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marque_pierre

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Posts posted by marque_pierre

  1. Do any of you mapcoreans have experience with dedicated modellers, such as Silo or Modo? I kinda like the idea, but for now 3ds Max is where I model 99% of my stuff. But I am not always too keen on Max's texture or animation tools. So to be able to string together a custom pipeline of workflow suited to your need and tastes sounds appealing. Say, modelling in Modo. texturing in ZBrush, animating in XSI, rendering in Mental Ray...

    These new modellers claim to be oh so intuitive and artists friendly, what's your take on that? Yes, I know I need to sit down and spend some quality time with the software. But I don't have that time now, so in preparation, I want to narrow the field of packages down a bit...

    Any takers?

  2. Sure. As far as I remember, Rare still has a nice 3 point something million titles sold per games released. But how many RAREs are there out there? And then you have games with super people behind them, like Beyond Good & Evil, where I am sure the developers also never saw a dime of royalties.

    The harsh realities seems to be that this is a very attractive industry to work in, but just because we have all played Half Life, doesn't mean we will ever get a shot at making the next Half Life. I remember meeting a games developer who had worked in the games industry for various companies for 15 (FIFTEEN!) years, and he only had one published game to his name. Everything else had been scrapped along the way. Man, he was bitter!

    Thousands of games are made every year. Out of them a couple of handfulls break even or make a profit. Royalties? You do the math...

  3. Royalties sounds swell by principle. However all the pros I have ever talked to have said the same, 'don't expect to ever see any!' Why is that? Well, very, very, very few games of the thousands upon thousands made every year, do ever break even allowing the developers to get near the haunted royalties. That is just another sorry fact from the way this industry runs right now. So unless you work for Valve, Naughty Dog, Blizzard, Rockstar North or those other 10-15 companies like them, don't believe the hype.

  4. Hi guys,

    Most of the entry level jobs in art or design seems to be as environment modeller with texturing responsibilities.

    So where do you go from there? I suppose once you have been building and dressing level geometry, the gap to laying them out game play wise is not too great, or perhaps specialize in modelling/texture work instead.

    Pros have told me that the highest paid people on the art team will be animators and character artists. So there seems to be a distinction in status and experience between environment and character artists?!

    So as we progress in our careers, I suppose we either move up (Lead Artist), sideways (switching to another field) or perhaps specialize deeply in the same field.

    I know there are still many shops where everybody does everything depending on needs and all, that but I'd like for the pros on these shores to comment on the career paths in art(/design) as they see them.

    For example, as a texture artist, is it possible to specialize in texturing ONLY? Like Lead Texture Artist or something else? Or is texture artist (to keep with that example) just a phase in the normal progression of an artists career trajectory?

  5. Here is another one. A couple of old industrial washing machines which have stood around and lost a lot innards over the years. C&C, if you puhlease....

    washingmachines.jpg

    To preempt a lot of comments. Yes, there could be a lot more geometry on these babies, but they will not play a role in the story/gameplay, so they are kept fairly lowpoly for their role as background decorations.

  6. I study games design + art in the final year of my degree, but we have a team of students as well, who work as contractors for games developers. And yes, we do get hired! Within that I am basically Lifetime Dictator (talking a lot of bullshit, daydreaming and cracking a lot of whips), modeller, texture artist and level designer. Life is good. 8) We might never have to look for another job upon graduation. :twisted:

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