I have a question for my fellow artists who are currently working

2080 hours was spent on working on a non disclosed project. Full time.
Around 1000 hours of my free-time was invested on new workflows (PBR)
tools : substance painter, designer, ndo, Unreal 4.

For those who seek employment in the game industry. You either sacrifice or become redundant.

>>503786

I've been trying to get good by putting in 8 hours a day, but I still suck. Maybe I shouldn't focus on character art.

My friend said he was doing 15 hours a day for two years to break in and now he just doing 6 hours extra a day on top of his work.

There are skills that never get old.

Anatomy, composition, color theory.

Develop these and you'll never be redundant

It kinda depends on what area of the industry you are working in. I know that on /3/ the realistic AAA stuff is very popular, and the constant pressure for greater visual quality is constantly pushing bounderies and tech so you need to keep up to date constantly.

However, in the mobile game / casual game sector the pressure is lower. On the other hand, in this area it pays off to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. so it is good to exercise multiple skills.

In the end, my personal goal is to start my own studio next year. Yes, it's risky, but i will have the satisfaction of working for myself, not lining the pockets of others.

>everybody itt not posting work

This thread is totally pointless. Even polycount has better threads.

>>503805

Just out of curiosity, why are you bothered by the fact anons do not post work?

- Good info is good info. It shouldn't matter from whom it comes. If someone posts a cool pic but writes nonsense, you add greater value to that info?

- It's an anonymous board, so someone can post something and claim it is their own work. How can you check a picture if it's indeed from that anon?

- If an anon would indeed post some of their professional work, would you simply accept that, or immediately write that it's not really this person's work, or bullshit and not up to your standards?

I regularly visit /ic/ and /3/ and sometimes I give advice based on my experience in the game industry. So am I actually expected to offer myself up for trolling on an anonymous board just so that any good info I give might be taken seriously? That's some twisted thinking, with all due respect.

>>503805

Posting your personal info on /3/ is the worst thing you could possible do.

This isn't like reddit.

i haven't gotten into 3D yet so i have no hours, but i've been focusing on concept art and music composition. i'm trying to get my concept art on a level that's decent enough for me to then transition to 3D modelling. from there i wanted to try animation and then rendering. my goal is to understand each step in the pipeline to try and assist directors or producers rather than just work in one particular step, mainly because i have a passion for all of them equally.

>>503807
>Just out of curiosity, why are you bothered by the fact anons do not post work?
because its a waste of time for anyone involved. Please see a good board for reference ie polycount. Also see people that post work like Hans "Mil"

>Posting your personal info on /3/ is the worst thing you could possible do.
See Hans "mil" and many others posting their work and the skying not falling on them

>>503811
/3/ isn't /b/. Nobodys gonna do shit here that can hurt anyone

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>>503816
>Thinks /3/ is somehow separate from the rest of 4chan

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>>503820
>still not posting work after its been demonstrated thar you can indeed
>somehow /ic/ can post work all the time with no problems

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>>503821
>implying I was anyone else in this thread and not a new person
>this is why we need the auto-id system on this board.
Here, something I pissed out for practice. Now your turn :)

mehehhe faggets, just do some shitty blocks game and become rich just like that minecraft faggot

>>503822
>>503796
>boner

This is a very sensitive subject among industry artist. Artists know damn well that competition is getting insane. In order to cope with the demands. 1/ efficiency 2/ speed 3/ productivity. You gotta stay up to date with the latest techniques, workflows or become redundant.
Redundant due to speed. If you keep up missing out on milestones you will be laid off.
Average production time of a next-gen character is 1 up to 3 months. This is a business, if you can get shit done within a faster timeframe and you can pass down that knowledge to your team. You become a valueable asset to the company.

When I first entered the industry. You needed to know 2 tools. max and photoshop.

Now you have 6 different tools that perform the same operation. Knald, Crazybump, Substance designer, Substance Painter, 3dCoat, Quixel suite.

Composition, color theory is pretty irrelevant if you produce assets based on 2D concepts.
But for environment artist, level designers composition, color and lighting is key.

I put in 2 extra hours on top of my existing 9. So 11 hours per day. I plan on keeping this up till I am 30

tools that I use in my current workflow.
Maya
3dsmax


Substance designer
Substance painter
Photoshop
knald
quixel suite
Headus UV
meshlab

Zbrush


Xnormal
Handplane
World machine


PureRef

It is true. You can cut down a tree with a axe but a chainsaw is faster.
For me it is all about speed and efficiency.
Investing time in tools is my strategy for not becoming redundant.

>>503822

Wait are you Adam Fisher.

