I’ve recently come across a post asking how builders build so well. I listed how I always build, and I saw some good replies. What I’m requesting is:
Anything will help. Please make your replies consist of the five listed points above. Thank you.
vibrantkoffing
I find the best colour scheme for assets and maps by playing around with colours in a build. It’s common for me to try out at least three colour combinations just to be sure that the one I picked fits in with what I’m trying to achieve for the player’s experience.
Here’s an example of what I tend to do:
Executing plans takes a lot of thought, time, research, and practice to get right. Here’s a thread where I wanted to achieve a rather simple goal, and the steps I took to achieve it.
If I’m understanding what you’re asking here - “what method is most effective for building”…This comes down to preferences in work flow, which usually come down to practicing and finding what suites you best. I personally rely on my 3 and 4 mouse buttons (the extra ones some mouses have) to do more common actions like Undo and use the plugin Studio build Suite for all my in-Studio work. Once I got my preferred workflow set, I really don’t like to deviate haha. If you’re still finding yours, try different hot keys, plugins, or other tools to see if they help you do your work faster.
Folders. I use CamelCaseWithTwoNumbersOnTheEndLike01 because it’s easy to read and I like to number my iterations/versions of assets. I know some devs prefer Using_Underscores_With_Two_Numbers01 which is totally valid as well. And name everything. Nothing is worse than an Explorer with a thousand assets named “Model” haha.
This kind of ties into #2, but I see why you separated it. A well thought out layout starts with a plan of course. A conversation with the team as to what the goals are, a greybox, a play test, etc just to see if it fits in with the game. As for style, I try out a variety of styles and communicate with my team as to what they like the most, or what fits the most in with the game.
1. Finding Color Scheme
Color choice isn’t something that comes easy to me. I think I know what I like when I see it, but I’m no good at plucking schemes from among the limitless variations to match a theme or mood. I find it helpful to see way more examples than I have patience to generate. A site like Adobe Color can be very helpful in that respect.
https://color.adobe.com/explore
When I’ve used this, I’ll start on the “Explore” tab and enter things in the search bar to find images that match what I’m after. The search can handle concrete terms like “snow” or “sunny landscape” and also abstract ones like “happy” or “agony”. If you click an image, it takes you to a palette page. On the right there is a menu, and the bottom option is “Create Using Theme”. From there you can adjust individual colors to taste. The “Create” section is also useful for selecting colors from scratch using common color wheel schemes (there are a number of good sites that discuss how to use these schemes). When I find an image to run with I’ll note how they use the colors in the palette. Which is the main background color? What is the main accent? Which are they using for warmer or cooler portions of the image? etc.
After that, I’ll make a few color sketches to see how the scheme looks with my own scene/model, much like Aotrou suggested. Sometimes I’ll do that in 3D and sometimes 2D; it depends on how far along I am with the modeling. If you are testing in 3D, you also have the option to see how different lighting affects your color choices.
3. Effective Building Methods
Beyond Studio. the most useful building technique to learn would be box modeling. This versatile approach will apply to a huge number of mesh models you might want to create. Here’s a primer video. There are really too many others to cover in a short space. As you run into situations where box modeling isn’t helpful, do a search to see how others solved a similar problem and add that to your bag of tricks. Learning how to texture with UV unwrap is also a good skill to pick up right away.