Simplifying Efficient Workflows with Daniel Bystedt | Game Dev Unchained Episode 271

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon pham and with me a special guest daniel beast dead how are you doing well done right i'm doing good how are you doing man thanks for coming on yeah thanks um it's fun to um be invited i i've been listening to your podcast uh bits and so it's uh yeah fun to be invited sorry but i missed your first email by the way it kind of slipped by no worries it gets buried and ignored but that's why i do the follow-ups just to make sure uh well uh thank you for for for tuning in and uh thank you for coming on

uh this is actually the part of the podcast where i asked our guest which is yourself to introduce yourself to our listeners out there of who you are where you've been and where you're heading yeah so my name is daniel bystad and i am a character and creature artist from stockholm in sweden and yeah i've been working in vfx and doing game cinematics [Music] and working in 3d for uh over like 10 years now and um yeah i recently switched over to game development joined embark here in stockholm uh which is a new company from a bunch of uh started from a bunch of dice people um and yeah that's it i think that's more than that's it i mean uh if

anything uh you yourself have been making quite a impact i i think because of the whole blender community have been growing in the last couple years it's one of those like sleeper hits where you know blender used to be like a ah like something that we tease about in industry and then now it's like it's such a force of like uh of doing everything basically uh really well uh on top of that you know where you're at right now embark you guys are kind of known to kind of do very interesting things uh most notably how you guys are really dedicating a lot of time in r d um and sharing that information pretty openly uh so those two things are kind of like the topics of today that i want to kind of dive into because they kind of go hand in hand um just to kind of relate uh being an environment guy there was a period of my

time uh where there was like a dark period where i'm like opening like 10 programs at the same time to do one thing right and you know questioning myself what am i doing here because the danger of that is of course even though it's a very specialized programs to do a very like uv mapping or something a lot of these programs kind of die out like dinosaurs and your your dependency on them becomes uh an issue especially when you're moving from studio studio you're asking for these programs like what what is this does you need a usb thumbstick to to turn it on why why do you need this so i so it's a lot of it's a loaded question but do you find yourself in your industry is that part of the reason why you kind of really dug into the blender because it seems like it has everything done pretty well yeah it's funny actually because like the the reason uh i started with blender i'm coming from a

maya background in the beginning like started out with 3ds max first and then quickly realized oh there's much more maya tutorials out there it was like back in 2006 or seven when i started looking into 3d and um yeah so i worked with yeah maya and um see brush for quite some time and and then i saw some video uh on youtube about uh cycles uh which is like the path tracer in in blender and at the time at the studio i was working for we were using a rendered coral called um um 3d lights which is a renderman clone and i never got my head around it i was i was doing characters and wanted to do luctive and stuff like that um and i picked up cycles and under and was like oh

this is just easy i can just you know change stuff and it was felt really intuitive to me and then i sort of like had a look around like what else is there in blender because i was begun modeling so i was interested in the modeling tools and i was actually blown away like first there was this uphill struggle just to like learn the ui yeah exactly and and how it works and how everything relates but once i pass that little hill it was i was just amazed about how much faster i could work in blender compared to maya and so it i really adopted it and and just started working with it at work and basically used maya as the most expensive publishing tool ever

for models and and i was also rigging at the time in mayas i had to do that as well but otherwise just doing everything in blender and um yeah been doing that ever since yeah i mean that's a huge um i'm sure you were being teased in the office all the time and oh yeah and like the technical artists i think one of the biggest resistances because the tas tend to create tools for for for other programs right and uh there's like a sense of um just making things easier right for your for for colleagues to work together to kind of share tools but you know it's it's so open now where you know if there is like a special tool you can always import it in and export it but it i think in the last two years or three years you tell me it feels like there's a shift now where

everyone's at least more accepting i still see like the aaa space a little slow to change right um you know where we're still talking about it and you know smaller circles are like blender are you serious it's a joke right yes but definitely a shift a lot of recognition like such as yourself using it and people are slowly adopting it because the everything thing is a big deal right um because i've used programs that just disappeared after a while or just never updated right and it's just like this old tool and uh you kind of feel left behind when you know it got to a point where it's like why am i not just doing this in mind just forcing it takes longer right but like uh the ease and the easiness of um moving studios and not having to buy and request like 10 softwares right yeah i was noticing an issue every time