I thought /3/ was full of just crappy artist who argue about what is the best 3d software.

>>503890
Nope. But I do shitpost about what's the best software now and then ;)
But for the most part I mainly leave advice...

>>503896

The blue zbrush theme and dishonoured sculpt. You must be Adam Fisher.

>>503902
My sculpt is very different from his...

If you cannot tell the difference between adam fisher style and this copy cat, then good luck becoming a artist.

>>504055
>copy cat
m8, he didn't invent that character, it's based on Dishonored concept art of a character in the game.

I feel like this only applies to game dev studios. The constant pursuit of having close to film cg. I mean the old tools work best and I think the surplus of software will slowly die down as studios end up sticking with one. I mean learning new tools doesn't hurt either.

However I find it strange that there is a massive influx of 3d artists out there. Won't deny that there is competition, but its usually competition for the top tier game studios such as Riot. Whenever I hear artist talk, they aspire to work for Riot/Blizzard. Yea, there are ALOT of competition for those. But for smaller studios, its not as bad, some are would even be suprised that you've hear of them. All I know at the moment is Framestore is hiring, so is ILM for props. Most artist tend to forget the other guys. But thats my take on it.

>>504115
>Most artist tend to forget the other guys. But thats my take on it
I have a feeling it's more so that there isn't a lot of talent out there that can fit the skill and experience requirements ILM and Framestore would want. Those are not "smaller studios" by any measure.

The workflow for cinematic CGI and Game Art is different.
Adapting to cinematic cgi will takes perhaps months or years. Why take that risk?
Within 10 years, games will reach cinematic quality.

>>504143
>Within 10 years, games will reach cinematic quality.
m8...in 10 years games might reach the cinematic quality of 2015,but not 2025

>>503843

Hi Game artist, why does it take 1 to 3 months to make a next gen character?

Also, do you think it is the artist being slow that takes up all the time. For example Tor Frick can work really fast so couldn't you get a character artist who can work as fast as Tor Frick to create a next gen character in a few days instead of a month.

>>504361
> Tor Frick can work really fast so couldn't you get a character artist who can work as fast as Tor Frick
Highly skilled models like that aren't as abundant as you might think. That why you usually see Senior modeling job openings more than junior.

Also, it's the back and forth between different departments to get approval and changes made over those weeks that takes so long. It's not that you're usually ONLY working on that one model for 1-2 months, you're working on other models in-between each feedback session.

>>504362
>Tor Frick
literally who?

>>504363

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZUDm93rg4A

Tor Frick is the best 3d modeller alive. He is also insanely fast.

>>504362

How long does one model take if you had no distractions and didn't have to go back and forth. Just wondering as for props a 3D artist told me you should spend 1 day on the high poly and other day to create textures and low poly. So it is 2 days to create a prop. Yet everyone who talks about characters say stuff like 1 to 2 months to create a character.

>>504364
>So it is 2 days to create a prop. Yet everyone who talks about characters
>characters

Those are two very different things. Nearly all props will be static, so right off the bat your workload is much less because your topology does not need to support deformation, nor does the design itself need to support it.

Also, hard-surface modeling goes a hell of a lot faster than organic.

But realistically, you should be able to do a fully fleshed out, high>low poly character within 5 days. This greatly depends on the complexity of the character though.

Props absolutely shouldn't take your more than a day or two, with most only being a few hours if you have a consistent texturing workflow (Substance and Quixel greatly help this out now).

>>504364
>Tor Frick is the best 3d modeller alive
>kitbashing and instancing out the ass
That doesn't add up.

>>504364
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZUDm93rg4A

I bet a good portion of hard surface modellers could turn something like that out in a day easy. I think I could probably do it myself, It's only one panel's worth of modelling that's repeated along the hallway, and hard surface is easy as balls.

>Yet everyone who talks about characters say stuff like 1 to 2 months to create a character.

There are a huge number of reasons that it's more difficult to make a character vs a prop. Not only is organic modelling harder, but characters also come under much harsher scrutiny in the game. Not only because they're focal points but also because humans are evolutionarily wired to relate to other humans.

>>504364
>Tor Frick is the best 3d modeller alive. He is also insanely fast.
Going to need some verification on that claim.

For the game industry what is important to have from greatest to least.

-Knowing the right people
-Having top tier cg talent
-Experience
-Went to the best school

add more factors if they matter

>>504425
1. knowing the right people
2. experience
5. top tier cg talent
10. went to the best school

http://polycount.com/discussion/74038/my-new-3d-character


Smiljan pecjak is the best alive.

lol

For those who say modular environment art is easy.
Many variables.
Hardsurface baking follows complex procedures. Tangent normals, smoothing groups, seams, degree angles.
Making it modular and seams while retaining textures that don't show repetition is a complex art form.
Character artist have alot easier time baking high poly source data to normal.

