How should i approach game asset design as a beginner? [closed]

Question

I have come back to blender after a long break, and now that 2.8 is here, I thought its a good time to get back into modelling. In the past i have worked on modelling simple objects and animation.

However i want to focus more on creating game assets. So... What is the best way to start? Im not sure if i should sculpt or model my assets, how many tris/vertices should i aim for. how can i optimize my object to be used in a game engine and what is the best way to texture my models? I was thinking of going for the texture painting approach. Do i need a third party software or is blender enough for everything?

Just need some ideas to get started. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

i personally prefer sculpting, as it allows you to focus purely on shape and worry about topology later. also, it's normal to do at least some sculpting as it allows you to make bump maps for your model. I prefer the multiresolution method to the dynamic topology.

I think that blender will be fine for texture painting, it has a lot of nice tools for it. here's a tip for it that I didn't know until recently. on your brush settings, there's two settings called spacing and jitter. spacing makes the brush add color in a dotted way(you'll understand what it does if you try it out) and jitter makes it more random. this can be used to make your textures look a lot less uniform, and it looks great! this can also be used for sculpting.

you should aim for low poly, but don't get too low! game engines can handle more than they could ten years ago, and having extreme low poly can lower the game graphics quality a ton.

If you're trying to make characters, a good front and side reference image is a must!

In order to optimize, just put the high level detail in a material versus the mesh.

one more useful tool if you want to sculpt. the mask tool is pretty obvious, but the amount of uses for it is very high. also, if you want to draw the mask quickly, draw out the area you don't want to be masked, and press ctrl+i to flip the mask.

I hope this is helpful, and please comment if you'd like more info.

Answer 2

That's quite a few questions and a bit more general than SE is meant for; but I'll tell you what I can.

Sculpting vs. box or face modeling really depends on the asset and what you're comfortable with.

Try and keep your vertices to a minimum necessary for the model, as every one is a tick against available resources on the client machine. You might also consider learning LOD, as you may end up using several different models (of leveled vertex count) for the in-game object depending on how far away from the camera it is.

Where texturing and optimization goes, it really depends on your game engine and isn't something I would worry about until you've profiled your game. Most of them do their own materials management and whatever you do in Blender you'll likely have to re-do there. They also accept a variety of formats, the most common being Filmbox and Collada; these notoriously differ in what they're capable of and how they do it, so bear it in mind.

And yes, Blender 2.8 is easily enough on its own; but you might get some use out of additional software. It's a little too vague to properly answer here.

I hope that helps. I'm still going to suggest that this question be closed, as it's a bit broad and relatively opinion-based.