The evolution of the 3D artist
Computer
games have been a very popular aspect of people’s lives for over 30 years,
and they have come a very long way. In this report I will be discussing
how the progression in the making of these games has affected the 3D
artist. I will use secondary and primary research from industry
professionals to explain how it has evolved and where it is going.
It all started with 2D games that date back to the 1950’s but they weren’t
popular until the late 1970’s with the creation of arcades and home
computer games were available to the public. 3D work was first implemented
into games in 1982 with 3D Monster Maze. The game itself was very simple
and involved you as the player in a maze, with one entrance and one exit.
Within the maze there was a dinosaur and you had to escape alive. It was
entirely programmed for the ZX81. The game was rendered using
‘low-resolution character block graphics’. This is a very primitive way of
design now but at the time it was ground breaking technology.
We have come a very long way since then, a prime example of how 3d art has
evolved within the games industry is the Tomb Raider series. Lara Croft,
the main character in Tomb raider 1 [1996] was built up of just 540
polygons. It was such a low count due to both software and
hardware limitations as at this point it was designed for the PS1 which
had 2MB of RAM and 32 bit processor. 10 years later as things
developed further Tomb raider: Legend [2006] the same character consisted
of 5000 polygons for the PS2, and later in Tomb raider: Underworld [2008]
only 2 years later had 32,816 polygons which was released for the PS3.
This broke a Guinness world record for ‘Most detailed video game
character’.
This progression was mostly because the hardware allowed them to
create much larger and more detailed elements as in comparison to the
PS1's 2MB the PS3 had 512MB of RAM. As time has progressed, so has the
technology. The release of the current generation of consoles and their
more advanced hardware has allowed artists to create far more detailed
models and assets. For example the Killzone series had a remarkable
difference in detailing between Killzone 3 [2011] on PS3 and Killzone:
Shadow Fall [2013] on PS4 as it had a huge difference between 10K and 40K
assets and
models.
Given these changes an artist needs to
keep their skills fresh and up to date. Geraldine
Cross who has over ten years experience in the industry and who currently
works in human resources within the games industry came and presented us
in a lecture. She confirmed that the quality of games has improved
dramatically over the past ten years as she claims ‘The quality of games now bears no
resemblance either to 10 years ago’.
Furthermore she recommends that 3d artists keep up to date themselves without
relying on their employers.
Stef Bow, a professional junior artist at Sports Interactive,
confirms that she makes an effort to follow industry and 3D news. She has
a subscription to 3D World Magazine, noting that ‘along with tutorials
and amazing examples of work, it has industry and tech news for working
in 3D - the software, the hardware, the techniques’ (Stef Bow, 2015). To
keep in touch with developments Stef keeps involved with the 3D
art community as a whole via various forums and Twitter. She confirms ‘My Twitter is really just a massive list of
industry related news’ (Stef Bow, 2015).
This allows
her to stay in contact with any changes or advancements within her sector of
the industry.
The current state of the industry is continuing to develop. The future of
the industry could go in many ways with all of the more
recent technological advancements with both hardware and software. An
example of this is the Oculus Rift. Stef’s colleague Andrew Willmott
claims that the next big change in the games industry will involve
headset-based VR (Stef Bow, 2015). For artists this also means that there
could be massive change in how we model in terms of 3D sculpting. Future
replacements for zBrush will let the 3D artist interact with
"real" 3D objects using VR technology.
This means that the future of 3D modelling may indeed lie within these headsets,
interacting in real life to create digital models. This in combination
with hardware would allow for extremely photorealistic detail and
structure. Research suggests that Virtual Reality is going to be the way
of the future. A new start up called ‘Leonar3Do’ is a brand new piece of
ground breaking technology. It allows you to manipulate 3D objects as if they were right in front of you.
It all started with 2D games that date back to the 1950’s but they weren’t popular until the late 1970’s with the creation of arcades and home computer games were available to the public. 3D work was first implemented into games in 1982 with 3D Monster Maze. The game itself was very simple and involved you as the player in a maze, with one entrance and one exit. Within the maze there was a dinosaur and you had to escape alive. It was entirely programmed for the ZX81. The game was rendered using ‘low-resolution character block graphics’. This is a very primitive way of design now but at the time it was ground breaking technology.
We have come a very long way since then, a prime example of how 3d art has evolved within the games industry is the Tomb Raider series. Lara Croft, the main character in Tomb raider 1 [1996] was built up of just 540 polygons. It was such a low count due to both software and hardware limitations as at this point it was designed for the PS1 which had 2MB of RAM and 32 bit processor. 10 years later as things developed further Tomb raider: Legend [2006] the same character consisted of 5000 polygons for the PS2, and later in Tomb raider: Underworld [2008] only 2 years later had 32,816 polygons which was released for the PS3. This broke a Guinness world record for ‘Most detailed video game character’.
This progression was mostly because the hardware allowed them to create much larger and more detailed elements as in comparison to the PS1's 2MB the PS3 had 512MB of RAM. As time has progressed, so has the technology. The release of the current generation of consoles and their more advanced hardware has allowed artists to create far more detailed models and assets. For example the Killzone series had a remarkable difference in detailing between Killzone 3 [2011] on PS3 and Killzone: Shadow Fall [2013] on PS4 as it had a huge difference between 10K and 40K assets and
models.