i do that and it became inefficient right when you were trying to be efficient right why am i switching between 10 programs to do anything right now and uh what has been like the biggest uh future that you saw uh with blended in the last year or so uh that has been this huge mon you know momentum monumental leaps from from other 3d programs i would say um one of the biggest things is the viewport actually uh i was you know when when uh clemont the developer who has developed evie when he started working on it and um i was really uh blown away uh because i'd i'd seen his work he was doing a separate branch

doing not working for the blender development fund but rather doing his own thing with the blender branch and then you got hired by the blender foundation to implement it into blender and then you got these little updates every week and i got in touch with them and started chatting with them on twitter and stuff and it was just so much fun it was like christmas every week that you get something new all the time to play with and you know uh i think people who come from like oh i'm a young person growing up i'm playing games oh it must be so much fun to like model stuff and light stuff and then they come open up maya open up the viewport it's a great cube you know it's super uh uninspiring yeah but what i found is like in blender what what i love to do is is go from

if i create a character i want to go from a to you know z yeah as fast as possible i i some people are like okay first i do the sculpt the sculpt will be perfect then i do the texture you know that kind of thing but i just i want to just go through it all as quickly as possible and then go back and iterate yeah and then if i have created the lighting and the environment that the character is going to be in pretty early on it's so much more inspiring to work because you're in a you know you're in a pretty environment and you can see all the shadows and stuff like that um and especially like uh i did um i wrote an article for embark a while back about how i create hair for games and one of the biggest selling point of using blender is actually that you can see a really good representation

of the game here inside the blender because it has you know great capacity and great shading and stuff like that so i think that's a huge benefit compared to working in like maya or any other application i'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on on something i'll bring up a little later but like to kind of tie that into it seems like there's a certain philosophy an embargo you know you guys are still i don't think i haven't announced anything but it sounds like it most likely something awesome but uh this this r d period right is something that i feel have always been really uh de-prioritized especially aaa it seems like there's a huge it used to be a big part of game development but lately it's been like let's just get the ball you know get to the vertical slice figure out what the game is like it was design focused right and not so much in in tech and uh what i

love what you guys are doing is like wow you guys are actually bringing it back to the basics and let's build the foundation up and find shortcuts kind of like what you're talking with blender to to make the games as efficiently as possible which seems to be like this generation's goal uh when it comes to aaa it's like smaller team more efficient more leaning on tools rather than manpower to get to the next level um is that something that uh is the right assessment what what are you observing what's the biggest challenge and wins for this generation of game development yeah i think you're spot on there i mean um whatever uh like putting time into building tools especially for finding you know that kind of monkey work that you do as an artist um you know exporting something bring it over to another application that kind of thing or baking or yeah that kind of

kind of thing it's you can save so much time by um fixing that workflow so it's fast and easy and it's also like you you free up the artist from doing boring work so it's win-win as well so yeah i mean time is the most expensive part of game development and the effects compared to you know applications and stuff like that so i think it's yeah it's important to try to yeah just make sure that things can be more efficient and that's really something that embark has taken to heart um as you said there's a lot of r d going on and everyone is encouraged to you know use their time to try to

like i've been allowed more to spend time on coding and stuff like that and so that i can build tools for myself and mostly other artists so that we can you know just doing small kind of tools to make things go faster that alone is like uh kind of mind-boggling to hear five years ago right an artist learning to code like it used to be such a no-man zone between artists and programmers like we do not cross but uh it's becoming a theme where uh at least being a core member of a internal team right uh the need of an artist uh being more technical seems to be where the job market's going right like content making isn't enough anymore you either have to be

either a technical artist at some level or uh basically the at the very front the design creative idea guy right it seems like the middle is like the jobs are disappearing um and more driven by ai or or outsourcing or something like that just to get it out of the studio and not waste time is that is that something that you're seeing too as in terms of the trend moving away i'm not sure actually that the the the jobs are going away i i kind of think it's the opposite that all the human resources are being sucked up sucked up into a lot of companies so that um there's like a shortage of people to uh create games because it's like um 10 years ago uh perhaps you know the

