Game Asset Workflows

I’ve being bumping around for the past few months, trying to figure out a reliable way of going about making game assets.
As of right now, I usually go for this approach

  • Base mesh
  • Unwrap
  • Add extra details on duplicate mesh while preserving UVs
  • Texturing
  • Copying the texture onto the lowpoly
  • Export

I’m certain that this isn’t the correct way :no:, and I was wondering if anyone could give feedback on how to get a better process.

Hi, can you be more specific bout “add extra details on duplicate”? Do you mean sculpt process or you are adding details just in terms of baking various maps onto base mesh?

For questions such as these, application-specific forums aren’t always the best place to get help. For instance, there’s Polycount, a forum dedicated to game art (with quite a few Blender users, incidentally). They also have a well-maintained wiki that will answer a lot of questions you might have:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polycount

As far optimal workflow, that depends entirely on what your goal is.
These days, the most used workflow (even sometimes for handpainted-looking stuff) is to start from a highpoly sculpt. That way you don’t need to worry about polycount or polyflow yet, those steps come later in the process. After you or your lead artist is happy with the sculpt, you then build the lowpoly around it (a process that’s referred to as retopology), unwrap it, and project the necessary texture-maps from the highpoly (this needs no UV’s) to the low detail mesh. Depending on whether you poly-painted your highpoly and what your style is, you most likely still need to take those baked maps and use them as the base for your final textures.

Hello there
Like Mighty Pea mentioned polycount is 1 of the best place’s for game art related questions and there is always plenty online resource’s.

My approach when it comes to game assets all depends on what that asset is and how i plan to use it within engine.
Your workflow might suit yourself (depending on what it is that you are doing)
(Your workflow)

  • Base mesh
  • Unwrap
  • Add extra details on duplicate mesh while preserving UVs
  • Texturing
  • Copying the texture onto the lowpoly
  • Export

Starting with a basemesh is always a good idea and when tackling enviroments i would always recommend blocking everything out, this will help alot with basic forms and visuals for a good sense of dimentions.
Unwrapping the base mesh if already planning on creating a highpoly mesh i would suggest isnt a good idea unless you are only creating a lowpoly or even midpoly and dont need a HP to bake down onto the base or if it is a simple basemesh and only need small details (maybe like text or grooves on a panel) then that detail could easly be added with photoshop.
The idea is to create the highpoly for the details and bake these details down onto a lower poly mesh for the normal map. This is why starting with a Highpoly and retopo it to get a lower poly mesh whilst still keeping that sillouette is a much better approach and then unwrapping the lowpoly.
Having the lowerpoly already unwrapped b4 you have even created the Highpoly will cause baking errors (depending on the asset ovcourse) as you will need to plan out what areas of the UV will need to be split into there own island, what parts will have certain smoothing and where seams will be less visable.
Once you got yourself a decent normal map baked out then it would be time to get texturing.

My workflow for example if i was creating say… a fps weapon for the source engine…

-I always start by doing research, looking online for as much reference as i can find and this also includes the texture refs that i plan to create and also similar original weaps and there polycounts that are already within the source engine, because it is a fps wep it will be highly details as the player will be seeing it upclose all the time… always do the research it will help give you a clearer idea of your end goal.
-Setting up the folders and directorys (keep things neat)
-Open up blender and get stuck into creating the highpoly
-Retopo to create the lowpoly
-UV the lowpoly
(Depending on the mesh) I may explode the highpoly and low for a cleaner bake also at this point i like to do afew normal map test bakes to search for errors
-Export the low into marmoset or even the game engine with flat mat colors (still looking at how the lowpoly will look with the normal applyed and any errors) keep in mind some engines and apps use different normal map swivels +y or -y etc , a list can be found on polycount at the bottom of this page http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Technical_Details
-Once i got that nice normal i would also bake out an AO map,ID map (for masking areas) and object space normal (some apps use this) then start texturing either in photoshop using Ddo or even take it into something like substance and paint directly onto the model.
-Once happy take afew beuty shots of the model and export into the engine…
-Sit back open a beer and test that badboy model out.