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Anyone ever-

polycounter lvl 17
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SubPablo polycounter lvl 17
-lose multiple weekends cleaning up after a former teammate who's work was a sloppy mess? Fuck lazy egotistical assholes who lack enough integrity to do their work right the first time, then shove off leaving extra work for their team. End micro rant. thank you, drive through.

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  • danr
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    danr interpolator
    oh yes : overnight and at the weekend is when the Arse Elves flourish

    as in, someone produces a complete load of shite and sods off home, but return to work to find it all shiny and working and as if nothing bad had ever occurred. And who magically turned the crap around? Arse Elves. That's who. No-one likes it when Arse Elves have to step in. In fact it makes people really very angry

    actually, they've been very quiet of late - there was a council, and it was decided that no work would be ever be redone by Arse Elves any more. Do it your fucking self.
  • Rob Galanakis
    My guess is most everyone on this board has done something like this. And my guess is even the teammate who's sloppy work you are fixing thinks he has done it for someone and doesn't realize someone is doing it for him (or at least, he won't admit it).

    Its pretty sad this is so common and even sadder that it often happens for Lead/Director work.

    Best thing to do, I've found, is ask the opinions of your other teammates to get their thoughts- if your AD is a good guy, make sure he knows. If he is the cause of your problems, you really need to get other people on your side and present your case to him and his bosses.

    This sort of thing is not at all unique to game development, cleaning up after others, it occurs in every job from the factory to the cubicle. Some of it is inevitable, but people need to be secure enough about their jobs and importance, not just to speak up for themselves, but to speak up in defense of their peers who get shitted on.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    yes, its just one of those things, or so your boss tells you =)
  • JohnnyRaptor
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    JohnnyRaptor polycounter lvl 15
    has happened, and its been weeks lost not just a weekend or two. with a proper pipeline this should never happen if the leads know what they are doing. they shouldnt hire incompetent artists in the first place, and know how to direct people in the process of making assets and finally not approving things that arent up to standard meh. i share your pain brother

    good thing is now im fortunate to work with a bunch of pro artists
  • vahl
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    vahl polycounter lvl 18
  • Jeremy Wright
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    Jeremy Wright polycounter lvl 17
    I can't tell you how often I have to do this at my work. I have to check behind two particular guys anytime they work with me on a project. It pisses me off, and it's one of the reasons I'm looking for a new employer.
  • pliang
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    pliang polycounter lvl 17
    So far I haven't been losing too much sleep over similar shit like this at work...I usually manage to have them know what they've been doing and would let the upper people know about it if it gets a little over the cliff...
  • swampbug
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    swampbug polycounter lvl 18
    This happens ALOT on our project. Sometimes its not the fault of the person who left, because the pipeline has changed over time. Other times we redo work simply because someone just didn't do it right, or they rushed it, didn't pay attention to some details.
  • greenj2
    Professor420 made some good points on ways to deal with situations like this.

    The worst instances I've seen are when good people take it upon themselves to clean up after those not doing their jobs properly, without making it known to the right parties.

    All they do is overload themselves covering for someone else's errors. It's not always a sinister situation involving an incompetent employee either, there could just be a kink in the production pipeline. Just another situation of the squeaky wheel getting the grease I guess. If you don't speak up and let the right people know, nothing will change.

    Other times it's just an unavoidable hurdle in the project you're working on, which sucks like a Hoover. I once spent 9-10 months going back over existing characters and props adding and dev-kit testing normal and spec maps. That was less than fun to say the least... :(
  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    a large amount of one of my internships was re-doing or cleaning up animations from other people. It really didnt bother me though. in some ways, it was easier to do because a lot of the work had already been done for me.

    I can imagine though that I might be annoyed if I had my own deadlines, and then also got the extra work of doing other people's work as well.
  • Xenobond
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    Xenobond polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah, I can imagine how much frustration can be had. You'd expect the other people on the team to be willing to take responsibility for the work they are given and do their best on it with the time they were given.

