we are multiple people willing to start a project soon. Since we are rather enthusiasts, who are experienced in particular fields, but have never worked as a team, we are encountering this problem. How should we synchronize the quality of 3D assets?
A 3D artist has a complete control about the content he is creating, being it a weapon, a piece of land, a character or anything else. One can create such assets with different number of polygons, different texture sizes, different focuses on detail, etc.
We need something like a standard, which would tell us: this asset is good enough and is not too good, for this game.
A general style is something that you can usually stick to pretty well, like say Borderlands. Within that style besides the things you know you have to do, you might start from concept art, or you’d want to have art reviews where people can look at work and give input on how it might need to be changed.
I haven’t been in that situation, so take this advice with a grain of salt, but… If I were in your shoes at the moment I would do this:
Talk about what your goals are, maybe find some reference material from other games that correspond to what you can (realistically) hope to achieve.
Have one single artist on your team (preferably the best and/or fastest) build a small set of standard assets (finalized and textured) like one character, one small building, one little patch of terrain, some small prop and one weapon (or whatever might be a key type of item in your project).
Review these assets together and make changes as needed (still using the same artist).
Once you are all happy with them, use them as “gold standards” for all future assets, in terms of scale, overall look, mesh and texture resolution, LOD levels and so on. So, everything that anybody on the team produces going forward must match the technical quality as well as the aesthetics of those standard assets.
And that’s about it. One thing I find lacking in projects done by less experienced teams is a cohesive style - so don’t just focus on technical specifications, but pay close attention to aesthetics as well… Art direction, in other words. A singular vision is important there, I think.
every 3d artist should create a small package of meshes (e.g a tree, grass, some props,…)
now you can compare it together with the team
after you have found a package which looks really good you can focus on this style/quality of assets
But keep in mind that every 3d artist has his own style + preferences/skillareas. So probably you will have to choose stuff from different artist (e.g artist 1 = foliage -> all other guys should create such good foliage meshes; artist 2 = buildings -> all other guys should create such good buildings)
Having a concept artist helps…a lot but planing quality, the art or look of the game, will “always” change through iteration so the plan should be to get what works into the game/engine as soon as possible and evaluate through critique. We are lucky to have at our disposal a small well organized QA team to pick things apart, in a constructive manner, and are good at picking out small details that were over looked.
As an artist in general the ideals that art is never done but abandoned does become a reality, and as long as it’s not taken personally, the art will level up as you move forward and through iteration something that looks simple, like a player model, can take up to or more than a year before even considering it done.
What I do recommend though is don’t let the content team focus to long on just one project. Moving between different projects gives you a fresh perspective where spending to much time on a single project will burn you out.
My project is a solo effort at the moment, but I have been writing documents describing the methods and standards of content creation in my project. I am also deliberately making at least one of each type of game asset that will set the standard when I gather a team in the future. This is similar to 's suggestion.
Like says, your overall game style should be designed by a single concept artist. Then the other artists job is to follow that game style. They can add their own creativity but ultimately it will be your job together with the head artist to make sure they are following that style. Everyone likes to be creative and have their own styles, but unfortunately they will have to reign that impulse in a little in order for the game to have a coherent style.
This makes sense. Any pointers on how can I apply this methodology to Modular Entity design. In my case every entity in the game world is modular and customizable. Dissecting Concept Art correctly has proven to be very challenging. Perhaps the concept art should be dissected before hand?