>>504467
>Hardsurface baking follows complex procedures. Tangent normals, smoothing groups, seams, degree angles.
your noob card just got pulled.

My noob card just got pulled?
I am not sure what you mean.

College animatorfag here.

I was interested in becoming a character artist but there are tools that just automate the more difficult aspects of content creation like DDo.

Although Zbrush made organic sculpting easy, it still required some skill to make a presentable product or something to be used in the pipeline but the main line between professional and amateur work was blurred.
A pro can make a finished sculpt in 1 or 2 work days depending on complexity, but this can no longer be immediately found when a bunch of amateurs or juniors show 'good' work on their portfolios that took them months to polish.

What stopped me from becoming a character artist was a student a few terms ahead of me. He was lazy, didn't know what he was doing and didn't apply himself. However, with DDo he was able to make his mediocre and some even poor modeling skills look presentable in the last few weeks when literally someone else in the class showed him (doing the hard parts of setting it up) the DDo plugin.


With the Zbrush turd polish timer hidden and above plugins being developed, it is clear that character and environmental modeling will always be 'competitive' and temporary positions.

BADASS.jpeg will probably land him a 6 month contract somewhere making beds and bathrooms. You will not be modeling what you want. 10 beds, 6 toilets, tubs and toiletries until that set dress kit is complete, then you move to flowers, grass and shrubbery.

I can't even admire that image in OPs post anymore, the magic is gone. Most of the modeling students in the portfolio I class can do that in one term. But there are so few that put in the effort.

>>504487
so what are you saying?
teachers don't judge by UV's,organic/hardsurface skills and only renders?
that's pretty shitty, why they don't let you render things in real time and walk through the entire process

>>504364
>One polished panel CTRL+D'd and rotated
Piecemeal modeling is like lesson 3 at any 3D modeling course. I've never heard of this guy and I'm not interested in looking after what I've seen in that video.

You play Fallout 4 probably right? Go make a small house using the metal pieces in there and crank up the settings to max and turn on the Drive soundtrack music. Same principle.
>>504362
>back and forth between different departments to get approval and changes made
This too. Applies to the animation studio I want to work at, people animate up to 30-45 seconds a week, but it's only that high because of changes required to be made.

A pixar animator only animates like 5 seconds a month it's ridiculous, these animators eventually forget how to even animate properly. I heard a story of an animator that worked on Sony pictures, he left to work for a TV production and was laughed at because he could only animate a few seconds a week and he did less work than a junior animator even though his portfolio was top tier with big names.


Personality>Work ethic>Ability is what's being pounded into our ears every week at school.

Good hard working people can be taught programs and skills, but skilled and lazy unsociable shut ins can't be taught or put up with to be a good personality or have stronger work ethic.

I.E no one here is getting work unless they already have it. 2 years experience minimum is to keep the 3 month contracted autists out of their company.

>>504487
Except that's not how hiring works in this industry dude. If they're thinking of hiring you for a junior role (since you have no real work experience yet) they put you through a test to see if you can actually make something decent from given concept art and within acceptable time-frames. If you can't, you're not hired. You're just making excuses because you found modeling too difficult and requiring too much artistic talent to be built up, so you settled for animating which takes much less effort to get good at.

BADASS.jpeg will probably land him a 6 month contract somewhere making beds and bathrooms. You will not be modeling what you want. 10 beds, 6 toilets, tubs and toiletries until that set dress kit is complete, then you move to flowers, grass and shrubbery.


http://www.torfrick.com/info/Petrol.html
Funny, coming from a college student who still hasn't grown his pubic hairs yet.

If your not planning to work 12 hours a day to build up your portfolio after graduation. You won't stand a chance. Your competing against artists from all over the world. We have guys from India, Europe, Canada, China.
For new fags thinking working in the games is fun. This is a sausage factory.

>>504525

I can only manage to put in 8 hours after work and 15 hours on the weekend.

Thats depressing if that is true. But, if you think about it there must be a lot of artist who do 10 hours at work, then go home and put in another 4 hours a day.

So it would be impossible to compete with that.

Maybe making my own game is the way forward.

>>504535
Don't go into this industry unless you're truly interested in doing 3D. When you're truly interested, spending literally the whole day playing around with things and learning doesn't feel like work, it's what you actually find fun, to the point where you might end up staying up all night too because you want to keep going. This industry requires lots of dedication to the craft and people don't join it for the money, but for the passion.

