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I'm not in the industry at all, but I've followed it for a long time and done a good deal of random game dev. The biggest pain point is how much it costs to pr

by daeken 16y ago

I'm not in the industry at all, but I've followed it for a long time and done a good deal of random game dev. The biggest pain point is how much it costs to produce a large world these days. As it stands, this is not a technical problem, but a business one: artists are expensive and art for modern games is insanely detailed. Procedural generation is, IMO, the way to go here, but it's an unsolved problem. I've been thinking about this for a long time and I've had two specific ideas in mind for how to ease the cost of content development. Please, steal these! Idea one is for the creation of individual assets. You start with what is, in effect, a block of clay. You (programmatically) cut away at it, apply materials to it (which could, in turn, do things like cut a wood grain into it), add on to it, etc. So let's say you want to build a sign generator for shops in your town. You'd start with a block of clay roughly the size of your sign, cut it into the (2d) shape you want, emboss the logo into it, then apply a wood material to the sign, and paint the raised areas. This allows you to quickly create unique assets in your world. Idea two is for the high-level creation of a world. You have an editor where you can create a landscape. You start by setting the size of the area, drag points up and down to affect terrain, etc -- all stuff that's been done before. The key, though, is in world brushes. For instance, you select a 'forest' brush. This brush, when painted onto an area, creates trees, rocks, bushes, etc as appropriate based on elevation, angle of the ground, etc. So you paint part of your area with a forest brush, then go in and paint in a river, paint in paths, etc. Once you've created the high level look, you can go in and add features like signs to cities, unique quest/story-related assets, etc. This allows you to create large areas with completely unique geometry very quickly and cheaply, without sacrificing quality; after all, you're starting off with unique objects and then adding specific touches. The latter idea has been implemented to a certain extent in the past, but it's been entirely via instanced geometry. The problem there? Everything looks the same. Procedural generation lets you get a unique world, then you can go in and actually make it feel real.

LiraNuna 16y ago
You bring good points, but you forget one things - artists love control. Take that away from them and they cry like babies who lost their candy. Procedural art is really cool if you can think about your asset as a programmer - but you need to remember artists do not think like us. If you are willing to replace your artists with tech artists though, that's a different story (note: normally those people are rare, and stay in one field programming shaders). "The problem there? Everything looks the same." -- Yes, that's exactly the desired consequence by artists, and as mentioned, will cry if their flexibility is revoked by tools they are not familiar with (in house model/texture generators). While you as a programmer think of a texture of "noise and color", artists think about it as brush strokes, materials and emotions.
- wladimir 16y ago
  Procedural generation doesn't automatically mean that the artist has no control. There will still be inputs guiding the generated content. Artists will still have the final say as to what will get into the game. You have to make the GUI artist-friendly though, inputting some numbers and hitting a button won't do. The tree generation company (SpeedTree) is actually a good example. Their program is very easy to work with even for artists and you can generate a large scala of realistic-looking trees. Also, with procedural generation you can achieve a more varied look. For example: If artists have to design every tree, you get a few specimens that you place everywhere. With automatic generation, every tree can be different,
  - LiraNuna 16y ago
    "Procedural generation doesn't automatically mean that the artist has no control" - It means they have less control, and they always bitch and moan about that.
    - wladimir 16y ago
      Sure, some people will always bitch and moan about change. But look at it positively: it allows them to do more impressive things in less time. If they can make a good-looking forest in a day instead of three months, it means they can do more interesting things then hand-design trees.
vilya 16y ago
Your first idea is exactly what Autodesk's Mudbox does. I can't speak for the games industry but it's a reasonably successful product in the VFX industry. See http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=13565063&siteID=123112 http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=13565063&#3... for more details. The second idea is also already being done by software like Terragen from Planetside Software: http://www.planetside.co.uk/ http://www.planetside.co.uk/ I don't know how widely used this is; I have the impression lots of game companies build similar tools in-house, tailored to their particular games.

by daeken 16y ago

LiraNuna 16y ago

You bring good points, but you forget one things - artists love control. Take that away from them and they cry like babies who lost their candy. Procedural art is really cool if you can think about your asset as a programmer - but you need to remember artists do not think like us. If you are willing to replace your artists with tech artists though, that's a different story (note: normally those people are rare, and stay in one field programming shaders). "The problem there? Everything looks the same." -- Yes, that's exactly the desired consequence by artists, and as mentioned, will cry if their flexibility is revoked by tools they are not familiar with (in house model/texture generators). While you as a programmer think of a texture of "noise and color", artists think about it as brush strokes, materials and emotions.

wladimir 16y ago
Procedural generation doesn't automatically mean that the artist has no control. There will still be inputs guiding the generated content. Artists will still have the final say as to what will get into the game. You have to make the GUI artist-friendly though, inputting some numbers and hitting a button won't do. The tree generation company (SpeedTree) is actually a good example. Their program is very easy to work with even for artists and you can generate a large scala of realistic-looking trees. Also, with procedural generation you can achieve a more varied look. For example: If artists have to design every tree, you get a few specimens that you place everywhere. With automatic generation, every tree can be different,
- LiraNuna 16y ago
  "Procedural generation doesn't automatically mean that the artist has no control" - It means they have less control, and they always bitch and moan about that.
  - wladimir 16y ago
    Sure, some people will always bitch and moan about change. But look at it positively: it allows them to do more impressive things in less time. If they can make a good-looking forest in a day instead of three months, it means they can do more interesting things then hand-design trees.

vilya 16y ago

Your first idea is exactly what Autodesk's Mudbox does. I can't speak for the games industry but it's a reasonably successful product in the VFX industry. See http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=13565063&siteID=123112 http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=13565063&#3... for more details. The second idea is also already being done by software like Terragen from Planetside Software: http://www.planetside.co.uk/ http://www.planetside.co.uk/ I don't know how widely used this is; I have the impression lots of game companies build similar tools in-house, tailored to their particular games.