Given these changes an artist needs to keep their skills fresh and up to date. Geraldine Cross who has over ten years experience in the industry and who currently works in human resources within the games industry came and presented us in a lecture. She confirmed that the quality of games has improved dramatically over the past ten years as she claims ‘The quality of games now bears no resemblance either to 10 years ago’. Furthermore she recommends that 3d artists keep up to date themselves without relying on their employers.
Stef Bow, a professional junior artist at Sports Interactive, confirms that she makes an effort to follow industry and 3D news. She has a subscription to 3D World Magazine, noting that ‘along with tutorials and amazing examples of work, it has industry and tech news for working in 3D - the software, the hardware, the techniques’ (Stef Bow, 2015). To keep in touch with developments Stef keeps involved with the 3D art community as a whole via various forums and Twitter. She confirms ‘My Twitter is really just a massive list of industry related news’ (Stef Bow, 2015). This allows her to stay in contact with any changes or advancements within her sector of the industry.
The current state of the industry is continuing to develop. The future of the industry could go in many ways with all of the more recent technological advancements with both hardware and software. An example of this is the Oculus Rift. Stef’s colleague Andrew Willmott claims that the next big change in the games industry will involve headset-based VR (Stef Bow, 2015). For artists this also means that there could be massive change in how we model in terms of 3D sculpting. Future replacements for zBrush will let the 3D artist interact with "real" 3D objects using VR technology.
This means that the future of 3D modelling may indeed lie within these headsets, interacting in real life to create digital models. This in combination with hardware would allow for extremely photorealistic detail and structure. Research suggests that Virtual Reality is going to be the way of the future. A new start up called ‘Leonar3Do’ is a brand new piece of ground breaking technology. It allows you to manipulate 3D objects as if they were right in front of you.
All in all we have come a very long way since the origins of 3D art. In
reflection to my research the future definitely lies within Virtual Reality in
terms of both games, art and design. From both general research and from
speaking to industry professionals the extremely rapid pace that 3D art is
evolving leads to hard evidence implying that the future truly does lie within
Virtual Reality. With big names like Sony with their Project Morpheus backing
the Virtual Reality campaign in due time 3D artists might well be using these
headsets to create their designs.
Even the software we currently use is constantly updating. So even if VR
doesn’t take off then artists will still need to adapt to these changes. Stef
says that even though she thinks her job won’t change dramatically she will
still have to learn new iterations of software or even new software entirely (Stef
Bow, 2015). For example Mudbox and Maya, 2
of the biggest 3D software packages release a new version every year. Meaning
that developers are constantly having to adapt to these changes.
Bibliography
References
Appendix
Stef Bow – 13/2/15
Hi Stephen,
Here goes:
- Dependent on the stage of the production, what kind of hour do you put
into working per week?
The norm is 8 hour days. Sometimes I will do more - closer to deadlines I
will do more .Maybe working until 8pm or 9pm? (Or, personally, I prefer to go to work
earlier)
So generally the average is a 45 hour week, which goes up towards final
deadlines ("crunch") maybe to 50/55 hrs or more?
- Aside from being a 3D artist, what other roles do you have if any
within the team?
- What would you say is the next leap forwards in graphics technology
that would make a huge difference to your work?
His thinking is that the headset-based VR (think Occulus Rift and Microsoft and
Sony are also pushing in to this area) is going to be massive because of the
improvements and the sense of real virtual presence. For artists this means
that there could be massive change in how we model in terms of 3D sculpting.
Like zBrush does now, but we will be interacting with "real" 3D
objects using the VR technology.
He tells me he knows someone at Occulus who is working on such a sculpting application.
It sounds like it will be awesome as it would be the VR version of working with
real clay.
- How many early versions / variants do you make before someone selects
the version to take to completion? Obviously there is concepts first, but do
you have multiple 3D iterations before you get started?
I hope that
answers your questions. Feel free to send me more if you have anything else you
want to ask or you would like me to elaborate on something.
Stef
Stef Bow –
17/2/15
I really like Geraldine. I was at a workshop with her recently. I'm sure
she must have had some great stuff to say to you!
- What do you do to keep your skills fresh within your work? i.e changes
or advancements in the software and learning new skills?
- As the industry is continuously developing, where and what do you see
yourself doing / working on within the next 5 years?
I don't see my job changing dramatically - I will still be working in and
creating in 3D. I will have to adapt to new iterations of software and learn to
use entirely new software maybe. Of course, if I were to move to a different
studio I'd have to learn a new workflow and various other bits of software such
as a game engine that I've never used before - depending on what they use.
Here goes:
His thinking is that the headset-based VR (think Occulus Rift and Microsoft and Sony are also pushing in to this area) is going to be massive because of the improvements and the sense of real virtual presence. For artists this means that there could be massive change in how we model in terms of 3D sculpting. Like zBrush does now, but we will be interacting with "real" 3D objects using the VR technology.
He tells me he knows someone at Occulus who is working on such a sculpting application. It sounds like it will be awesome as it would be the VR version of working with real clay.
Stef
Stef Bow – 17/2/15
I don't see my job changing dramatically - I will still be working in and creating in 3D. I will have to adapt to new iterations of software and learn to use entirely new software maybe. Of course, if I were to move to a different studio I'd have to learn a new workflow and various other bits of software such as a game engine that I've never used before - depending on what they use.
