Sep
09

How long does it take to build and texture a model? 1 Week? 1 month?

Asked of me on Game-artists forums a few weeks ago (it seems to have gone kaput).

How long does it take to build and texture a model? 1 Week? 1 month?

Some models take a long time, some don’t. Some come together quickly, and others are a struggle to get right.

The time taken depends on the models importance in the game, and I don’t think I have ever worked on a game where you sat down, built and textured a model in a few days and had it be final. Most of the time your model will have to be altered (for artistic, animation or technial reasons), and in almost all cases you’ll need to have the assets approved, often by several people. You always revisit to adjust and polish geometry (often for deformation), texture maps, shader values, rigging, skinning.

I could build a game ready 5k model then unwrap it, texture it with diffuse, specular and normal maps, then rig its body and face in a week. If I was building it by reusing and changing a head from one model, a torso from another, legs from another I could probably construct two a week. These would be good enough to go into a game, but would still require more work - but spending a month on a model isn’t necessarily the best option. Spending 4 weeks on it would be a better use of time.

But 4 weeks and a month are the same thing, are they not?

Spending a month on one asset is quite boring. How about spending a block of 2 weeks on it, then another week a few months later adjusting it, then a few months later going back for a week of polishing? That’s a much more likely scenario - and in my opinion it’s also a more effective method that a solid 30 days non-stop.

Technorati Tags: ,

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Games Industry, News. 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.

2 Responses to “How long does it take to build and texture a model? 1 Week? 1 month?”

  1. David Marsh Says:
    September 10th, 2007 at 6:49 pm

    This thought strikes a chord with me as I work on the art for my indie game. I was thinking about how my experience on previous game projects has given me the expertise and tools to quickly create assets that look good and do the job in a very short amount of time (40-60 hours for entire environments, around 10 hours for characters and other misc game items). This is staple of the development process for the game I am creating - and is not an accident but rather a planned-for occurrence. The art direction for the game is low-poly and cartoony colorful. I believe it’s going to work, and I think it’s a choice of direction that is becoming more distinct in this era of zbrushed high budget art asset games. On games I used to work on only a few years ago, I would be given a month to create an entire environment - one person! Now one month of one-man hours is laughable by todays standards of AAA game development for an environment. It’s a trend that eventually is not going to be able to support itself.

  2. Rick Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 7:46 am

    Something that people often forget is that you ARE working in a team - so that asset that is going to take 4 weeks probably won’t be worked on you for 4 weeks. Some of the changes might come from the rigger or animator. They might be making the adjustments.

    In these situations the model might end up being worked on non-stop for 4 weeks, but not by a single person.

    One person might spend a week building the model, one person might spend a week texturing it, and a third person spends a week rigging it.

Thoughts on this?