3D modeling was outsourced to foreign sweat shops on par with fiver. We had 3 artists on staff who's job it was to fix all the fuckups the foreign artists were doing. The foreign artists never hit target polycounts and always turned in work that was full of flaws like unwelded verts or being set up in the wrong scaling / wrong world orientation. Those artists spent most of their time creating entirely new low poly models and then baking the details of the high poly down onto that model to make it compliant with our metrics.
We had many people who were SJWs who got into games as a fall back when things like their fine arts degree didn't get them a job the way they were hoping. No doubt their foot in the door was some kind of nepotism.
There are times when I absolutely despair when I have my prejudices confirms and there are other times when it's hilarious and this is one of those moments where it's hilarious. That's worse than even I was thinking because I was under the impression they just lazily generate shit which I suppose is partly true
Is it safe to assume they don't even know about topology workflow as well? I went out of my way to learn about islands and pinching etc. so I knew why it was so necessary. I would love to have sneaky looks at the models and code these now trash studios put out regularly. They seem to be very much making their living off the legacy of the people who worked there before them.
What I wouldn't give to look at the code these retards are putting out, I'm going to have to see if there are possibilities of leaks by disgruntled employees but I don't think it's that bad yet for them.
Basically, the guys we had in house on staff were just focused on low poly and fixing bad topo.
Max, Maya, Zbrush and substance painter all made auto-magic re-topology tools. Whatever that shit out went through minimal editing before it was baked and considered good. Lots of broken "difficult" areas like bad topo around tits, bad topo around the corner of lips. Weird as hell lighting artifacts thanks to that.
You know how you'd have topo that is like /\ in the middle of a symmetrical line? If the retopo pass made it / / they'd not even bother to turn the triangles. Oh, giant 8 edge n-gon? Fuck it. It's flat. Surely the engine will get it right. Let's not solve that pre-emptively!
The dumbest topo tool is zbrush though. Smear red and blue to indicate where you need more texture density and hit the easy button. Others in the office didn't even know you could premark texture seams to make the tool at least a little more intelligent.
I first learned Maya back in the day when I was a little noob and didn't know a thing about 3D then I made the switch to Blender. I'm not surprised by the poor technique ( personally I know about good topology in relation to quads ) but what frequently surprises me is how studios are so stubbornly sticking with completely outdated software with their game dev.
It's as if the CEOs can't be bothered putting the money in to train their staff properly or overall they're just too lazy to make the switch even if it would really benefit them. I'm somebody who had to make the switch from Unity to Godot but it was worth it. Yet these morons even for new projects seem to refuse to learn new software and insist on sticking with their horrible buggy internal engines or whatever crap they've been using since almost 20 years ago.
As somebody who does take pride in my work, I simply can't process that level of laziness and incompetence because the only way you'd let any of this go on is if you're an arsehole that doesn't care about your own work.
Most people heading up studios had a backround in QA or production. So management has a familiarity and connection to the tools that are legacy. They can easily call bullshit when a hireling starts saying "Oh, my texture bake for a gun is going to occupy my computer for the next 8 hours. I'm going to leave it to cook, see you tomorrow boss!"
That's the big reason. Getting new tools for the staff would mean having to learn themselves.
Another thing is the "good enough, lets just get it done" mindset. That'd have a guy struggling and grunting to drive in some wood screws by hand because he doesn't want to climb through a messy garage to retrieve a powerdrill.
Speaking as an ex game industry worker.
3D modeling was outsourced to foreign sweat shops on par with fiver. We had 3 artists on staff who's job it was to fix all the fuckups the foreign artists were doing. The foreign artists never hit target polycounts and always turned in work that was full of flaws like unwelded verts or being set up in the wrong scaling / wrong world orientation. Those artists spent most of their time creating entirely new low poly models and then baking the details of the high poly down onto that model to make it compliant with our metrics.
We had many people who were SJWs who got into games as a fall back when things like their fine arts degree didn't get them a job the way they were hoping. No doubt their foot in the door was some kind of nepotism.
There are times when I absolutely despair when I have my prejudices confirms and there are other times when it's hilarious and this is one of those moments where it's hilarious. That's worse than even I was thinking because I was under the impression they just lazily generate shit which I suppose is partly true
Is it safe to assume they don't even know about topology workflow as well? I went out of my way to learn about islands and pinching etc. so I knew why it was so necessary. I would love to have sneaky looks at the models and code these now trash studios put out regularly. They seem to be very much making their living off the legacy of the people who worked there before them.
What I wouldn't give to look at the code these retards are putting out, I'm going to have to see if there are possibilities of leaks by disgruntled employees but I don't think it's that bad yet for them.
Basically, the guys we had in house on staff were just focused on low poly and fixing bad topo.
Max, Maya, Zbrush and substance painter all made auto-magic re-topology tools. Whatever that shit out went through minimal editing before it was baked and considered good. Lots of broken "difficult" areas like bad topo around tits, bad topo around the corner of lips. Weird as hell lighting artifacts thanks to that.
You know how you'd have topo that is like /\ in the middle of a symmetrical line? If the retopo pass made it / / they'd not even bother to turn the triangles. Oh, giant 8 edge n-gon? Fuck it. It's flat. Surely the engine will get it right. Let's not solve that pre-emptively!
The dumbest topo tool is zbrush though. Smear red and blue to indicate where you need more texture density and hit the easy button. Others in the office didn't even know you could premark texture seams to make the tool at least a little more intelligent.
I first learned Maya back in the day when I was a little noob and didn't know a thing about 3D then I made the switch to Blender. I'm not surprised by the poor technique ( personally I know about good topology in relation to quads ) but what frequently surprises me is how studios are so stubbornly sticking with completely outdated software with their game dev.
It's as if the CEOs can't be bothered putting the money in to train their staff properly or overall they're just too lazy to make the switch even if it would really benefit them. I'm somebody who had to make the switch from Unity to Godot but it was worth it. Yet these morons even for new projects seem to refuse to learn new software and insist on sticking with their horrible buggy internal engines or whatever crap they've been using since almost 20 years ago.
As somebody who does take pride in my work, I simply can't process that level of laziness and incompetence because the only way you'd let any of this go on is if you're an arsehole that doesn't care about your own work.
Most people heading up studios had a backround in QA or production. So management has a familiarity and connection to the tools that are legacy. They can easily call bullshit when a hireling starts saying "Oh, my texture bake for a gun is going to occupy my computer for the next 8 hours. I'm going to leave it to cook, see you tomorrow boss!"
That's the big reason. Getting new tools for the staff would mean having to learn themselves.
Another thing is the "good enough, lets just get it done" mindset. That'd have a guy struggling and grunting to drive in some wood screws by hand because he doesn't want to climb through a messy garage to retrieve a powerdrill.