    I was also in this weekend prepping assets to get sent out to one of our outsourcing vendors to go and make a bunch of small changes to a large number of items. Wouldn't have had to do that if there was enough planning put in and accountability for the areas they were responsible for.

    Different aspects, similar frustrations. >_<
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 19
    wowzers, there is a silent rage that simmers under SubPablo's mellow exterior.
  • TWilson
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    TWilson polycounter lvl 18
    20% of the people do 80% of the work! It's inescapable as far as I can tell. Best to be in the 20% though.

    Just make sure to be vocal, but not at an asshole, about it. Because you can be damn sure the 80% is vocal or they wouldn't be there.
  • warby
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    warby polycounter lvl 18
    happens to me none stop.

    what is the worst is when you cleaned everything up and fixed shit like crazy and optimized everything and polished it to a solid shine ...

    and than the people figured out something is wrong this looks marginal different from what i did and than the revert to the broken version without talking to anyone one day before submission.
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    /me loves freelance.
  • SubPablo
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    SubPablo polycounter lvl 17
    Haha, nice replies everybody! This past situation was more along the lines of the "pipeline changes/lack of previous oversight" variety. I immediately felt way better after bitching. Nothing like ditching your negativity into a public forum! Constructive, yet satisfyingly unprofessional in one fell swoop!
  • Ryno
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    Ryno polycounter lvl 18
    Yes, all of the time. People, please organize your PSDs. The other day I had to make a bunch of texture changes on a PSD that had 70+ unnamed layers. For any element in the texture, there would be at least 7-9 layers affecting the appearance. Some had as many as 16 layers affecting their appearance. This is not conducive to easy editing.

    For instance, some gray painted brick that I was looking at had a base white color, then a brick overlay, then a grime multiply, then a hard light overlay, then a color layer, then a color adjustment layer, then a levels adjustment layer, then a screen overlay.

    On top of that, there were two elements of gray brick on the texture. But were they on the same layers, and did they share the same convoluted combination of color, multiply, and adjustment layers? NO! The each had their own set of chaotic layerings.

    It was just fucking gray painted brick that needed to be darker and collor corrected slightly. Just collapse your shit to maybe a base and a single overlay so that I can color corrected or make quick changes easily. Do not just keep adding unnamed layers willy nilly for minor adjustments. Collapse them.

    With the amount of work that goes into creating spec and normal maps now days, there's a lot of psd work and organization that should be happening. Assume that your psds will be touched by someone else. If you don't want them to hate working with you, for god's sakes at least organize them somewhat, and have some rhyme and reason to whatever it is that you are doing.
  • IronHawk
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    IronHawk polycounter lvl 10
    Ryno wrote: »
    Yes, all of the time. People, please organize your PSDs. The other day I had to make a bunch of texture changes on a PSD that had 70+ unnamed layers. For any element in the texture, there would be at least 7-9 layers affecting the appearance. Some had as many as 16 layers affecting their appearance. This is not conducive to easy editing.

    For instance, some gray painted brick that I was looking at had a base white color, then a brick overlay, then a grime multiply, then a hard light overlay, then a color layer, then a color adjustment layer, then a levels adjustment layer, then a screen overlay.

    On top of that, there were two elements of gray brick on the texture. But were they on the same layers, and did they share the same convoluted combination of color, multiply, and adjustment layers? NO! The each had their own set of chaotic layerings.

    It was just fucking gray painted brick that needed to be darker and collor corrected slightly. Just collapse your shit to maybe a base and a single overlay so that I can color corrected or make quick changes easily. Do not just keep adding unnamed layers willy nilly for minor adjustments. Collapse them.

    With the amount of work that goes into creating spec and normal maps now days, there's a lot of psd work and organization that should be happening. Assume that your psds will be touched by someone else. If you don't want them to hate working with you, for god's sakes at least organize them somewhat, and have some rhyme and reason to whatever it is that you are doing.

    Ouch! How do people operate like this? I do 4 folders for masks, diffuse, spec , and normal colored for easy of reading when uncolapsed and then use subfolders as well. For speed I have names and colors hotkeyed on my g15.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Haha, yeah Ryno, I hear that...

