environmental art
polycount lvl 666
just thinking as part of my wider options to get in to environmetal art for games. I have done some in the past, but not for next gen. What sort of things are employers looking to see now.
Yeah it just seems there are not so many jobs going for character modelllers at the moment and TBH I find the whole process of making buildings etc less stresful than building characters which seems to be an endless process these days.
Yeah it just seems there are not so many jobs going for character modelllers at the moment and TBH I find the whole process of making buildings etc less stresful than building characters which seems to be an endless process these days.
Replies
'It depends'
It depends on who you are applying for, and what art style they are using, and what their art pipeline is. All these things come into play for what an employer is looking for - of course, the skills are all the same in the end.
hand paint: woods, metals, rocks, nails, rust textures at 128 to 1024
know next-gen pipeline: normal maps, specular, additional material creation from high detail mesh to low
know: max, maya, unrealed, photoshop
model: building facades, statues, caves, interior rooms, foliage
all in the style of: realistic, scifi, medieval fantasy
Overall, a fully custom, ut2k4 (or one of the newer versions of the engine games) level would be great because developers love seeing you know how to work in a game engine.
Basic things to know: Diffuse texturing, photo-real. How to do a good job using photosource as well as photo-real hand painted textures. Color correction. Specular maps, normal maps via geometry and grayscale conversion. Lighting/lightmapping ambient occlusion. Smoothing groups (hard edge/soft edge). UVs, UVs, UVs. This is the biggest problem that I have with artists' work that I review.
The only real answer is....
'It depends'
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haha, this is exactly the first sentence you learn when you begin law school
I've got a big tutorial on exactly this topic coming in the next couple of weeks.
Basic things to know: Diffuse texturing, photo-real. How to do a good job using photosource as well as photo-real hand painted textures. Color correction. Specular maps, normal maps via geometry and grayscale conversion. Lighting/lightmapping ambient occlusion. Smoothing groups (hard edge/soft edge). UVs, UVs, UVs. This is the biggest problem that I have with artists' work that I review.
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looking forward to it ryno
Learn how to make things modular like lego in that it can interlock with itself and other pieces. This will take a lot of time and effort mentally, but practise makes you a VERY valuable commodity as an environment artist that understands how to make things modular can generate 50 meshs from one texture that work so well together that you can speed up the production rate by about 300%.
r.
zbrush or mudbox is your friend, once you have learned to hi poly some environments, learn to subdivide them equally enough to take them into zbrush or mudbox and work in the organic details that make concrete look like concrete.
Learn how to make things modular like lego in that it can interlock with itself and other pieces. This will take a lot of time and effort mentally, but practise makes you a VERY valuable commodity as an environment artist that understands how to make things modular can generate 50 meshs from one texture that work so well together that you can speed up the production rate by about 300%.
r.
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the lego-approach has been exactly the case in my limited experience...basically creating whole sets of pieces for the designers to build the levels with--and all of the pieces sharing the same texture page.
I tend to build a 256x256 wall with a few custom elements like a trim along the top thats 256x32. same at bottom and a small 8-16 height trim along the center.
I then process the information on to a 1024by1024 flat bsp texture, apply it to a plane, extrude the plane by 16 units, subdivide on the z axis with 12 edge loops so that I can deform it to a quarter circle path to create a smooth rounded corner version of the flat wall.
through this method I can kitbash pillar, short sharp curves, sloped half pipe ramp style walls, whatever I want really.
The process as a whole's only real limits are your ability to plan ahead and how ambitious you want to get in relation to different forms.
Once you understand that pretty much every object in the world can be reduced down to a handfull of basic primitives, it becomes increasingly easy to make more things modular.
r.
I must admit I don't fully undertand the process yet, but I think for now I will just have a go at making some small test pieces and take it from there.
The path deform modifier in max is a huge boost also for this approach.
I tend to build a 256x256 wall with a few custom elements like a trim along the top thats 256x32. same at bottom and a small 8-16 height trim along the center.
I then process the information on to a 1024by1024 flat bsp texture, apply it to a plane, extrude the plane by 16 units, subdivide on the z axis with 12 edge loops so that I can deform it to a quarter circle path to create a smooth rounded corner version of the flat wall.
through this method I can kitbash pillar, short sharp curves, sloped half pipe ramp style walls, whatever I want really.
The process as a whole's only real limits are your ability to plan ahead and how ambitious you want to get in relation to different forms.
Once you understand that pretty much every object in the world can be reduced down to a handfull of basic primitives, it becomes increasingly easy to make more things modular.
r.
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And I'm spending that time on fun, for me. You folks will just have to learn the hard way , by yourself!!!
Or you can wait a while and buy the next UT and check out the assets heh
r.
hehe already checked them out. was working on the unreal engine at a previous company.
I tried to champion the modular aspect, but was told to mind me business he he.
seems I was proved right in the end
Sometimes its worth taking the beating.
r.
For tunnels I create one segment that repeates, I create bones and skin the tunnel (as if it was an arm) apply a spline IK solver and by moving a few points I can deform an entire tunnel any which way I want. Then to cover up the repeating details I push pull some verts around. I also vertex paint a blend masks in different areas to help break up the repeat. I wouldn't have thought about it if I had never done characters before. I would still be pushing polys around for hours, instead of minutes. I also take that one section that repeats and create "oddities" that fit the edges of the tile.
Having browsed through the UT demo, they definately make good use of this process.
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051202/mader_01.shtml
the time of creating indulgent and wacky stuff that only shows off the ability to use loft objects and mapping techniques is long long gone. What's most effective these days are cohesive scenes and props that are true to their own rules, doesn't matter if it's fantasy, sci-fi or real world.
Game worlds are designed and built at such a level of detail now that employers like to see that you could hit the ground running by instinctively appreciating this detail ... including reference photos and concept drawings (doesn't matter if someone else created them) will be a valuable part of your portfolio, especially if you can also demondstrate how you expanded on the original reference and still kept it convincing