amount of time you need to spend on creating a game would be gay much yeah but now with triple a and stuff like that it just increases of course you have uh you have um in details and stuff like that which is great i think uh more diverse games but but these you know mega big games it just takes so much people to create those right um so i haven't heard of many um there's always a lot of layoffs i hear like in in the states and stuff like that that's always sad to hear um especially i think it's a special circumstances now with crone and everything but it feels in general like there's a lot of jobs out there for game developers but i also think that you need to be

like adapting to an ever-changing uh workplace environment kind of thing you know there's always new workflows um ways of doing things like you mentioned being more technical like uh using new applications like uh using houdini for stuff uh or blender instead of just using the same application and trying to you know doing i think it's important to try to think about how you can create content in another way than you always have done and um not only looking at other people and and trying to copy their workflow but trying to think out of the box and yeah well in terms of your toolkit you're kind of mentioning that like what

what is your top two top three must-have programs to to make your job easier uh the must-haves houdini blender all right those two definitely have been like blossoming softwares where you have to learn this uh i think as an artist uh in the last few years yeah is the third one uh optional at this point like substance or um well how do you think yeah i think substance painters yeah it's really good it's one of those um great things for great applications where you have a good representation of the final uh product as well you have shadows and and and good lighting and i also like the proceduralism and reusability of things in that application that you

can store a smart material or smart mask and things like that and yeah it's a really quick baker as well so that's cool but i i guess i would like to see more automation in that software where i know there's the substance automation toolkit but i think um i think it could be improved um what i i think my main software nowadays has been blender and um pablo de varo has been working on the sculpting part of blender has been doing a really good job so nowadays i actually do a lot of my sculpting

inside of blender and like there's always been historically a lot of artists who always sculpt details in their assets yeah and [Music] for me i think it's time-consuming way of working i think it's much better to use try planar mapping or procedural texturing that kind of thing to um it just add details to um to your assets instead of hand sculpting those um that's and that's just like a work flow thing you know try playing shading has been around for ages but you don't see a lot of uh artists in in tutorials that's been using it when they're creating assets uh you see a lot of like uh

like when you have artists who want to create um huge render uh they use a lot of tri-planar mapping but yeah not really um assets makers i think yeah that yeah so that's just uh are you talking about tripling or mapping and texturing or in the sculpt itself the texturing right just final detail uh yeah exactly texturing but i mean sculpting uh like in the effects sculpting is basically everything is stored as a as a using sequence texture so it's all textures and in the end anyway yeah so it doesn't really matter if you have sculpted them or or apply them in a texturing software so yeah i think in general with game artists especially there's a lot of wasted time in in each stage and i think uh the the amount of

versatility of programs kind of um we kind of get lost in that it's like well i'm in zbrush now so i'm going to spend all my time in zbrush doing zbrush things right yeah and then it kind of compartmentalized you know the end product which is you know a a model with textures on it right and uh and and there's like an over emphasis of each stage being perfect especially when you're working as an external development team outside the studio there's like little gates put into place of like we want the best quality each stage it's like well no one really works like that because in the end it's like what's the end product and what's the deadline and how i get there shouldn't matter but yeah i think because of game development getting so more much more complex with teams being bigger but budgets being bigger that leads naturally think gates are like the best way to be efficient um instead of just you know a little trust in the senior artist of like let me just i'll get there just tell me

when the deadline is it's like when do i how can i check you on each stage to make sure that you're going yeah it did it does feel like the last few years it's kind of kind of morphed into that weird um weird thing and i think i caught myself it's like well i mean i guess they can use this for marketing at some point like just a pretty high-res image uh but rarely that's the case right uh it's a lot of wasted work and time in those little areas especially yeah i can't imagine for creature and character so you've been seeing a huge shift then uh for for that department especially um that uh like these programs are kind of disabling those bad habits of over over sculpting and doing these things right yeah i think um especially uh repetitive work um a very i mean there's

there's a handful of sculpting softwares out there right and and most of them are um i mean really good when it comes to sculpting you can you know go high poly and do great sculpting work there but the interesting thing in blender is that you can use all the other parts as well yeah so you can use you know cloth simulation and things like that adding hair um which is procedural and not like oh every vertex is a thing that you have to move with your brush yeah um and also you have uh instances so i've i've been experimenting with you know just so for instance if you are creating a lizard godzilla for instance