>>504519
>I can't even admire that image in OPs post anymore, the magic is gone. Most of the modeling students in the portfolio I class can do that in one term. But there are so few that put in the effort.

Yes he puts in the effort to have a rendered noisy technojunk model.

That ''noisy technojunk model'' was build by Tor Frick. Your implying that most of your modelling students can do that in 1 term.
Then you just wasted 20 K on shitty college diploma, which won't guarantee you a position in this industry.
If your teachers hasn't taught you anything about Subdivision modelling and hardsurface baking. Then you won't stand a chance making it in this industry as a asset artist.

This noisy technojunk model wasn't build in low poly with normals generated from Quixel suite.
The base normals were captured from a highpoly subdivision model. The details that you see like rivets are blended on top of the existing normal layer.
If you comprehend the complexity of this model, then you just wasted 20k on a shitty education.

>>504489
What you say about animation is pretty misguided.

>these animators eventually forget how to even animate properly

Shows that you don't have the eye to judge what you're looking at. Feature film takes more time because the quality is much higher. It's just that the animator in your story wasn't willing to sacrifice his quality standards to finish faster, which is his fault of course. But if you see that as "not animating properly" you need to reevaluate some things, especially as a prospective animator.

For someone still in school, you already sound pretty discouraged and bitter. Maybe spend more time away from forums and 4chan.

>>504563
>If your teachers hasn't taught you anything about Subdivision modelling and hardsurface baking


what kind of school don't teach baking? its very essential to to games,unless you wanna model beds all day

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>>504364
Bad example of Tor's work your picked there. Literally something in his own words that shitted out for a Quixel promo.

>>504371
>>504392
>>504400
>>504489
He did a load of work for Wolfenstein: New Order. See here: http://www.torfrick.com/info/Wolfenstein.html

Somebody mentioned Smiljan Laserna Pecjak. LOL. I thought he left the industry after he scammed alot of people.
This guy is a nutcase. I cannot believe people still fall for his bullshit.

>>504620
Wolfenstein: TNO looks fucking radical. One of my favorite games due to the designs of everything.

Smiljan is a clown, shunned from polycount, unity forums, cgpersia. Banned from Unreal 4 forums.
Mods on Unity are idiots, scammers, shit-talkers, noobs with big mouth get free pass.

If Phil Fish had a retarded son that could sculpt shitty character, his name would be smiljan pecjak.

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>>504793
>>504792
>>504637
Could someone elaborate? I'm only getting 4-6 year old forum posts and not very helpful pictures when I try to look him up.

Smiljan has been caught modifying existing art assets and thousands of dollars for them.
He got caught by one of the Unreal forum mods which resulted in a permanent ban.

Unity mods don't care, they either delete the entire thread like nothing has happened or they lock your thread.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/artist-scammer-warning-smiljan-peckjack.368742/

http://forum.cgpersia.com/f20/bones-pro-4-51-3ds-max-2012-a-32478/

His characters all look alike, proportion look pretty much the same. Just keep on modifying the same basemesh. Just change the face and change the clothing, Voila a new character.

Why not call yourself a fashion designer instead of a character artist. Guy must be closet gay. Obsessed with muscular men and fashion.

>>504846
>images missing
>post content removed
Dang. Was hoping to get some solid proof.

Still, thanks for letting me know; It's also hard to trust someone who can't type properly after >=6 years of being on the internet, as well.

>>504849
Yeah, I noticed that as well.

A lot of old unity threads exposing smiljan pecjak got deleted the Unity mods. I am trying to find a funny thread about Smiljan and a pissed off client.
Summary : Smiljan did some level for a client on the forums, he used cracked copy of Unity 4.
Legit copies and cracked copies of unity can cause syncing issues. The client ended up with corrupted project. The damage was pretty severe. There was enough evidence to get Smiljan banned from the forums but the mods decided to let it slide.

Question.
How can a artist like that who commits fraud, theft, still manage to survive?
I thought this industry is small and tight, people gossip, you know.
How the hell does he still get paid clients?
He is not even that good. Digital tutors tier, mostly recycled basemeshes.

>>504923
The industry is tight in europe/america. But third/second world countries are not really integrated with our culture much and wouldn't be easily aware of these issues, or potentially they wouldn't care, as studios in such countries tend to already use a lot of pirated/stolen material themselves too. So he can find business where he comes from no problem.

>>504923
wut?
there are millions of 3d artists if im not mistaken

>>504927
This troll is dead dude, come up with a new one.

