the value of artists

[chumps]

in the latest gamespy interview fred said he's doing ALL the animation. that's a lot of work! the best animation is probably done by pixar, and those are professionals who have tweak their keyframes over and over for a few seconds of footage. i don't think fred has that luxury.

motion-capture isn't as useful as us techie-noobs wish it were. it's come a long way, but it still has a tendency to produce wooden, robotic animations. which of course makes no sense because it was 'captured' from a real person, go figure eh?

as technology improves in real time gaming, it doesn't automatically make games look better. if anything, it just requires more from artists and animators and designers. a few years ago, you didn't need to be a great artist to make some nice doom/quake mods. but as tech marches on the importance of artists becomes more and more evident. thank god id has such talented people!

carmack is a programming god, but doom3 looks as good as it does because of the creative people behind the code.

of course, as an artist myself, i'm a little biased.

happy regards.

[chumps]

ah crikey this was meant to be a reply to another thread..

BUT, hey it doesn't sound too bad as a seperate thread does it?

:)

[Linguica]

You know, there IS an "Edit/Delete" link down at the bottom of the post...

[Fredrik]

Indeed, it takes some quality artist work to make a good game.

[EsH]

I agree entirely. I just made another thread about this, but 3D engines are sort of going to be like modeling packages. People won't be wowed at the great "programming" effect, but at the amazing set piece effect that some artist worked really hard on. The engine will just "naturally" carry the effect as a given.

[dsm]

Hm, I wonder if I will have the skill to do any good when working on a Mod for Doom 3 when it's out.

[Fredrik]

dsm said:

Hm, I wonder if I will have the skill to do any good when working on a Mod for Doom 3 when it's out.

Same here...

[Zaldron]

I'm working on a "texture". I've already made a special material to separatedly render the bumpmap.

[dsm]

Well, Zaldron not only has the technical knowledge, but also has art skills which make my drawings look like kiddie drawings so I'd be a bit surprised if he'd have any trouble working with the art side of the new Doom engine's modding tools.

[Zaldron]

It's hard though, very hard. It takes way much more time.

[Sev]

hmmm i wouldnt say its harder, it just takes longer. Making a really high polygon model in many ways is easier than making low poly models.

The way i see it, make a stupidly high poly model, in this case a wall. Bump map it, generally make it as kick ass and detailed as you want :). Then render that and use that render to generate the bump map image to use in your texture for the 5 - 6000 poly model. Using the high poly render over your painted (traditional) texture.

If im correct it isnt really much harder its just more time consuming.

Sev

[dsm]

What I think would be a really big problem to me, would be the art itself - I can't make CGI quality art and dunno how to do it.

[Zaldron]

http://www.cgtalk.com

This place rocks bigtime.

[chumps]

EsH said:

I agree entirely. I just made another thread about this, but 3D engines are sort of going to be like modeling packages.

that's a really good analogy, and it's promising for people who want to get into the industry but aren't interesting in the programming side of things. developers will need to hire more and more artists to keep up with the new demands in content.

you can't get away with flat cheesy textures and simple lighting anymore. i truly believe that a lot of people who work in the industry today along and with those who want to break into it will find themselves unable to live up to the potential that new technology offers. when people are stripped of limitations some will rise up while others will be left behind, it'll be interesting to see how large the gap will be.

as for how developers will fare, or the whole industry for that matter, it's hard to say. i think that as games become more sophisticated they will become more mainstream. with mainstream support, perhaps games can make the transition from simple entertainment to valid art. perhaps :).

[mmnpsrsoskl]

I can't wait to get my hands on the level editor.

When I finish my project for Ultimate DooM, I might port it over to DooM III...

[Fredrik]

At least, the level editor in DOOM3 will probably be more intuitive and more powerful than any of the DOOM editors we have today...

[Sev]

yeah so heres how they make the textures... it was said in the latest interview at Gamespy.

First you make the model of the texture, render that gives you ur bump map. And use that to create shadows on the texture. Then specualr map, diffuse map, combine that with a painted texture gives you your brand spanking new D3 texture :)

Sev

Doing that for each texture, especially the models.. now thats gonna take a while :)

[Fredrik]

Damnit I prefer the old fashioned painting way =P

Heh, in five years from now, we'll model textures like that and use the models directly (same as modelling all wall structures in the level editor but easier).

[Sev]

yeah i bet we will be