what you would do in a traditional sculpting software is uh you would sculpt all of these you know little plates on his back right that's a lot of plates yeah but in blender you could basically create just three plates or so and then you just do a so-so job with each of them and then then you just instance those across the back and then you go back and and like hand sculpt it better and all and all those instances will be updated and and then you can replace them or you know add more geometry to them or change them to uh something else entirely yeah i definitely agree with you there like there's um you know i'm an environment guy so with environment you never really need to sculpt really anything right unless you really want to but like when

you're in a zbrush program you know it doesn't have the advantages of the instances and all these procedural things that are more computer generated than than artists uh instructions right so uh there's always seems to be like a handicap if i fully dedicate my time on that side and coming back i mean i i mean the the bridging and all that stuff i've always tried to help with that with ghosty stuff but like those little times that you switch back and forth it just builds up uh yeah that's ceremonies it gets tiring uh switching program the program and it kind of kills the flow it's kind of like what you're you're kind of talking about that flow is so important i mean especially if you're i mean if you're picking up an asset that you worked on a week ago yeah i don't think you have to yeah exactly and then it's like oh i have to open this file and then this file and then this file and it's like did did i have the same brush version

updated with the maya version right right i think so and then you have to that yeah yeah it's a lot of file management for sure that i have a bad habit of like making it quick and saving onto my my desktop right but like my desktop it just gets filled with like all these stupid files eventually and it just becomes a mess and i hate that and uh yeah it's just a bad it's a bad way of doing things i i do like the fact that it seems like the movement now is not about having all the programs for every specialized thing it's more about what's the one program that can do it all because um and for for good reason because a lot of these programs don't survive like the very specialized program right it's like ah this is not going to make it it's not enough it's like completely dedicated to uv like rhythm right i was like oh rizzo seems to be fun

make it easier but like it's just for uv this is not going to survive uv is not that hot for people to kind of invest you know learning a program for and and stuff and it's always that danger right the danger of like well should i really bet on this and learn this program and hope that it's around five ten years from now right like i've kind of abandoned so many softwares in the past that kind of have ptsd from learning new things right so but it's but it's also exciting to learn new things right it is but i'm like at a point where i rather have reliable software than then keep learning these specialized software that don't survive because i have so many like a graveyard of softwares that just aren't around anymore just not enough support right because business is real right so um yeah he's buying them all i know right uh i i kind of want to ask you about

this because you know being a creature and character artist um you know you're finding efficiencies in your workflow um you know meta human just came out right and that's something that seems to be like the mega scans for character i dived into a bit but i would love to kind of hear your perspective being that's your discipline and your thoughts on it yeah i mean it's it's um yeah it's one of those things it's very similar to when um 3d scanning started happening with characters you know with with heads so you had a there was a bunch of uh you know tutorial maker people who was into sculpting uh a couple years back was like everything you need to know is anatomy you need to focus on anatomy and that's right right now it's like well you don't sculpt

people you just bring in the scan kind of yeah right right and um at least in a lot of the um for the lord of the character assets um but then you have sure you have some hero character assets that you will you know sculpt and and have a you know create a proper character and you know you have a art director that has a certain vision for the character um but yeah there's a lot of you know opportunities for people who just want to sculpt faces that has gone out the window for sure oh yeah and and that's that's why i think it's important not to just put all your eggs in one basket i think it's it's good to have a really good to have a specialty and try to but also try to you know uh look at what what is tangenting to my specialty what what else can i learn

because it's all also a huge danger and trying to learn everything i'm i'm kind of stupid enough to try to do that but it's very challenging you know try to um a lot of my personal projects i do you know i do everything like yeah lighting and rigging and you know characters and uh and it's very time consuming and challenging and and i fake a lot of the stuff uh you know as well just to get things done but um yeah to answer your question i think yeah i think metahuman will eat up a lot of the opportunities but but there's also all of the other stuff uh like outfits and things like that for characters which we can still create so yeah well i mean like that seems to be not

