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How do you make the 3D pipeline less painful?
Hey folks,
I’ve been working on both characters and props for games, mostly splitting time between Blender, ZBrush, and Substance Painter, with the occasional Maya session when needed. I love the creative side of it, but some stages in the pipeline still feel like a slog.
For me, texturing and sculpting can be especially draining, and sometimes the retopo/UV/baking combo (even with RizomUV or Marmoset) ends up eating way more time than I’d like. It often feels like I’m fighting the process instead of moving forward.
Are there newer tools, plugins, or workflows you’ve found that actually make these stages faster? Or is it just “suck it up and put in the hours”?
I’m curious if there’s really nothing out there that speeds up the back-and-forth for us 3D artists. Would love to hear what works for you.
Replies
Usually that feeling can come through a broken part of the workflow\needlessly complicated. So to check if its due to that would be cool to see what your process usually is, preferable with visual examples.
What in particular about texturing & sculpting do you find most time consuming?
I haven't found AI to be helpful yet (to me), and from my understanding of how it works, I don't know if it will ever
3d AI is still in it's infancy and I don't see it overtaking handmade work, and you definitely don't want to vibe code. Everything about game development demands precision and non destructive workflows so you can do more and optimize more. Generative AI is the opposite of that
Also Disney is suing Midjourney, so there's that
Well, all of this is self-imposed really. Nothing forces you to work on models at a level of detail/fidelity requiring complex pipelines or hundreds of hours.
If the process feels like a chore, the solution isn't to hope for automagical tools (AI or not) to speed it up, but rather, to refocus on something you enjoy more. Or establishing strict time goals and adjusting fidelity and processes around them.
Lastly, wishing for AI to automate the tedious is IMHO a pretty bad idea. Because the day some automagical AI tool will be able to do proper UVs for you, will also be the day when you won't be needed anymore as a modeler because there will be plagiarism machines available for that aswell, and the job of a 3D modeler will only consist of cleaning things up.
If UVs feel like a chore to you know, that's probably just because you are not quite there in terms of modeling efficiently with UVs in mind.
Sounds to me a bit like you looking into the more technical side of things would be the better choice for you?
UVs retopo struggles sounds mostly like an experience thing to me. Do it often enough to find your shortcuts. Maybe enforce some time constraints to yourself to see what works best for you.
Tbh my workflow is easily 15-20 years old and still holds up even with the ancient tools i use in these parts.
Obviously experience plays a role, but take your time whenever the circumstances allow it. In the end, UVs are like a puzzle. You might just as well enjoy the process or at least take pride in a job well done. Not always possible in practice, of course.
Rebaking is always a pain, though, I'd agree. Setting up everything correctly (naming conventions etc.) so you only have to push a button after your tweaks are done definitely helps.