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>>504153
>What is real time path-tracing.
top kek

>>504981
>Brigade
>Real time

I run a VR company, interactive VR with Gearvr, Oculus, Cardboard etc. How will brigade benefit my company?

>>505045
>http://www.torfrick.com/info/Wolfenstein.html
for the next 10 years, it won't

>>505075
accident link in there
my bad

>>505045
>for the next 10 years, it won't
Or maybe it could be used as a conceptual renderer or something like that? I mean it is very fast and it could be useful to get a more"immersed" feel of what you're looking at? The only thing is that you might need to completely disable any head tracking movement as the renderer would never converge enough with the constant movement.

I don't know, I don't really know much about VR.

I would rather be a B student who has fun than an A student who doesn't. You don't need to be the best. You need to have a great grasp on the fundamentals and principles, be a team player, and find a balance between leisure and work.

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Sorry to say. But B students hardly make it in the industry. You gotta put in work and become exceptional or have at least 2 years experience in the industry.

>>505145

That or know the right person to get you in.

the tools are getting easier and easier.
hard surface baking used to be a pain in the ass.
Texturing used to require skill, tweaks, and alot of practice and testing under different lighting conditions. Specular/gloss old tradional lighting model is tricky with vertex,pixel lighting.
Hardsurface modellling in sub-d used to require skill. Now every noob is using zbrush.
Hey old skool artist, you feel me?
Knowing the right people will get u in right?
Knowing the right artists will get you in. If you wanna be ok in my book. You need to better then me. Not many new artist are.

>>505145
haha well fuck me I was a C student in high school

With things like Quixel suite and Sustance painter it's amazing how much it does in 1-click actions. Like shit, apply a material and the entire model has a scratched painted layer in seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WirF2bV8iNk

Saying that, which one of the suites do people recommend? I quite like the look of Quixel and how powerful it is, all for a fair price.

>>505145
>B students
Is that college / higher education you're speaking of?

>>505443
Learn both, use the best features of both combined.
I think for asset production Substance Designer is also a very powerful tool as it can increase the texture output immense with its procedural shaders. I give you an example. Lets say you have a sci fi corridor with 100 repeating tiles. One clever build shader can build 100 unique looking tiles in a couple of minutes. Combine that with Quixels giant texture library and you have a lot of fun texturing.
IF you hardware is powerful enough and the programs run stable.

>>505460
But you still have a sci-fi corridor anon and everyone's seen that a billion times. You're just trying to shine shit and turn it into gold but really you're just shining shit.

As veteran polycounter. I have seen it all.
Your not gonna impress a veteran artist with some DDO / NDO / generated environments. It is too easy.
You want a job? It is simple, do something technically and artisticly hard.
Go model and sculpt a gothic cathedral.

LOL Tor Frick is good, but you probally never heard of Yemyam.

>>505465
no actually i don't have a sci fi corridor. I had an example, but you took it and run too far with it.

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>>505443
>narrator is an indian faggot taking our jobs

Where I work. http://i.imgur.com/6F73Wza.png
I am required to finish this scene in less then a week. I wrote a few scripts in the past to automate tedious repetitive tasks such as 1 second boxmapping + retaining texel ratio.
With quixel you can build a scene like this in less then 3.

>>505557
than*
pls

>polite sage

>>505557
Where do you work that the standards are that low? If you can get a job with work that amateur looking, then I really must be beating myself up too much about applying.

I'd just like to say that failing to get into the game or film industry straight out of training / right off the bat when you start looking for CG work doesn't mean you can't make money in this field. Do some freelance / contract work to start out, or make assets for sale in one of the marketplaces. Your skills will improve as long as you keep trying, and after a few years doing contract work, you will be a lot faster, better, and more professional than you were. Those traits might open doors for you into game / film production.

>we're all gonna make it, brah
>zyzz.exe

>>505582
I used a example from the internet. This work is not done by me. I think it's from polycunt environment contest. If you look closely, you see it is still using old tradional specular/gloss/diffuse maps, probally UDK. Probally made 2-3 years ago.
Since 2014, we have been extensively using PBR in our pipelines.

During crunch periods, we do make environments that look crappy like that. 2/3 days for a environment like that will burn out most newcomers.

>>505599
Average freelancers charges 10-30 USD in the west, when a poor indian is willing to do it for 5-10 USD per hour.

In 2007 I could easily charge 80 USD per hour for a few simple environments at Liquid development.

The market for freelance work is so extremely saturated nowadays.

that image is from the quixel ddo program . post something you really made.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WirF2bV8iNk

>>506165
He wasn't claiming it was his...