I was wondering if the artists that are currently working for games companies could give us newbies a rough idea on how long your actually given to concept / model & texture a character, ready to be passed onto the animator or what have you?
Obviously the time is going to be relevant to the project and character somewhat - but are there any rough guidelines ?? [?]
Okay Thanks JI - youve prompted me to change the question a bit [:)]
Hop on over to the exhibition page, check out the model i done there, what would the turn around time for him be ? 3000 tri, 1024x1024 texture sheet ?
So far i think i would have spent about 25 honest hours on him - and i havent even started painting yet - im just a bit paranoid cos i keep hearing / seeing times that seem inhumanly possibly to me.
then again, my infinite newbie wisdom tells me they probably knock a few hours off here and there to cherry it up a bit. [;)]
ok, well straight off the bat, in a perfect world disregarding all other factors, a margin for those specs would be somewhere around 1 to 2 days modelling, half a day to a full day unwrapping, and 1 to 2 days texturing.
*edit: just a note, standard day = 8 hours... give or take lunch/breaks/play tests/etc
but, like I say, that's in a perfect world. Is it a key character? Spend a day more on polishing. Is it to go into the next build to show to the publisher coming up very shortly? knock off a full day or two. In the end you're getting payed to do what you're told to. If that means a finished character in 2 days turn around, you're going to have it done by then. It may mean a few cheap hacks, and some liberties taken, but you're being paid to be creative on demand, and supply when needed. Most of the time it's iterative production, so you're going to do extra passes to redo stuff and improve upon it.
Depends on the complexity and design of the concept, is it a realistic 12 limbed insect queen with photoreal textures and a normal map or is it a cel shaded ball with eyes?
For arguments sake lets say its some sort of bipedal FPS type model with semi realistic textures.
I'd spend between 2-4 days on that breakdown you gave:
1-1.5 day modelling
1/2-1 day uvmapping/rigging (depending on complexity of the rig)
1-2 days on texture (again depending on complexity)
then of course all the fixes/polishes that happen along the project cycle would obviously increase that timeframe just like JI said.
Generally you should aim for a decent speed that doesn't come at a price of quality and your leads should know this and be setting realistic timeframes, if not then to some degree its on there heads if its a bad model.
I beleive its better to take the time out first and get the model as spot on as possible, that way it lessens the amount of time it gets retouched by the artists.
I don't know what your level of ability is but in my opinion its better to get the quality of your work up to scratch before worring about speed, that will come with experience.
this is a question I was trying to ask a lot myself before I got a job, and all to no avail except some very general "it depends"; which honestly, it really does. It's a very hard question to answer with so many things affecting it. In an effort to get this answered satisfactorily, can I ask you to re-pose your question with a specific example. Eg, "how long is the expected turn around on a x poly, y texture size, z platform character". From that we can give you a little bit better answer, but unfortunately there's still a myriad of different affecting things which change peoples time constraint expectations.
Hope that all makes sense, and I hope you can get this answered satisfactorily