" into the project itself. i.e. you want to make a real-time character? well then it takes xyz amount of hours no matter what. Now I've realized that you could make a finished character blazing fast if you know exactly what you're doing, know exactly when to do which part of the process, and don't make any mistakes while you execute on your vision / design.

One of the biggest timesinks I have at the moment is having to continuously go back to the high poly during texturing to remake pieces that just aren't working or where the high poly normals were distorted from forgetting to auto-mask my backfaces. I've been particularly stuck on faces, which I often have to remake 2-3 times before I'm even remotely satisfied with them.

How long do your 3D projects take to complete?

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