Arbiter - Monthly Recap - May 2024
Greetings Gaymers! 🏳🌈🏳🌈
While this is technically my recap for May, it's also technically June at the time of writing, and I think we all know what that means...
The Production of Assets
I spent most of the month working on more architectural assets like stairs, walls, etc. Not the funnest stuff to work on but I'm liking how it's shaping up. I finished the moon gates from last month and moved onto some broken walls and crystal posts for the surrounding area.
Afterwards I made some stone stairs and other pieces of broken wall/brick to help fill things out. Simple assets like these really aren't that complicated once you've got the textures finished, but the process does tend to get a bit tedious the more you make.
My current plan is to make "clean" versions of these assets first, then go back and make some damaged variants to spice things up. Afterwards I'll likely add some vertex painting and set dressing to help break up the more repetitive areas.
Ramping Up
While I'm feeling good about building up the asset library, I'm still not going quite as fast as I'd like. I've been spending a little over a year on the environments now, and while I'm proud of where things are going, I've started to really notice the cracks in my process that are wasting the most time.
There's a weird contradiction I've had when it comes to character art vs environmental art. From the outset, my process with character art has always started with getting detailed concept art commissioned from the get-go. For some reason I just... never respected environmental art in the same way—but I sure as shit do now!
So, to help make my life a whole lot easier I've decided to commission a bunch of environmental art, both for this level and all future levels. I did get some art commissioned for this level last year, but it wasn't enough to cover the breadth of assets I'll need to finish it. This time I'm gonna cover everything from cliffs, to foliage, to props, to more temple assets, to overall palettes and tones—the whole gamut. I think I'm at the point now where I can make the game look good, but I need a little more "creative certainty" (read: an actual skilled artist) to help remove a lot of the guesswork.
I see it kinda like running a race. With a concept artist, I can clearly see where the finish line is based on how close the in-game art matches the concept art. But without a concept artist, I kinda just keep running until I "feel" like I've finished, if that makes sense. The catch is that I'm running this race while also learning how to run, like I'm playing QWOP or some shit. What ends up happening is that I just never stop iterating, which results in stuff like spending 2 months making cliffs (still mad about this btw).
I've instead decided to brutally murder that part of myself and finalize those details beforehand, removing the guesswork entirely. I think the reason it's taken me so long to get here is partly my own personal pride, but frankly it also just wasn't something I could afford before. Now that I have a much better understanding of how environmental art works (and a little more financial freedom to play with) I think it's a good time to start doing things properly.
Look At This Graph
Another thing I'm doing to help speed things up is learning Substance Designer! For those that don't know, Designer is essentially a node-based program for creating seamless textures procedurally. It's a very different process from stuff like Zbrush/Painter, but it allows for much faster iteration and reusability once you figure it out. It's also super modular and non-destructive, so it's gonna allow me to get a lot of variety out of my textures that I just wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
There's a bit of a learning curve to it (more of a 90-degree wall actually), but the time it'll save in the long run is definitely worth it. I'm also following some courses on the side to help get me there faster, but all in all I feel pretty comfortable with everything so far. Hopefully this time next month I'll have something to show for it!
Doing Things Right
Anyways, that wraps things up for this month! June's looking like more asset production, concept art direction, and designer adventures, but overall I feel pretty good with where we're at! It feels nice getting the ball rolling on some faster workflows—like I'm finally starting to do things "properly." All of these little lessons make me wish I dove into environmental art way sooner, but I guess it's better late than never!
Thanks for your support as always and happy pride month everyone! 🥳
Cheers,
Jordy