TennoGen as a Non-Game Artist - Where to Begin?

[ShifuYaku]

Hi, everyone,

So I see a lot of posts and questions about TennoGen and how and where to start, and most of them talk about that you need to be a 3D artist and you can go learn Blender, Zbrush, Maya, etc, and you have to learn texturing and workflow.

But where should you start if you already know how to do all that, but not as a game artist? I don't quite understand PBR yet, and I'm attempting to grasp at it. I guess what I'm saying is, is it better to break into TennoGen with an alt helmet (where you have a base model to be built on and an idea for textures readily available to you) or a syandana (where you need to create completely from scratch)?

Ideas, thoughts, concerns, and criticisms welcome. 🙂 

[HitsuSan]

I don't quite understand how you know to do sculpting and 3d editing and painting but you don't know what it takes to make a 3d model for a game. Really all it takes is the right poly count limit, basic knowledge to how to bake high poly to low poly (with uv) to generate at least a normal map and then painting to make all the texture maps the game requires such as metal/roughness or spec/roughness, a black and white diffuse map, emissive for the lights and the tintmask which is quite unique to warframe.

Here you can find all the information you need about it :) https://www.warframe.com/steamworkshop/help/index.php?page=content-creator-art-style-guide

[ShifuYaku]

13 hours ago, HitsuSan said:

I don't quite understand how you know to do sculpting and 3d editing and painting but you don't know what it takes to make a 3d model for a game. Really all it takes is the right poly count limit, basic knowledge to how to bake high poly to low poly (with uv) to generate at least a normal map and then painting to make all the texture maps the game requires such as metal/roughness or spec/roughness, a black and white diffuse map, emissive for the lights and the tintmask which is quite unique to warframe.

Here you can find all the information you need about it 🙂https://www.warframe.com/steamworkshop/help/index.php?page=content-creator-art-style-guide

Thanks for the advice 🙂 I don't know how to do game art because I didn't study it; I studied film/TV modeling and texturing, which is a different pipeline experience, although not too different. I don't know how to make normal maps properly (but I'm learning) but I know they are kind of like bump maps. 

But what I'm asking is, should I start with an alternate helmet or a syandana? They would be two totally different experiences because with an alt. helmet, I could have a base texture and model to go off, and I'm thinking that's what I want to do. That way, I could see how the textures actually work in Photoshop (maybe?).

[HitsuSan]

10 hours ago, ShifuYaku said:

Thanks for the advice 🙂 I don't know how to do game art because I didn't study it; I studied film/TV modeling and texturing, which is a different pipeline experience, although not too different. I don't know how to make normal maps properly (but I'm learning) but I know they are kind of like bump maps. 

But what I'm asking is, should I start with an alternate helmet or a syandana? They would be two totally different experiences because with an alt. helmet, I could have a base texture and model to go off, and I'm thinking that's what I want to do. That way, I could see how the textures actually work in Photoshop (maybe?).

Ok so here's what you can do that you should be able to accomplish in a week or so to prepare to tackle an high quality game model.... do something simple and unrelated first, like a piece of wood, a rock or a battered metal decoration. Sculpt a high poly, make your low poly version with a budget limit ( even if Warframe allows helmets up to 8k you should start with something really low, like 1k polys because that's how you learn what a normal map can or cannot do), then learn how to generate an uv map for your low poly, then learn how you bake a normal map from high poly to low poly (yes, it's a bump map generated from the surface of an high poly model projected into a low poly uv space, this way your low poly + normal map is going to have the same details your high poly has, more or less, it's pretty simple once you get it). After all that you need to learn how to use Substance Painter or some other type of real time texture painting software to generate a diffuse map, a metallic or spec map and a roughness map.

It should be all pretty easy to grasp if you have previous 3d knowledge for any kind of other media and you don't have to think about design and requirements, and once you have this standard pipeline steps that are in common for any type of videogame asset in your pocket you can start looking into what's needed for Warframe specifically like the crazy art direction or the tintmask which is not a super easy concept to grasp on top of everything else but if you know the rest it won't be overwhelming at all etc etc

Helmet or syandana it's up to you btw, you can download examples for each one, they're in the guide i've linked you :)