Model creation time

#1 1) Thats a loaded question, with to many answers. It depends on the complexity of the model.

2) See above.

3) Yes, but its best not to, be prepared for a long line of headaches if you choose that route.

#2 Hi Evan,

It all depends on your skills, your tools, and how comfortable you are using those tools. I can make a verrry simple 4-room building with textures and lighting and then export it out to Torque within 15 minutes using Cartography Shop. Complicated structures, texturing and lighting will require more work and some testing, iterating, etc.

Animated characters are a whole 'nother ballgame though. Assuming you are skilled at character modeling, texturing, rigging and animating, the only new twist to the process is exporting out to Torque and making sure everything came through ok. Again, depending on how simple or complex things are, you can expect to see varying differences in time investment/frustration levels. At least that's been my (admittedly limited) experience so far.

I've heard of people using Max and/or other programs to build their .DIFs, but my guess is that it will never work as well as a true .MAP or .DIF constructor.

[Edit: Oops. Allyn beat me to it.]

#3 Evan, all I can do is tell you how long it took me to complete my first character for torque - from build to rigged and running in torque approximately 40 hours.

Ice Age Hunter

That was a model with around 1500 tris and two texture maps but with a handful of animations.

Hope that helps give you an idea.

#4 Thank you guys!


So I guess is not a good idea to create interiors in MAX. Which program do you suggest for
creating directly .map and .dif? I only know about DeleD but I haven't play with it! Cartography Shop
is good?

As for the models I have heard various times one is A MONTH for model like the one James made
with maybe more detail (not much) on the body but much less in the face!

And for a building they told about 1 - 2 WEEKS (it has only 1 room) and it looks like a mushroom
It has a base and a column which ends on the house which is just a room.

Sorry I don't have photos but I don't have them in a website to show them. Is there any other way?

I just want to know if they are over reacting about it. My opinion is that it to long for an
person with adequate experience with the tools... What is your opinion?

Thanks again guys

#5 DeleD is great. Use that for Difs until Constructor hits.

As above it really depends on experience + complexity + effort = Time.
But err... A building which is just one Room? I mean seriously thats like an hour or 2 with nice details.

#6 It depends on the artist, their experience with the tools, the details necessary. Say, doing a grungy one-oom bathroom ala the Silent Hill movie or in the style of Trainspotting's worst bathroom in Scotland, would be a major texture undertaking, whereas a traditional living room with consistent wallpaper/paint and hardwood floors would be much easier. It also depends on how much time was taken per day on it and whether they had to spend a huge amount of time taking reference textures, photoshop manipulation, normal mapping the environment, etc...

#7 MY guess on the first would be texturing, though it is difficult to see specular maps, bump maps, etc at that detail. The model itself is simple enough that someone in Silo could make in relative short order (or anyone who is experienced with their modeling application). I created a replica of the base in a few minutes in a brush modeling package. The stairs would require more work (or getting into Quark and generating the brushes quickly). The higher up, the longer it would take simply because of the level of detail. But nothing too exciting, I would think. And this is coming from someone who is not an artist. I just sat down and played for a few minutes.

The second one should not have taken a month unless they were tweaking rigging. As a model, it could be done in hours using the GameSpace tutorial on creating and rigging an elf model for Quake 3. And that is learning the GameSpace interface as well. Now, making a high quality model, texturing it so that it animates without screwing up a UV map and such does take time, but the modeling time for these should be rather limited. Tweaking and texturing, normal mapping, bump and specular mapping, etc will require the majority of the time needed. Plus, it also depends on what they were creating their models for, though from the level of detail, I would say real-time rendering was in-mind.

I like the first concept, though. It reminds me of one of the art concepts I was working on, though it was over a large lava field (shamelessly stolen from Todd Picken's environment pack) with a couple of towers to move between.

It is really hard to critique someone else's artwork on time and screenshots, though. Just because I feel I could do something similar more quickly does not mean that they are not doing quality work. They may (and most likely are) doing a million tweaking things that I am not since I'm a prototyper.

EDIT:
Note that I am absolutely horrible at biped models and animation.

