Hi all. I've been working on a human character and I've started wondering what a good time is for the production of a character from start to finish (model, texture and rig). For those working in the games industry, how quickly are you expected to complete a character?
Thanks
Hey Turkey,
Weve had anywhere from 2 days right through to 4 working weeks to model / uvw map / build high poly / normal map / texture / rig full characters.
I wont speculate on the times ive heard from studios, but taking into account each model needs to be iterated upon and is in various stages of development I would guess somewhat the same amount of time or even longer.
How long is a peice of string? [:P]
Guess its all relative... what quality you're after, texture resolution, amount of bones, complexity of rig, complexity of normalmap, complexity of materials (ambient occlusoin, specular, HDR IBL map, height?), availability of modeling tools (like Polyboost to speed up work), speed of studio tools (is a ragdoll a nightmare to setup?).... etc!
In "the industry" you're given these specifics with a deadline depending on what is required for that particular model. You simply cannot put a "this is how long it takes" blanket answer on it.
Apologies if this gets a bit long winded, but I'll try and give you some solid answers. I'll give a high and low range that I'll usually work at, so should be a fairly good ballpark figure range for what's acceptable/expected in "the industry". Note these ranges I don't rig or animate or set up engine exports for these, just character and creature model/tex.
low end asset budget:
1000 - 2000 tri's
1 512x512 diffuse
= ~10-12 hour turn around, so assume 1 1/2 standard working days.
high end asset budget:
6000-10000 tri's
1 2048x2048 diffuse
1 2048x2048 spec
1 2048x2048 normal
high poly normal source mesh (usually don't go over 2million tri's since low level details are fine to bump in with zbrush)
= ~45-60 hours -- depending on the complexity can keep you occupied for a whole standard work week or two.
These ranges are still ballpark figures and completely reliant on specs, revisions, and technical complexity, but should be a good average ground. An example here is material complexity -- texturing a 'next gen' character with 3 basic texture passes can be done in a day, but a character with 5 or 6 passes is a 2-3 day turn around plus any revisionary passes; simply because there's diffuse, rgb specular, gloss, translucency, glow, and normal map detailing. It's quite surprising how much extra work it is to balance out every map against one extra map pass.
Last thing I'll say is usually you don't get the luxury of defining your own deadline since you're working to the project schedule. As an artist you need to figure out how best to manage that time and employ time saving techniques to keep a comparable high quality. That comes with experiance, so don't sweat it if you don't feel up to it yet! good luck! [:)]
edit: simplified my examples to make a bit more sense and made them more generic so you can gauge it better.
C'mon, I know there's plenty of those in the industry here. How about an answer? [:)]