I’m trying to get a sense for how much its going to cost to get environmental art done. Obviously different people have different rates, so I’m trying to get a rough sense for how long it would take artists to produce the environments not how much it costs.
Quality target is AA toony. Something like Genshin Impact.
So for example, if you needed to populate a mid-scale cave level in the above style: cave walls, floors, stalactites, a handful of props, detail stuff like some glowing mushrooms, etc.
What kind of ballpark time would this take?
Roughly:
a dozen walls/floors
a dozen cave details (mushrooms, stalactites, crystals, etc)
a dozen props
Are there any things that are surprisingly time consuming to watch out for or does effort level generally line up what a non artist would expect based just on level of detail?
Hello, artist that does hand painted models here.
As long as there is a clear goal (If a concept art is provided), it is generally pretty fast. (Like 3 to 6 days for 1 full environment mesh without UV & Texture, and another week for the whole UV & hand painted texture.)
Hand painting the diffuse texture will take time and iteration to make it look good.
But if it requires the whole Normal/Metallic/Roughness set, it will require sculpting and procedural texturing, which will take even longer. (This will take months)
Assets in most games, including Genshin Impact are mostly modular pieces.
This helps in re-usability, saves time, and indirectly helps in a more uniform texel density.
So roughly, it will be 1 to 2 weeks in total for 1 environment set. (Both modeling, and hand painting the texture) depending on the complexity.
Figuring out what to model, how to split them, and what works great/synergize together for the whole set is what takes most time.
So if you have a good concept art at hand, this will save a lot of the problem for the 3d artist.
I want to stress the point about concept art. With the quality target that you have, you can’t just order a bunch of assets to be made and expect them to fit together in the end - they likely won’t. You need a lead artist that has an overview of every single visual thing in your game - including UI and particle effects - while having deep understanding of how the game works and the hierarchy of information that needs to be communicated, and can orchestrate it all together into one cohesive whole. Ideally while also keeping marketing artworks in mind and making sure you get good mileage out of every asset that you commission. Concept art, is one tool that is used to communicate a shared vision between different people. But if you just look for “a concept artist”, there is no guarantuee they have the experience/skills to take on the responsibility of directing the big picture and giving your game a recognizable visual identity, creating a brand.