#8 I can talk only for myself, and only for the character: I would estimate about a week and maybe half other if you need a lot of special animations. That for modelling, rigging, animating and texturing with a base skin this toon model, which I think could be done with about 2000 triangles. And exported to dts and dsq files, ready to be used as a player model inside TGE. You can see some examples at my site:

http://www.gustavom.com

#9 Had an hour to kill before going to the inlaws for Thanksgiving:

Removed at Evans Request

In all fairness, what I did here is pretty darn sloppy, but I think if I had another hour or two to kill, wouldn't be a problem.

#10 Nice! That's pretty much what I did on the base when I was thinking. I didn't do the whole thing, though!

#11 @Evan,

Yeah, in no way am I trying to disparage anothers work. I think the models up further in the post are great, it's the time frame that I wonder about. The texturing is probably the big time eater, and like I mentioned before, my quick work has pretty generic texturing. To UV map a model like that (as opposed to a BSP type construction) would take a bit of time.

Regarding my experience as a modeler...well, I work at an office supply store in the technology department and before we began Code Name: Monster Island twenty two months ago, the only thing I'd ever done was modded half-life levels so me and my kids could play Action-HalfLife on our home network.

It's all about how hard you want to work at it.

#12 The time frame is what bothers me also! By posting the artwork I wanted to get an idea of
the needed time. What you see is what our modeler had also. The only information is that the game is for
online use.

I have no idea about modeling but my role is to organise the different teams. So I need to know if someone
is doing the things that he is paid to do. As you said Alan is how hard you work on it.

What would be the maximum time for theese 2 models (character and building)?
Is it 1 month for the character and 2 weeks for the building? From what you all told me I don't think so.

James made his first character in 40 hours. I am thinking that if I start know take a book of MAX, I could
make the model in less than 1 month if I dedicated 8 hours per day as supposly the modeler does
(he is paid a great deal of money for our budget).

So do you think that theese times are overrated if you take in mind the nature of the model as shown
above?

Please tell me if you agree.

Thanks a lot all of you

PS: Alan you saw the model that was made. I have to tell you that I like yours better. One question though
If used the player can go inside?

#13 @Evan,

The building would take me one day. eight hours to get it exactly how I would want it. That would be as a bsp based model -- a dif (not dts). As a dts object (which I *don't* prefer to a dif for buildings) it would take for that design anywhere from sixteen to twenty-four hours of straight work. (And this is probably long for a professional, but the texture/UV mapping is definitely not my forte').

Biped character modeling is not something that I have had any experience at, so I will defer the answer on that to others ( I believe my son will be chiming in on that, he is doing biped work in Silo so he should give some numbers on that for you).

And yes, the character could go inside, the one I made above is not rotated to align with the stairs at the moment, but that modification would take five minutes and the spiral stairway would be climbable.

Again, I hope a few others with more practical experience (i.e., those who do it for a living) would also give you a little input. I would get multiple opionions before forming a conclusion. Hopefully that helps.

#14 I'll jump back in to simply expand a little on my contribution here :)

I would say 40hours on a "hero" model is pretty reasonable. Some models due to the level of detail (normal maps, etc)or specific challenges in anatomy may take it higher. I know in my first go around I was learning about how to build joints effectively, applying weights to the geometry for the bones (rigging) and even mucking about with how to make a decent texture map.

I had to redo things on more than one occasion because of my inexperience. So I estimate I lost anywhere from 6 to 8 hours there.

Still. I figure I would spend around 40 hours regardless but much of that time would be in building a better looking model, with better rigging (facial animation perhaps?) and other refinements.

Would I ever get it down to a half that time? Hmmm. I'll let you know when I do :)

#15 Hello, I am affiliated with Alan James because we are on the same dev team, but mostly by blood.

Anyways, I tried taking a whack at the girl model, and this is what I ended up with after 3 hours...

However, I am not using 3DStudio Max. I am using a program called Silo, and have been using it for about a week and I have to say I love it, and am a fanboy.

On another note, I do not have textures for it but can pretty easily rig up some animations.

-Kyle James

#16 Guys thank you a lot!!1

You all have been a great help!!!

Alan, James, Aaron, "Mr Bloodworth", Kyle, Gustavo, David and Thak ....

THANK YOU