SFAM - Questionaire

[Stefan_Morrell]

cons..real world got in the way & I couldnt start,let alone finish an entry,still havent had a chance to look through all the entries either

pro..environments...viva la environment art!
promoting use of game engines is also great to see,if its a game model then it stands to reason the final output should be a screenshot from a game engine
the theme was also very wide open,it'll be hard to come up with future themes that have the same scope.

[PixelMasher]

didnt participate, too busy at work with GDC shenanigans, but peeping on the various entries was super enjoyable. here are some of my general thoughts:

pros:

Environments environments environments! awesome to see another enviro challenge so soon after unearthly, for a few years now its seemed like character art comps are dime a dozen but nothing for environment artists, which right now is one of the quicker ways into the industry by becoming a jr. prop or environment artist. contests like these can be great for anyone recruiting.

the realtime requirement. If you want to make games the format you should be producing your work in should be engine friendly, and having a basic knowledge of this technical side of things will almost always give you a leg up over the competition. With the increased workload this current generation of games require, needing less training off the bat is a huge advantage.

Cons:

the technical requirements, especially texture usage. overall size is not really indicative of realistic game production restrictions. I agree with what others have said about having an overall memory footprint for textures and letting people choose where to put their resources. with engines like UE3 its great to be able to have a single RGB texture that contains a dirt/grime map in each channel.

side note: having artists share a Zip of their source files could be a great way for the community to learn and benefit from each other. this was something I thought was awesome of Peris to do when he won the unearthly. I guess its up to the individual though.

wicked work from everyone who took part, Im sure everyone learned a ton and from the sounds of it, some really great teamwork took place. cheers all.

[wolfsage]

The two best things about this competition;
The fantastic subject idea, there's so much scope within movies for people to choose something that suits their personal style and interest.

Environment... have to agree with everyone else on this.
Oh and team work!


The two worst things about this competition

Again I agree with what other people have said about texture and final submission image sizes. Although I imagine having all textures placed on a single sheet makes it easier to judge.

Personally I was at a huge disadvantage due to hardware inadequacies, my antiquated laptop can’t even manage to display Normal maps in Maya's view port. Unreal3 is out of the question. This meant I could only do anything in my spear time at work.

Any thoughts that you want to share. (about the competition duration, size of the project, being able to work in a team, etc )

Overall I think this was a grate competition and the standard of finished pieces is high.
It made me decide once and for all that I needed to update my hardware! (new computer on its way )
It presented a great opportunity to learn new skills.

[Jaiza]

Pros: Getting me motivated again!
Movie themed was an excellent idea, removed the need to design and plan a scene and gave us the ability to dive straight into the creation.
Was enjoyable to learn some new workflows and gain feedback from all the members.
Working in teams was great, good for motivation and learning from one another.


Cons: The texture requiements were fairly limiting and not based entirely on real game workflows, the size was good but being forced to include our dirt maps in the diffuse really ate up alot of space that usually would be in another channel or alpha.

I understand the rules tried to be simplistic but there was so much not covered or clear, and to get answers for even a few things i had to read through like 30 pages of Q&A. Although response time from the mods to reply was rather remarkable.



Great competition, lets do more!

[Talon]

Originally Posted by Pankake

In my case, my teammate was really busy and didn't have much time to dedicate to the project, so I took the brunt of the work, that week extention was a godsend for me.

I'm sorry! Forgive me!

[Xoliul]

Cool that you are doing a questionaire afterwards, include that in my pro's!

other pro's: Well like everybod says, that this was an environment compo and not characters, which is what Game-artisans and Polycount are too much about in my opinion.
I also really liked the open theme, definitely a good choice guys.
Deadline extension was also super, I think you got more and more polished entries because of this.
Realtime engine use: I fully support this, it's all about realtime when you do game-art, and it's even kind of a personal mission of mine to spread this message further!

cons:
I've said it before and others have also mentioned it, but the texture usage limitations were not really realisticly described by separating you texture usage and so. Giving either a total resolution (eg 16kx8k) limit or a total memory limit (like 180mb uncompressed) would've been a lot better. Definitely do this next time, guys!

thoughts:
too bad we didn't finish, but i guess our scene was too grand. It happens so much that I run into the barrier of just too much goddamn work for my spare time. I don't want to list size/scope of an entry as a con, but for me it kind of was a con. Also must say it's kind of demotivating to see others seemingly not have this problem at all, but i guess that's my own issue.
Looking back now, at the amount of time I already put in this compo, I would've been able to finish an entry at the scope/size of my 2 previous favorite themes (post-apocalyps vehicle and armada). I never finished those back then because school got in the way in so many ways, but now that that's kind of over, it's very possible for me to finish such entries on my own even.
hah, I'm already thinking, "Vehicle from a Movie"...

[Pankake]

Originally Posted by Talon

I'm sorry! Forgive me!

To be forgiven, you have to grant me one favour, you're not allowed to ask what it is, and it can be anything I want..


..Anything

[Coridium]

Pros:
Well ran, thought out and with very active moderators that seem to care about peoples art, there time and there effort. The fact that it is environment based, as there is lots of character comps but not enough environment ones. The theme was good as it gave a wide selection but not too wide also allowed for a lot of variation in entrys.

Cons: I think that prop images should be allowed in the submission, as long as they where taken at final texture rez and polycount, as I think that a good texture is one that looks good on the final model, with normal, spec etc working in harmony, lol, not just on a flat image.
Only allowing two images ment that alot of peoples work was lost. You could argue that is the persons fault for the views they decided on but in certain environments would have been impossible to see all the work people put in. If this was an ingame environment assets at rez would need to hold up if the player walked up to them, not just from 2 fixed views, so including the props would show that people had thought about a texture space and usage not just gave big textures to the assets in the forground and small textures to assets in the background of the views for example.

Thoughts:
I can understand what people are saying about texture space, etc. My only problem with texture space is that it is completely dependant on what type of game you are making, scale of environment being made, the platform you are working on, design of your technology. For example, I would imagine the size of textures used on assets in Gears of war and the size of textures used on assets in something like GTA4 would be very different as GTA4 you can drive anywhere at anytime, so you have to have more of the world streamed it at one time, making the texture overheads higher and the technology very different. I personally thought that the budget too generous but I guess that depends what platform you are targeting and what tech you would be using.

Just wanted to say:
I thank all of the moderators for all there hard work getting this comp up and running also for all the time they took out there own schedule to keep it running smoothly. Nice work!!!

Sorry for the book reply.

[Abeaver]

Anything I would have to say has been said many times over by now. But I'll say it any way.
2 Pros: That the competition was an environment from a movie, Being a huge movie buff I couldn't resist this competition. There is so many movies out there that your choices are endless.

Another pro would be the use of any program or engine. I didn't get the chance to use a game engine, so I used Maya.

Con: Again with the sizing of the final entry.

And I would also like to say Thank You to the Moderators for creating this forum. It's one of the best out there, at least in my opinion, which is why I use it. And Thanx for your quick feedback and help. As well thanx to everyone that gave constructive criticism and feedback to not only me but the whole community. I'll definitely be back for the next competition

[Talon]

Originally Posted by Pankake

To be forgiven, you have to grant me one favour, you're not allowed to ask what it is, and it can be anything I want..


..Anything

No way dude, I'm still sore from last time I agreed to that.