being a character art it seems to be the shift because bass bass models are usually provided you guys don't really uh do things from scratch anymore uh no not right um and you did bring an interesting point it seems like you guys got hit twice uh with the so this is your second second uh readjustment uh because you know you know animation had had like the mocap scare right it's like do we have and of course that was adjustment we're just gonna fix up okay yeah and then uh yeah remember you mentioned that before yeah but it's it's like the jobs don't go away anyway because there was there's more animators more than ever now exactly adjustments yeah mega scans we we just got hit right people scanning everywhere in the last five years photogrammetry just just kind of blew up like a lot of what you guys did you know over ea and stuff uh and then dice

you know uh kind of opening up that door and uh there's definitely an adjustment it's like i don't know any environment guys sculpting rocks anymore i mean that used to be a thing the bombardment of rock tutorials like this is how you really make sure that the rocks look good i'll just take a picture no one wants to do that anymore um but i think it's good because this is what i was talking before it's like artists are more um needing to lean towards either the idea man or the technical guy uh because the these tools are becoming so available now where uh there's better use of your time to kind of learn how to talk to these tools rather than um you know learning anatomy now i mean it doesn't seem like it sounds like great background knowledge you know obviously there's a a strong foundation of an artist no anatomy but it's like to absolutely

have it as a character artist it doesn't seem to be too much of a case anymore word we're trying to ship something you know um have that changed greatly or is it more like my blank observation of of what you guys do sorry i i missed the question so like uh a huge shift from i i think when i was beginning like 10 12 years ago anatomy was like an absolute necessity if you want to be a character artist don't don't you have to perfect it right uh to even think about being a character artist right but now it feels like so many tools are available and the way the company structure is when it comes to creating characters there's a lot of reuse um more like frankensteining and kit bashing sorta right and then outfits becomes like more of the the highlight of a character more so than the what's beneath because you really unless it's conan or someone that

[Music] bear chesting it uh anatomy gets really seen uh on a surface level yeah um i st as an artist i still think foundation is king yeah yeah i mean learning anatomy and stuff like that is important if you want to create you know your personal art and stuff like that but in i think in in production there there is a lot of reuse and you use a lot of scan data for humans definitely um so it also i mean it's not all bad it opens up the door for uh more junior uh people to come in and and do character art like start we're off with you know i'm doing a bag for this character and

things like that you can sort of split up a character and and help out um being multiple artists um on one character if there's a shortage of time um but of course everyone all all artists wants to you know own their character and do as much as possible of it by themselves i think [Music] but yeah i think anatomy skills are not not useless not it's not useless but it's it's not as important anymore because there's so much more uh usage of scans but now uh there's yeah there's more shift towards um [Music]

you know stylized hair yeah and and definitely doing stylized characters that's even more interesting now because then you get to create something that didn't exist from the start right right yeah it's one of those things how you know with photogrammetry you shouldn't really invest your time as an environment guy being the nature artist all right um foliage foliage master you like stop learning to be awesome at that and but like more towards creative ventures like kind of what you're you're doing like with creature art right and and that's completely you unless you're finding a batman there's no way to photo scan that it's a pretty safe job and if anything anatomy is very key in creatures unless you're you're dressing them all the time in outfits mostly it's always anatomy you know new new creatures right so i i think

that the understanding of shifting and recognizing all right i mean that frees up our time to do other creative actual creative stuff rather than just you know sculpting your body into the game all the time yeah exactly and i i also think that um [Music] for environment artists it's there's a lot of potential for you know layout and storytelling and like oh now i'm gonna create this room and make sure it fits the style and you know dress it properly and doing lighting and things like that and there's always creative work to be done i think and there's always work to be done uh it never seems to be a shortage of that in my eyes yeah i think there's always going to be human input punching at the keys to oh yeah

to make sure that yeah that's why i think it's either it's one of two people you either gotta be the technical art who can talk to the computer and make sure that it's it's the language is being sought out and then the other one which is you know having the idea a vision basically um which is great because i i think it needs to get to that point for for us to make efficient games on budget um it kind of scared me last gen uh with the ps4 and the xboxes that we were just ballooning up budgets and we were throwing more man uh more people at the problem and it didn't and it always resulted in like you said in the states layoffs right it's just never it's just this bad cycle um and i do see like studios like yours embark and what you're doing as kind of the way of developers taking control again apart from the business right just like

