RE: Content

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@3DProgrammer.com>]

> 	Although I agree that many of the most popular and
> expensive software
> packages are not a pleasure to use, they do avail the work suitably for
> a trained and talented artist. Looking for motion capture and other
> automation is part of that renaissance programmer problem; clearly there
> is need for assistance but you look to the machine.

Dude, I'm looking to the dollars!  I said "cheap, perfect" for a reason.
Artists cost money.  I'm a good artist.  If I had the time and the tools, I
could do all the art.  But the time that the current 3D tools take is
prohibitive.  So, if you've got $X0,000 to pay the artist to work with the
godawful 3D tools, fine.  I don't.  And even if I did, I wouldn't want to.
The dangers of production-heavy game development are all too clear to me.
Skyrocketing budgets, pointless gameplay, no customers and no profit.

My interim strategy is to do what some of the titles in the games industry
are starting to do.  Like Max Payne for instance.  Screw the 3D prerendered
cutscenes.  Use 2D artwork and text as often as you can get away with it.
Worry about sound and voice first, where the tools are much more
straightforward, and you get a lot more bang for the production buck.

> 	Regarding freeware and volunteer projects: you infer that
> open source
> engines and amateur artists are not available to professional or
> commercial projects. A game built with the Genesis3D or Crystal Space
> engines can be commercial.

Sure it can.  But I downloaded and looked at those engines a year ago, and
they were dated then.  Even if they're better now, I don't believe they can
keep up.

> An amateur artist becomes a professional
> after you offer him or her a contract.

Right, with your pile of $$$$$$$.  Where did you get that pile of $$$$$$$?
Either from a publisher, or you made it yourself.  If from a publisher, then
you're stuck in the publisher's sucker game.  If you made it yourself, then
I guarantee you that you don't have as much money to work with.  Unless
you're an ex-Microsoftie or something like that.

To make a comparision, going to film school is stupid nowadays.  It used to
be that film schools held a monopoloy on all the equipment you needed, so
you really had no choice.  That has all changed now.  Read some books, buy
some equipment, take a class here or there to cover some basics, then start
filming.  It's mostly about experience.  Unless you are intending to enter
the Hollywood film production system, with its big budgets, process heavy
movies, and throwing lotsa capital around, film school has nothing to offer
anyone anymore.  It's a business model decision, not a creative decision.

Don't believe me?  Go to the film section of your book store and look at all
the books by people who got their films made.  For cheap.  Sure, there are
various levels of hell you can go through depending on how many $$$$$$
you're playing with.  But people get it done, and that's the important
thing.  Nothing in life is easy.  It's not about whether you've cooperated
with enough people to make your life easier.  It's about getting it done,
with the resources you actually have.

Paying a whole lot of 3D artists to do high quality realistic models is the
road to hell.  Right now it's stupid.  Gamers don't even like those
cutscenes!  You know who likes them?  Publishers and retailers.  Why?
Because they're stupid.  Because they don't actually make anything.

When high quality 3D art is actually easy to do, things will change.
Meanwhile, we should be focusing on the art media that are actually easy
enough to do.  Case in point: South Park.  Zero production values.  A
Macromedia wunderkind.

> And cooperation has much, if not everything, to do with humility.

Cooperation has to do with Life Being Hard.


Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.