Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Intro and bump

Discussion in 'Made With Unity' started by myksanders, Jul 30, 2008.

  1. myksanders

    myksanders

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2008
    Posts:
    3
    Hello Fellow Unity users!

    My first post here, so please be gentle if i step over some boundaries. I'd like to introduce myself, and get an idea of how useful an idea I have is.

    I'm Myk Sanders, a 3d artist with a fair bit of experience, and my company, Ascension Games, has recently selected Unity3d as the weapon of choice.

    We made some fairly significant leaps to use unity, ones that anyone who wants to use it will make, leaping to the Apple platform cost a nice chunk of change.

    Anyways, one of the things I see on forums that Ive visited is requests for models, but I seldomly find the selection of models out there overwhelming, I've seen some good models on turbo-squid, but they often come at a cost that a bit out of the indy-budget, (some are like $80- $200 range) and I think thats a shame.

    My team and I, being 3d artists, think we'd like to help our indy comrades, and create art that people can drop into engines like unity, but we'd rather do interesting models, rather than scifi soldier #3010.

    So we did.

    Im also interested in the types of things indys would like to see in models? I ask because I want to hear what characters or archtypes you think would be good? Our goal is to try to keep our art low cost, and high quality, so let us know what you think!

    I suppose some screenshots are in order, here are some works in progress, at our blog, and our products page. We hope to have the models viewable in the unity player once we've added some functionality to our scenes.





    and heres the link to our website

    http://ascensiongames.com/

    and visit

    http://ascensiongames.com/blog For more previews of the models we'd like to offer.

    Thanks for taking the time to read, and if this sort of thing isnt strictly allowed, I apologize in advance.
     
  2. Alec

    Alec

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2008
    Posts:
    1,330
    very nice! Zbrush?
     
  3. Krise

    Krise

    Joined:
    Oct 11, 2007
    Posts:
    80
    Hey mate, this looks great, and I like your site. Just thought I would warn you that there is no native build of Zbrush for the mac yet, :) so be careful if the whole team is switching :)
     
  4. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

    Joined:
    Apr 30, 2006
    Posts:
    5,434
    Nice models and welcome to Unity. Just a few thoughts:

    First, I think this topic might have been better located in the "Collaboration" section.

    Second, to answer your question: based on the artists portfolios that I receive and the models that are available out there, it seems that what most 3D artists want to build are characters. The problem with that IMHO is that a character is really the single most important visual element of a game and if someone else uses your character in their game (and I know about it) I'm not likely to want to use the same model in my game. So I think character models are better off as a "custom job".

    The other thing it seems that most 3D artists want to build are stylized elements (futuristic, historical, etc.) which really only fit in one type or style of game.

    What we don't see enough of, again IMHO, are well made, real-to-life game models of every day items or scenes. Even better would be completed elements (a bookcase with books in it, a garage with junk, tools etc. in it, and so forth). I needed a brief case for a scene once (easy enough to model, but I thought I'd look to see if someone might have done something nicer than I can do) and all the models I found were either super high poly or very low quality. If I found a nice low poly brief case, with texture, bump and specular maps ready for under $40 I would have bought it.

    Just my 2 cents...
     
  5. jeffcraighead

    jeffcraighead

    Joined:
    Nov 15, 2006
    Posts:
    740
    I agree with bigkahuna, I'm in need of environment items far more than characters, simply because working on my own I don't have time to build out a nice robust environment, I have to focus on my core characters and coding.
     
  6. myksanders

    myksanders

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2008
    Posts:
    3
    Thanks for the feedback thus far,

    Alec, Krise:

    Yes, this is done in zbrush, and Im fully aware of its status as a non-mac application. Im a long time mac user myself, so OS X for development isn't too much a stretch. We moved several of our artists and developers to iMac, and I use Parallels to run zBrush and 3ds Max. Seems to work ok. If I really need directx support, I use bootcamp.

    bigkahuna, jeffcraighead:

    I agree with most of whats been said here to a certain extent. I think Game art in general is custom job from the ground up. Outside of contracting for your specific needs, I think getting something that fits the bill is fairly hard to do. That said, I thank you for sharing your thoughts. Outside of brief cases, book cases... what sort of things do you need for your projects?

    I've considered contracting myself out, doing custom work, but I cant do that and keep it low cost, so this seems like a necessary stop-gap.

    I tend to mostly character art, but being a part of a small team I tend to do alot of everything. Environments are a part of that as well, just not the part that I find myself being good at yet. :D
     
  7. bigkahuna

    bigkahuna

    Joined:
    Apr 30, 2006
    Posts:
    5,434
    Just some thoughts (and I'm sure others here will have even better ideas than I):

    If you're going to do characters, how about doing standard, everyday people doing simple things like walking, standing, running, or cheering? There's never too many nicely modeled real people out there and you can use them in a number of ways in all sorts of games and sims. Another possibility is wildlife. Deer, chipmunks, birds, lions, tigers and bears modeled and animated.

    I remember seeing someplace (maybe here) a while back that somebody was selling complete street scenes, complete with buildings, graffiti, trash, streetlights, etc. etc. At the time I thought it was an excellent idea, and can be easily be adapted to an FPS, sim, racing or other genre.
     
  8. Charles Hinshaw

    Charles Hinshaw

    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2008
    Posts:
    1,070
    I agree with bigkahuna. I would think that regular people, pre-rigged, UV'd (with basic textures as a template) and multiple levels of detail would be potentially valuable for developers. Throw in a couple default animations and give some props that are configured for easy parenting and that could be a money maker.

    The best would be to create the kind of people that you meet, like, and forget instantly -- human props, if you will. Since you are effectively creating stock assets.
     
  9. HiggyB

    HiggyB

    Unity Product Evangelist

    Joined:
    Dec 8, 2006
    Posts:
    6,183
    Including Unity t-shirts! :D


    @myksanders: welcome to the forums, look around, hang out, get to know folks...
     
  10. Alec

    Alec

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2008
    Posts:
    1,330
    your really trying to sell (at tom) sneaky....
     
  11. myksanders

    myksanders

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2008
    Posts:
    3
    Thanks for the warm welcome :!:

    I'm assuming you guys have already seen sites like this:

    http://www.lowpolygon3d.com/CCP6/index.php?app=ccp0&ns=catshow&ref=3D+model+people+animate

    Granted this a bit old, but this is almost precisely what you're looking for?

    Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong angle, but I thought the marketplace was flooded with these sorts of models. I do completely agree that characters are unique enough to warrant a custom job however.

    The kick is this: you'd be paying contract rates and the cost would be significantly higher, what would have cost you a couple bucks could cost you several hundred dollars.

    I think regardless of what we'd end up doing, we'd provide templates, textures, full rigging, source files, source textures, animations and everything.