"Video Games Are Too Expensive To Make!"

[Cerebralbore101]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Cerebralbore101 said:

Taking a 3D model from something around the PS3/Switch level and improving it to the 4K PC/XB1X level easily takes four times as long. And that's with a talented 3D modeler, texture artist, and animator. 3D assets are art and nobody becomes a Corradini over night. Just like learning to paint or draw takes years of practice, learning to make good 3D assets takes years of practice. Especially with organic models. 

Well, those get already made for the PC market, so the extra cost is nil, but it would be partially true if that wasn't the case. Partially, because the 3D models don't change much anymore these days unless you add some tesselation. To save in texels what's normally done nowadays is a reduction in vegetation, not model quality, as these need a lot more triangles to calculate than the character models now. The animation gets transplanted 1:1, so if you have it on one model you can reuse it on the other models as well, limiting the extra time by a lot. The textures however would be true... if those had more RAM to fit higher resolution or otherwise better textures. It's partially true for the XBox ONE, but the Pro just can't afford these.

We were talking about Nintendo games though, so those assets don't exist for PC. But yeah, if the game is already on PC, then it's just a matter of using the already existing PC assets for a 4K version on consoles. Could you elaborate on the bolded? I didn't realize that 4k was so advanced that saving texels was required. But what's this about cutting down on vegetation? The animation gets planted 1:1, but rigging the model can be a bigger hassle the more complicated the model is. And as we both know, without rigging no animation will work.