3D GAME ASSET

3D GAME ASSETS PRODUCTION PIPELINE IN THIS PROJECT

The 3D art pipeline that we used working on this project consisted of blockout, high-poly sculpt, retopology, texturing, assembling the scene, and a final polishing pass to make our 3D assets look better.

Blocking

To test the general concept and viewpoint of a scene or a 3D asset, we first design a rudimentary model. The geometry and rough outlines are fairly basic at this point, hence the blockout. This is a crucial initial stage of creating a 3D model that helps to get an overall view of the scene/asset, establish its size and proportions. At this point, precision is not necessary. It’s up to you, although you might utilize some very basic lighting to get a sense of how everything will fit together. Here, we determine whether our 3D asset is prepared to move on to the Sculpting stage of the pipeline. ‍

Sculpting in ZBrush

The next crucial step in our 3D workflow is sculpting. At this point, we basically used ZBrush to simulate clay by transforming and manipulating the various components of our blockout asset. The end result of this procedure is to duplicate the 3D asset with the necessary level of similarity to its real-life analog, assuming that there is one at all. Working with the stylized or even sci-fi-themed assets, we refer to the concept art to cross-check the forms and details of the final sculpture. Our 3D studio can still provide a full sculpt for environment objects and props if needed.

Texturing

After the retopology and UV-unwrapping is done, and we get an optimized 3D asset, we can move forward to the last step – adding some colors and textures to the surface of the 3D asset that is already optimized by this stage. This process is essentially texturing. There are several software packages for texturing, but we have been using Substance Painter for making textures.

Assembling our 3D scene in Blender

After all the 3D elements were prepared, we used pre-made models in Blender to quickly integrate them into the final composition and render the scene to provide a number of high-resolution 2D samples. This resulted in a way more engaging atmosphere that you can see on the images above. At the same time, all of the models created by our 3D studio are already well-optimized and available for usage right away by developers in game engines.

A final stage in Photoshop

Once the 2D images were exported, we used Photoshop to make a final polishing pass and add a little more shading to our scene. After exporting the 2D files, we utilized Photoshop to give our scene one last polishing pass and add a little more shading. There quality level of 3D assets these days is quite excellent even in relatively basic mobile games, therefore, we can’t let it go without refining the final image a little more to create an outstanding visuals as the outcome. As you can see, our 3D studio sticks to quality as a fundamental cornerstone throughout the entire process of creating 3D assets.