Question for devs - graphics (semi ot)

We create all of our art in house with our art teams. When we cannot keep up with demand we go to 3rd party contractors. Quality art is worth paying for.

If you want to learn 3D, learn either Maya or 3D Studio Max. They are pretty much industry standards right now.

Whatever you do, don't steal from Google Image Search or Wikipedia. It's just tacky, and could get you sued.

 

If you're only looking to learn modeling, Silo is a very competent package. I would advice against Blender, no matter what the open source fanatics tell you

 

Some developers have an art guy, or artists. Some hire contractors. Some meet on forums/IRC and decide to work together. Some (including myself) actually do art themselves.

It's rarer to find developers that do their own art. I've been coding games professionally for nearly a decade, and one of my personal goals has been to start doing my own art and audio. Smiles' art and sound have been highly praised, so as a coder gone artist, I'm thrilled.

 

Yea, we have our own artist doing our stuff... there are a selected set of talented people that can do art and programming but it's most likely to only exist in a small 1 or 2 person company just because you won't have the TIME to do both if you want to be running a full time company.

If you want to start learning some modeling I highly recommend anim8or. It's a free *BASIC* modeling and animation program that is VERY easy to use and does have a lot of nice features, not as many as blender or 3dsm or so, but most of those you won't be using anyway.

 

My brother is our in-house artist (and sound guy), he's been creating graphics for commercial games almost as long as I've been coding them, so we only need to go external when we're doing a *lot* of art content in a game (and then we have Freeverse's small but very talented art team to call on).

I'd add Cinema 4D to the list of 3D packages. Not as pricey as Maya, but almost all the same features and used in both games and film.

 

I do all my own art and code. Most small developers stick to 2d graphics since 3d games usually require more art resources.

 

I do my own art and audio but I'm more of an artist/musician gone dev than the other way around. I haven't released any 3D stuff on the iPhone yet but I would encourage you to learn Blender - despite the nay sayers!

I was a long time Cinema 4D user (and still recommend it) but after going from full-time artist to most-time developer I couldn't justify the update costs and started using Blender. Admittedly, it's not always the easiest thing to get the hang of UI wise but it can handle game assets with little trouble.

For pure low-poly modelling you should check out Wings 3D. It's kinda ugly in the UI department but it's a highly functional modeller and relatively easy to use - and it's free.

 

I'm currently working as an artist for iPhone games (MotionX) so I'll pitch in.

I think with the appstore being such a small developer centric marketplace there will be a lot of opportunities for freelance artists, as many of these companies don't have the resources to hire a fulltime artist, or with short development cycles, having an artist relocate to work on a game isn't efficient.

If your working freelance it may not matter what 3D package your using, as you may be exporting all 3D work to some common format for transport anyways (such as .OBJ or .3DS). These formats are pretty standard and most 3D packages will export.

For me personally, I'm a big proponent of 3D Studio Max, as its what I learned first and I find it to be a great program. When I was hired to work at MotionX they only had a license for Maya and I barely knew it, but I learned fast (I made this after only a few months of rare Maya useage ). Although Maya feels backwards and awkward to me, it was simply easier to use because I was already familair with 3D Studio Max and many features in 3D apps are similar.

If I was going to recommend learning one of the two big ones, id suggest Maya, Its Windows and OSX unlike the windows only 3DS Max and seems to be slightly more widely used, despite the fact that I sometimes want to punch it. Maya PLE is a free demo version of Maya that has many of the features of the final product and is a great way to learn.

Blender is free (it is isnt it?) but most likely any large company that my want to hire you already has a lisence for Maya or 3D Studio MAX and wont be interested in someone who knows Blender. If your working on your own and sending OBJ files through email, use whatever works for you. Having Blender for free is way better than buying Maya for thousands of dollars.

Biggest tip. Learn Photoshop. Its way easier than any 3D program and youll use it for everything. I do 99% of the art for MotionX Poker in photoshop. Even a 3D game requires tons of 2D art and it takes way longer than the 3D stuff.

 

Yep. Blender is a tougher application to start with, but it's nearly as powerful as the expensive higher end packages. iPhone games are low budget, especially us nobody developers. So if you are looking to target yourself to iPhone work, knowing your way around Blender, and having an impressive portfolio there would make you an excellent contract work candidate.

 

I wouldn't (and I'm not an open source fanatic). It's got lots of features, works great, loads almost instantly, and doesn't crash, unlike Maya and Max. I guess it's "hard to use" at first, but so are nearly all 3D apps. Some of the rendering stuff is pretty obscure, but for game modeling you can just ignore all that anyway.

--Eric

 

Exactly. Perfectly usable complete modeling package.

We used it as part of a console game pitched a couple years back. The in house artist had to learn the package, but it didn't take them long to start producing usable assets. At the time I wrote a custom export plugin, but I imagine Collada support is usable these days.

I've been keeping a Softimage XSI license (and dongle) around just in case, but it's soooo nice not to have to deal with the silly license server software. Well worth the week it takes to get them up to speed.

 

We think we pushed MS paint to its limits as you may see in our hand drawn artworks

 

I worked together with a friend of mine on the graphics for my latest app ([website] and for the actual website itself as well, and it was a huge help since I could focus on the product instead. All my other apps have been 100% me, though.

 

Hi nickels

I've spent a long time as an games artist/animator, and I can only re-iterate what others have said here.

Learn Maya or Max. Simple as that - you'll cover all your bases.

Blender, it's free and actually has some great features: But you won't find it in 99% of game studios (not the ones that pay well anyway).

XSI, brilliant software and will always have a place in my heart, but again it has a fairly limited footprint compared to Max & Maya - this may change now Autodesk have bought Softimage, but change can be a slow process. The interface is also a lot to take in for anyone new to 3D.

If this is your first foray into 3D, I'd strongly recommend Max.

If you're forced to learn on a Mac, then Maya is the only one of the two with Mac support (although not as stable as the PC counterpart). Alternatively, Cinema4D may get you faster progress if you're thinking of working with other Mac developers "here and now".

Be warned, 3D is a many disciplined area. Just be sure to learn it rather than click all the easy-to-reach buttons. Knowledge pays dividends.

 

luckily for me i was doing web design full time for a few years (and did video production, post production) and then did graphic design professionally (like working for a real co. lol) for @6 years after that and always kept up on web and flash, flex actionscript etc and when iphone came out i actually got into real programming.. so i guess i am lucky i can not only do graphics, but do them well. what sucks is there is only so much time in the day. and sometimes i cant do all the graphics, which is hard to hand off to someone else to do when you feel like you could do them 1000x better yourself, but just dont have the time.

as far as blender, ive been messing with it lately but havent gotten too deep.. everytime i started getting into 3d stuff in the past i just got over it, but now i am kind of forced to learn it because i am working on 3d games.

i will tell you 3d design is an art, just like graphic design, and programming, and even more specifically game programming. you cant expect to be an allstar at everything.. eventho thats my personal goal

ps. blender seems to have a slightly higher learning curve compared to max or maya.