we can do this faster we can do this with less people and you know what we can still all be here next year yeah it seems more like a developer movement more so than the business movement um businessman movement right which actually actually saves the business part but it seems like developers are getting so senior and smart about this now that they recognize that we need to be efficient now uh because it sucks um otherwise yeah and also you know it enables everyone to have more of a um nice life work balance instead you know 60 hour weeks which you know a lot of us has done in the past get tired of it yeah definitely uh one of the things that i'm curious about is um obviously all right um we're coming out

of a disastrous crazy year um a whole new element uh has been introduced right where i don't know how it is over there but united states it's always been a crazy thing to say hey i'll work from home on even on a friday right it's just unacceptable there's too much intellectual property at risk but now all the systems are up um i would love to kind of hear your take in what your uh your perspective on what last year meant for us and will mean for us going forward for game developers yeah i think it's the i think it was a great thing that came out of this horrible year you know just uh enabling people to work from home and especially in the effects there's been so much um you know you know that you can't work

from home you have to be at the office that kind of thing and you work with clients that has um yeah [Music] important important data that that can get lost basically um but yeah working from home feels like it's it opens up the door for um game developers to work not only in their own city but rather like freelance and working at different studios from time to time so it i think it creates more job opportunities as well and it also enables you to take a risk on people if you're not sure about candidates you might take the chance because it's not being not going to have to

spend a lot of time and money relocating that person that's true yeah yeah and then and also the environment thing as well [Music] i think it's a huge uh plus as well and for me you know i i think you have kids as well i mean i have two kids and it's quite stressful you know picking up and leaving them uh during the day so it saves me a lot of time not having having to ride the subway from and to work all the time but i guess the downside is that you lose these kind of little in-between moments with [Music] your co-workers that you don't really you know going to lunch and talking about the project you're doing and those kind of random ideas that spring

up and sort of like overhearing people talking about a problem and you'll be like oh i'm hearing what you're talking about i can help you with that [Music] but then again i think people has adjusted quite a bit um so i think it's so easy now to to ping someone at work like could you help me with this problem right they can just like see your computer instantly your screen draw on top of it so everyone becomes a bit more available i guess yeah and me i've always loved helping people when i can so that's something yeah i just really love doing and being able to do now since embark has you know adopted blender and a lot of the 3d artists

are not you know used to working in blender so i get my opportunity as well to to help them out which is show them away yeah definitely i i i see i see huge advantages um there the updates alone like you said they're so frequent it's it's so hard to catch up uh and there's just so much love into that thing where uh where even i am like starting to to get into to make sure that i'm not left behind uh because i am tired of you know juggling too many programs but uh the the one thing too is um you brought up a lot of good point like more people are going to be willing to take risks because you know you're not having to spend too much resources to kind of get to the work it's like almost instantly basically uh and then um although there is a give and take trade

right with with remote you know like the in-betweens like you said with co-workers and it's fine it's like one of those thing it's like ah it was cool but yeah you know there's a lot of like stuff and shenanigans that happens in the office that you know you kind of it's okay to let go right so like when you need me here i am uh when you don't need me don't bother me type of thing so it's an adjustment for sure for a lot of people uh i hope i hope a lot of the state at least in the states there's like a huge um huge amount of employers asking people to come back in september like complete reversal right so wow yeah there's a lot of the aaa well i mean they're paying for these offices and there is like this feeling of safety now with the vaccine and it's like well i mean let's get them back in here and so i think there is another wave of

like uh problem fixing uh because there's a lot of people that permanently moved away from work thinking that they can do this forever right but now it's more like special case basis so i'm starting to see that and i think what what you do what you guys do at embark what i do and a bunch of concept artists right are used to kind of being self-sufficient but there is a huge amount that aren't they're just not used to it and it was such a big change in the the home life and the balancing they need that space and physical presence to function and that that feels like more than 70 percent of developers hence why i think last year i don't know you saw the gdc survey there was huge um like huge amount of percentage of games delayed right just delayed um still figuring that out apart from it

