One of the biggest checks in reality I had did not come to me in college, it did not come to me when I had to start creating wonderful artwork with strict deadlines and it did not come to me when I had my first few interviews, no, it came to me when I did my first art test. In this Art Tests in Depth series on Notes on Game Dev, I’ll start with an introduction to the basics and then get more in depth with my test experiences.

I realized the real limitations of the game industry and the multitude of texture passes I need to more than know but master. I also need to keep myself up to date with new technology in order to do create the graphics you see in industry defining games not only as good, but better in order for my art to be the best. In addition to this my eyes opened up to the stylized ways of texturing. This was something I did not do much of in college. I always went for that realistic look with my own hand painted or self generated textures. This blog is going to be a personal one based on my experience with Art Tests and the challenges they offer including things such as textures etc. Before I go on talking about all the different types of tests and styles let me cover the overview of an art test.

Low Trinomial Counts

First off I am distinguishing this - Polygons are made of two Trinomials and Trinomials are three sided. A lot of people do not know this and a lot of game companies call Trinomials Polys since everything is based on a per Trinomial count and not a Polygon count. For me, I always started with high poly modeling and worked my way to low poly – or at least what I thought was low. Reality hit me here when I found out my environment assets with 8,000 Tris (4,000 Polygons) were above the count in the game world. I discovered that the maximum limit of assets max out around 6,000 Tris. This of course was a big reduction though an achievable one. Reality hit me yet again, unfortunately for me I love RPG’s and MMORPG’s and these games cut the count down even further due to the amount of content in a game. I found out I need to get my tri counts down to 4,000. Of course there are acceptations to this where there might be an important asset that goes higher or there are low poly creatures that you fight but your character itself is higher poly. From what I have been told, the maximum display on a next generation screen is between 500,000 and 550,000 Tris. In addition to this, I have to keep in mind that animations, effects, spells, etc. have to be added so my actual hard modeling has to be well under that maximum limit.

Functional / Vague Geometry

Every model I have been given has to be functional. This means that there will be concept sketches and these images do not animate on a 2D image. I have to figure out what would move, if anything, and how it would move and model my object to these functions. Most of the drawings I had did not show the parts that are functional they just showed a couple of angles of the object so I had to figure out what I would want to do as a gamer if I were to come across this object. Additionally, a lot of areas on the concept art are vague or hidden since a lot of times I was given one image compared to a complete layout of the object that shows 6 different angles of that object. This means I had to take that one concept image and continue the given style through the areas that are not depicted and I had to figure out what is on the other side of that object that I cannot see or how something functions.

Smoothing Groups / Soften Edges

I will touch on this briefly. Sometimes tests will required me to smooth the normal’s completely and sometimes they have specifics such as only smooth edges that need to look beveled or harden all profile edges for a comic look. In the end, they all require some sort of normal smoothing and usually it is smoothing all the normal’s.

Texture Limitations

The highest limit I had was 1,024 x 1,024. Most people will double this and then shrink it down to obtain more detail but I advise against this if you are not generating your own textures. If you are using photosource you will create heavy noise when resizing your texture. One company was going to zoom in on my texture 7x (700%) and if there was too much noise, I failed. Another was doing a 4x (400%) zoom test. You create more noise by bringing the texture down from higher resolutions. Some companies won’t care about noise but let me put it this way, the better resolution you can achieve with less, the more you are worth and the more companies will want you. Additionally, the amount of texture maps you can use per test will vary. Usually I was not allowed more than 2 diffuse maps which could not exceed 1,024.

Texture Creating

Another challenge with these Art Tests for me is how I needed to create textures. I have had ZERO tests that allow you to photosource your textures. I am a person who has learned to hand paint and generate all my own textures so this is the norm for me but many, many college students photosource everything. This means you cannot take images offline nor clone stamp textures you find or anything of the sort. You must use a wacom tablet and paint your textures or learn to generate realistic textures in Photoshop. Some tests even require extreme specifics. I had a few tests that require hand painted textures in a specific style such as a painterly look. They want all the textures to look as if they were painted showing obvious brush strokes and they must not break upon zoom tests so you have to use hard brushes. One test even required hand painted normal maps in order to reduce noise and achieve a hard edge style in the normal’s. Just be advised you will have a hard time getting a job if you cannot make your own textures. Trust me on that.

Texture Test, Next Level Games

Texture Map Passes

This is a brief section but if you cannot make one of these maps, it is time to learn how to because they were required for most of my tests. The maps I had to generate were; Diffuse Map, Specular Map, Gloss Map, Alpha Map and Normal Map and sometimes Reflection Map. The one map I had no idea about was Gloss Map. This is a map that controls your specular map. For example - if you have an object with both stone and metal on it obviously the metal has more specular than stone. The Gloss Map will allow the metal to have a brighter Specular than the Stone. The map is read in gray scale and white is brighter than black.Additionally these texture maps usually do not have to be the same size as your diffuse. For example Specular can be 1/2 or 1/4 of the size of my Diffuse so making it 512 or 256 greatly saves space over a span of 75,000 assets per game.I simply have to do trial and error to see if the object looks the same at lower resolution maps.

Time Limit

Simple, I have time limits and I better get it done on time even if you have to cut things out or make some textures simplistic. The time is a test to see how you handle optimization and short ends under a deadline as well as what you are capable of with less time than you normally will have. I am sure you notice things in games where something looks awesome but then some areas or objects look less detailed. Sometimes time takes a toll on quality. I just make good decisions on the main areas.

I plan to make posts relating to my own experience with each Art Test I took and I plan to go in depth on the challenges and the hardest part of each test per entry. So if you think this will be something you are interested in, keep checking back for updates. Until then, I am off to go wreak havoc on Diablo II: Lord of Destruction in dueling games–oh does anyone have 43+ Life Cold Skill Grand Charms on USWest Non-Ladder for trade?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 1:47 am and is filed under Art, Breaking In, INSPIRATION, RESOURCES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.