Need Advice on becoming a bit more skilled on 3D Environment Creation

[Cyrzo]

Hello Mapcore community

 

I am currently a level designer looking to expand my skills assets. I am looking into becoming if not an experienced or skilled , atleast a decent 3d environment artist. I have a few questions to the experienced 3d environment artist about workflows and other related topics.

 

here goes.

 

1) When creating a dirty room or any sort rusted indoor area. I know texturing 4 different types of the same floor tiles must be an absolute waste of time or maybe not. I use decals a bit and was wondering, how often does an actual 3d environment artist use decals once in the game engine or at all?

 

 

2) For the difficult unwraps for certain static objects, what would be the best way to organize a texture sheet? Such as larger poly's or smaller poly's?

 

3) Any other tips on helping me would be much appreciated.

 

Thank you very much.

 

[Steppenwolf]

1) decals or overlays are used a lot but nowadays thers also other options to individualize repeating textures via shaders or blending masks. Something like this:

 

 

2) rule of thumb is to have even pixel density across the model unless you have parts that will be more often in the face of the player (for instance rear sights on a weapon model). you don't need to organize your uv islands by size. just organize them so that you don't waste space and they are easy to texture (straighten edges horizontally and vertically for example)

 

3) start simple. make some boxes, barrels or chairs for starters. then work your way up to more complex stuff. then learn subdivision modeling for highpolies and normal baking, then sculpting. Same applies here start with simple props before you try cars or elaborate environments. Check the polycount Technical Talk subforum for valuable tips and tricks.

Get a wacom tablet for texturing and sculpting.

In general while you learn try to focus on one thing at a time otherwise it becomes overwhelming and you will waste a lot of time trying to fix things that you don't have the knowledge how to fix properly.

[Cyrzo]

Thanks alot Steppenwolf, Your advice was very thorough and valuable.

I own a Wacom table and was looking for ways to improve my overall knowledge of 3D environment design.

 

Thanks alot.

[Tutorial Doctor]

This is an area I want to explore myself. I use Google Sketchup for environments because it is very easy and it was used for Drake's Uncharted. 

 

I recently learned about greebles which they used for the star wars movies. It is good to have a collection of greebles for your environments because they can be used over and over. 

 

Another thing you want to look into is modular design or modular modeling: A good start is here:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xYdkxeEOzM

 

Also you want to try to use a texture atlas for some of your textures so that you can cut down on render time. Blender has a texture atlas plugin as well (if you use blender). 

 

Just wanted to give you some terms that you could explore.

 

note: I also have a post on here about modular design (some people posted some good examples). 

 

Hope this helps.