infrastructure right it was just how to work together how to talk to each other how does not do too many zooms uh basically trust right the trust hasn't been established and i think we were we would have needed another year two people to be at peace at that and be efficient but i think because the vaccine rollout is coming out september is the cut-off date so uh but i will say this that is still allows like if you're a rock star such as yourself that that door is open because the infrastructure is there for you to kind of pipe in and and work from home still but i think the majority of employees are going back unfortunately which is what i'm i'm hearing and seeing a lot that's a shame well i think the the best situation would be almost like kind of a 50 50 solution yeah that'd be uh that's what

people are hoping they're praying for that used to be four days at home one day at work you know just for team meetings and i was like can we just have half it's gonna be if anything maybe one day every two weeks or something is what i'm foreseeing um with people and then you know what that means right only a matter of time where it's like uh come back to the full month it's the trickery yeah uh but i i would love to hear your thoughts about um what what are the challenges that you're seeing it could be just character focus but you know it seems like you touched a lot of the disciplines overall pipeline of what this generation is um versus last generation the key difference in in in making games um is there any is there any challenges yeah i mean i i i wish uh some of my more uh

experienced and and wonderful colleagues were here uh to answer this question because um i mean i'm i'm pretty new to game development still and i um i lean on them for a lot of the time i've been really yeah happy working with the great colleagues but i guess if i should answer the the challenges is basically what we've been talking about trying to being more efficient and working smart and also try to utilize sort of like if i think it's better to

if artists find their solution themselves sometimes yeah talk in the group instead of having a person on top saying like oh we should uh you know try to find a solution for this and then that person thinks he or she has a solution but um it's always better to have like a constant flow of discussions uh between colleagues and having artists having access to technical uh artists as well for uh tool uh tool creation and and um stuff like that yes i think i mean one thing um i think could be a solution further down the road sort of like

um no ai and huh no sorry i'm i'm just spacing away here i think let's just scratch that no worries i i i get what you're saying like um [Music] like the the overhead of manager and artists being able to talk to each other is definitely you know cr helps with efficiency issues right um you know the less that you have to use like a middleman to kind of transfer information and just keep the flow again it's a lot like what we're talking about like not changing programs midway when you're talking doing something and trying to figure something out and having to switch to another program to for to create another stage right um the game being more complex more complicated

uh the time wasted and and just delivering information just asking questions can can be a bottleneck basically just removing all those bottlenecks uh i i would also like to add like um the the the the challenges of this generation is definitely just it's bigger game gamers except more uh and and all the time faster right uh and it's just a it's kind of like every generation has that it's like faster better bigger you know and i i i i feel ambitious bro yeah yeah definitely um that's why i think there will never be like people won't be out of job because the the ambitions is just the bar is being raised all the time right both in games and the effects so yeah i

will say that artists especially out of all the other discipline gets in their own way more like we've all had great art directors and we've all had bad art directors right and it's all about it's so subjective where i i do feel artists have a bad habit of noodling too much right um and and that seems to be hopefully going away where i'm you know from the indie crowd right we see games that are so ugly that it's beautiful right it's so simple that it's complex right that type of thing where it's not about a thousand hours in zbrush making it as detailed as possible it's about you know how fast did you get it and is it noticeable as as as not being super t-toned like that balance

is something that i'm finding in everything i do where you know there's personal projects you know of course you just want to max it out and just push it very far but in production i'm seeing the more there's more importance in if you get it faster good enough because it's a part of a whole picture that's the better path yeah that's a better path i hope we're shifting towards that because i feel like a lot of games only a few games can get away with like this is a masterpiece you know this is mozart it's perfect all right but most games kind of i think uh mistakenly use that as a guiding light and that's the way to do things and it's like you have half the resources half the budget what are you doing you have half the time like you shouldn't be making gains that way you know you shouldn't be trying to make last of us with two people right don't do that

there's so many better ways to do it and have a good product at the end yeah yeah i think that you're you uh yeah i had not seen something really true there that's as an artist it's so easy to get lost in the details like if you're doing a mushroom in a forest you're like this is going to be the best mushroom ever and you're all always looking at it in in the wrong context you're looking at it like big on your screen when you it should be like you should when you evaluate the asset that you are creating you should look at it in the context you know the forest basically so your character like walking in the forest and it's yay big in the screen yeah exactly um [Music] and um as an artist it's it's it's more fun to create more content for the game than that single uh

