Help me understand assets.

Post by DaffyDux on 2022-05-23 19:30:35

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Post by Ludullu on 2022-05-23 19:52:37

From my understanding you're correct and that is the exact reason why mmos are such big and difficult games to develop. They take a ton of time even outside the sheer amount of design you gotta go through to make them interesting. And you listed just the armor assets. There's a whole world (if not several) of other assets the game needs.

And as Narc said in his video on monthly streams - Intrepid really have to push the idea of each sellable cosmetic as one of the assets that they need for the game.

Post by Tyranthraxus on 2022-05-24 01:47:11

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Post by Azherae on 2022-05-24 02:00:11

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While everything you say is true, the specifics of how a given piece is defined, particularly as a mesh, shouldn't be viewed as 'an asset'. The various tools available now mean that the process is moreso based around finding a base that will deform correctly when applied to another model, applying, and fixing things that don't look right.

Tweaking animations to prevent clipping and strange deforms is a lot more work than asset creation in the way you may be thinking of.

I'm not the artist/modeler in my group so I'll leave it to her to expand further if it matters, since beyond this sort of thing, I have to ask her for feasibility of certain designs anyway. But based on what we know, and what other games generally spend their time on, it's obviously still a lot of work, but it might not make sense to perceive it as a staggering amount, or even a particularly large bulk of work compared to some other things.

I won't even attempt to address other assets, as those are really up to the amount of depth in the shapes required, but the streams have art sections that show off the systems for those as well. In general, I've seen full scenes done in about 24 man-hours, and full armor done in 8-10 from scratch, 2-3 from mesh to original.

Someone will be along to correct me if I have misquoted the numbers.

Post by GrandSerpent on 2022-05-24 16:36:27

We have not received permission from DaffyDux to share the quoted post.

While everything you say is true, the specifics of how a given piece is defined, particularly as a mesh, shouldn't be viewed as 'an asset'. The various tools available now mean that the process is moreso based around finding a base that will deform correctly when applied to another model, applying, and fixing things that don't look right.

Tweaking animations to prevent clipping and strange deforms is a lot more work than asset creation in the way you may be thinking of.

I'm not the artist/modeler in my group so I'll leave it to her to expand further if it matters, since beyond this sort of thing, I have to ask her for feasibility of certain designs anyway. But based on what we know, and what other games generally spend their time on, it's obviously still a lot of work, but it might not make sense to perceive it as a staggering amount, or even a particularly large bulk of work compared to some other things.

I won't even attempt to address other assets, as those are really up to the amount of depth in the shapes required, but the streams have art sections that show off the systems for those as well. In general, I've seen full scenes done in about 24 man-hours, and full armor done in 8-10 from scratch, 2-3 from mesh to original.

Someone will be along to correct me if I have misquoted the numbers.

Yes, this is all more or less correct. If character models have relatively similar overall proportions, armor created for one race can be deformed to fit another without the artist needing to do anything beyond tweaking the asset to prevent clipping or visible distortion due to differences in proportions.

All the pieces of a single set of armor would also probably be designed and modeled at once, then split up into separate files. So, it's probably more accurate to think of a full set of armor, rather than a gear piece like "Mithril Boots" or "Leather Tunic", as an asset.

So, while producing the quantity of content needed for equipment in an MMO is still a massive amount of work, it's not necessary as much as it might initially appear. In AAA game development, the work is also usually split up between multiple people. Concept art, modelling, material design, and processing the asset into something usable in-game might all be done by different people, or teams of people.