    When freelancing, I once had to deal with a PSD made by someone else, which was 250 unnamed layers. The PSD was 1024x1024, and slowed Photoshop to a crawl (something which had never happened before), and the file size was about 200mb.

    It was basically unworkable, so I spent about 2 hours figuring out what the hell was going on with it (turned out some layers just contained a single brush stroke, then a layer on top contained a counter-stroke to override the stroke below it... ever heard of "Delete Layer"?!), and then collapsed it down as much as I could - ended up as a 20-layer PSD which was 15mb, and ran perfectly smoothly in PS, and was actually capable of being edited in a sane fashion!

    I have no idea how some people can make PSDs like that, it's basically just shooting yourself in the foot... you slow down your own work, artificially bloat file sizes, and make life hell for whoever has to edit it.

    I've seen 3D scene files suffering from the same thing... hundreds of objects called "cube01" or "cylinder99", not in any layers or groups, hardly any instancing when it could be used all over the place... gah. How do people actually get work done in this way?
  • b1ll
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    b1ll polycounter lvl 18
    ahahaha, For me there is 2 different file, THe work file, and the Clean file.

    In ps, lets say, i mostly just paint . And using the same layer work for me, of course Iam not perfect, so I copy that layer over n over to secure my happy stroke. Ahaha,

    but uh. sometimes client will require the psd, or I know Ill need to use that texture again, I make the Clean file, Base layer, Wireframe, alpha, and groups for different shit. I guess its a matter of experience and shit like that. Cause maybe ya like to work in URmess, but other might not, and a Clean file, is a timesaver when u have to go back, or fix shit.


    Same with Max. Except layer, Dont like then much.


    ben
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Well I would only ever work one or two layers if I was doing diffuse only (usually use one layer per "material" for example flesh, metal, cloth etc), and then one or two layers for overlays and tweaks. Maybe 10-20 layers for a full character diffuse only, all named and ordered nicely.

    For normal/diffuse/spec etc it gets a lot more complicated, I usually have about 10-20 layers in each layer group, sometimes more depending on how many materials the object is made out of. I'd never have a PSD with just a single layer unless it was really simple, that's just too inflexible. I don't really see the point of duplicating layers, that's what version history is for.
  • b1ll
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    b1ll polycounter lvl 18
    Dunno, Each is on man. Works for me
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    i don't even know what that means :(
  • b1ll
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    b1ll polycounter lvl 18
    rofl
    EACH HIS OWN!

    better!?I WAS CLOSE!
  • Michael Knubben
    I guess he means 'each to his own, man' or 'everyone is his own man'.

    edit: I was right! Happypartytime!
  • Mark Dygert
    MoP, remember that when B1ll replies, 90% of the time hes just rolling his face on the keyboard.

    Yea, I've run into a few people who like to dump and run. Our end of game peer review period makes sure they get their come-uppins. It isn't anonymous so what people say isn't anything that hasn't already been said. It normally gets used as a tool of praise then a rough back hand. Most of us here like to deliver those in person...

    Most people here bend over backwards to make things clear and clean, but every once in a while someone gets sloppy and it costs someone else some time. And by someone else I mean me. I sit at the end of the production chain so I get to fix or kick back all the little/big f-ups that get made.
  • greenj2
    Remember kids, real men use "Flatten Image". :D
  • pliang
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    pliang polycounter lvl 17
    So? Wait till you see me dealing with people linking masks to unnamed layers too...
  • okkun
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    okkun polycounter lvl 18
    you know flattening layers is cool and all, but when you get a psd that has the occlusion flattened..
  • Asmuel
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    Asmuel polycounter lvl 17
    has happened, and its been weeks lost not just a weekend or two. with a proper pipeline this should never happen if the leads know what they are doing. they shouldnt hire incompetent artists in the first place, and know how to direct people in the process of making assets and finally not approving things that arent up to standard meh. i share your pain brother

    good thing is now im fortunate to work with a bunch of pro artists

    You're 11 and work in a studio? hurray for child labor.
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