mushroom you know that you spent exactly yeah it's a i help i hope it's something that listeners and developers are learning uh because you know we've been in those studios it's like man i spent like eight months on that and that especially the environment guy you just walked by it i mean that's that's my first lesson in games that i was like i'm not gonna spend that much effort again on that time uh in the context like you said it's it's so many moving it's a concert right so many things going at the same time where at the end of the tunnel the gamer experience is king right what's what does this attribute to the game gamer it kind of ties back to what we're talking at the beginning it's like you know if you can finish things in blender from beginning to finish it's a much better product than you having to switch to to zbrush just to make sure that its scope is 100 000 right to your liking but it's a lot of

wasted time so i see that as a team is what we've been doing a lot it's just like people everything's so separated everyone needs to be perfect at every stage and then at the end you only see like 60 50 of that right yeah it's a very game development thing i don't know what what it's like in visual effects it seems like visual effects you guys have to get everything perfect because everything's like super super huge pixels and super small pixels and it's super detailed is it i can see why you need to be detailed because it's so up close all the time but even then it's only things on the screen right you guys are efficient in that way yeah well the it it's easy to fall into the same trap because if you are a bunch of artists or rather if you are an artist that just gets you will create this apple for instance then you're going to create create a great apple but

um in the shot it's going to be in the back right yeah so it's much better actually to say like hey artist you're going to create this room with that little apple yeah in the back then the artist will sort of always look at the shot in the correct context right here's the camera here's all the stuff and um yeah that little apple in the background i'm just gonna you know spend three hours on it instead of those know days that you would spend if you would just do that apple right so i think that's a good trick and speaking of blender uh like say for instance that you like create a bunch of nature assets right um let's pretend we're not using scans um like what you would

the nice thing there you can have you can set up an environment with lighting and everything just as in your game and then as you are creating the assets you could i mean you could texture it inside of blender as well and then you just in the same file you switch to the other scene and you see uh like if you had created a log for instance you can just place it in the this little forest clearing for instance um and then you would see it in context so that's it's very useful yeah yeah and that's huge yeah i think that's that's the advantage of seeing uh things all in one program because uh it is a reminder of like don't spend so much time on this thing it's basically the role that i usually

took as a senior environment guy or lead talking to a junior environment because you you know as a lead you see the whole picture of in the context and you constantly have to remind the junior artist who's kind of focused on this piece of log being the best job ever it's like no no spend a day it's in the back it's filler um yeah and uh and it's something that dynamic start is starting to be individualized now it's like you got to start telling yourself that and it's uh i don't think it's quite there yet because it's it's it's weirdly like i think it's it's it's it's unhealthily where we're kind of aiming at uh uh like the the pinnacle of game development right the pinnacle of games that we all love right it's like well we spent like five months on that thing therefore if we want to equate to that we got to spend five months on that thing it's like it's it's very dangerous type of thinking now

more i see in last generation and this generation more than the ps3 and ps2 because ps3 and ps2 was very um limiting on graphics right there's only so much you can do right but like now we're reaching to this point where you know it can look really good if you spend more time on it and that's kind of disabling us in a way i feel where artists just feel like they're obligated to spend all that much time [Music] to make it look really good in case you know it falls in front of your screen or something something odd like that yeah ld zero all the time it's like yeah did you all d0 to make it look like the best not everything needs to led zero that looks you know cinematic quality is like oh well it's there for that right it's not no it's not there for that it's chill don't worry about it but uh i want to thank you daniel for coming on man we're at the top of the hour uh it's

it's everything about the conversation is everything i've been wondering myself so thank you for answering him this is the part where i actually shut up and hand the mic over to you to kind of promote give a shout out give attention to anything that you want to talk about go for it yeah sure um i guess you can find me on art station daniel bisted and on twitter my 3d handle a my twitter handle is 3d price that and support the blender development fund at fun.blender.org and if you are interested in embark want to work there or just want to see what we're doing you can check out embark studios.com awesome all right well again thank you for coming on talking with us educating us uh i'm sure you're convincing more and

more people to use blender at least try it out after listening to this episode so uh be safe man hope you uh are near to partying with all your friends family again but thank you for coming on again yeah thank you so much for having me [Music] you