Irfancg

The game developer community is awesome. It gave me so much help through my work and studies, and that's why I decided to take the time to give it back. I hope this will help some people, please enjoy it.

Working from home or working at the office? Which one is better?

Today I wanna share with you about my work experience, before I jump into a game industry I was a young graphic designer and I still remember my first salary was 15 USD/month, I know it's very short amount of money but that was my first-time earnings experience, so it still a good memory in my life. A few years later I go to Autodesk seminar at my school, I'm so amazed by their video reel, and there are a film and game talk session as well, for the first time in my life I know what I want to do.


After that, I start learning from youtube about how to modeling in 3ds Max for three months before I moved to Maya till this day.


I keep practicing and finally make my first 3D portfolio in 2013.


Then I join with some local game developers, mostly mobile game. That is my first time learning game engine, Unity Engine. Sometimes I do a global game jam at Jogja Digital Valley, making game in 48 hours with my friends, but I'm the only one 3D artist, most of my friends are programmer and 2D artist, it was hard and fun at the same time because I have to make all the 3D assets by myself which I have to stay awake for two days, but it's worth because we make something we love.

That is my short story about how I jump into a game industry. Then in 2014, I have a chance to work with an international team in a bigger company.

In 2015, I decided to work from home, because I have to go back to my University to finish my degree in computer science.


So what I have learned from my experience? What is the different between working from home and working at the office? which one is better?

At first, I thought working from home is easier than working at the office, because the working hour is more flexible which I could have more free time and I don't have to walk to the office every Monday to Friday anymore. But I was wrong, working from home is way harder, here's why:

1. Working from home have more free time
Nope, I was wrong. When working from home I don't have any workmate that I can share with or ask any advice when I'm lost, I have to solve the problem by myself which frequently end up with overtime.

2. Working from home have more freedom
Sorry, I was wrong too. When working in the office I can freely talk about something new, like a new idea, new technique, new technology and so on. But when working from home I can't do that anymore because the communication is harder, especially when I was working with a company which has 12 hours time difference, I don't wanna make it worse and I have to ask a clear question or clear answer to avoid miss communication. So I just follow every instruction from my Art Director except when he asked me about my opinion.

3. Working from home? Aah I can wear anything I want
Oops, again I was wrong. At first, I don't care about what I wear, you didn't want to know what I was wearing lol.
But after three months, I feel like jobless, even I have a job. Because every time I saw myself at the mirror I look messy, it affected my discipline and my mentality, I realized it's not just about artwork, it's about work attitude as well. Since then I always wearing a good cloth like I usually wear in the office.

4. Working from home is easier
Unfortunately not. It was a tough experience for me, I miss people who share the same passion. Surrounding by passionate people, it help me grow faster as an artist, I remember when I got my first task to learning level design in Unreal Engine 4, I never use Unreal Engine before, ok in the first day they just want me to try how to export and import asset in Unreal Engine, but then the next day they want me to do almost everything in the level editor, what? How can I do that in a short time? But at the end I made it, I don't know how I still can't believe it, I think that's the advantage by surrounding with passionate people who always push you up.

So, working from home is bad?

Don't get me wrong, it depends on the individual. Some people prefer working from home, some people are enjoy their daily life at the office, and of course they have their own reason, from my personal perspective, I agree that working from home is tough, but working from home is not that bad, here's why:

1. Problem solver
You didn't have any workmate to share with, which you need to do everything on your own. Every time the problem come, you have to solve it by yourself, it helps you to be a better problem solver and become more independent.

2. Management skill
You didn't have a manager or a secretary, or a lead artist who always keep an eye on you. You are the manager, you are the secretary, you are a lead for yourself, you are gonna learn about self-management, making the schedule, deadline expectation and so on. Those things will help you to improve your management skill and become more organized.

3. More time to think
In the office, I usually spent time with my workmate at lunch time, after work or even on the weekend. When working from home I can't do that anymore, but I have more time for myself to think. With more time to think, gives you the chance to clear your mind, focus, and think more clearly. You're more likely to make better choices, also may come to appreciate your relationships with the people more after you've spent some time alone.


I think that's for today, which one is better? you decide. I have to remind you again that is just base on my personal experience, so any advice are very welcome, thanks for reading I hope you enjoy it, and have a nice day!

If you have some questions or just want to say hi,
Feel free to contact me here

Email : cgirfan@gmail.com

www.artstation.com/artist/irfancg

Hi Fellas, welcome to my second post, in this post I’ll share with you about my experience as a Level Artist. I need to remind you this is just base on my experience who work on levels from the Open world level to Arena or Linear level for almost three years, so any input or advice are very welcome.

The game developer community is awesome. It gave me so much help through my studies, and that's why I decided to take the time to give back. I hope this will help some people, please enjoy it.


Like I’ve said in the first post, I began my career as a Level and Environment Artist, I’m originally a hard surface modeler, designing and modelling robot or futuristic stuff as a hobby, and suddenly my Lead Artist want me to do Level which is very new to me. But in the end I’m very thankful that my Lead gave me this great opportunity. Because as a modeler I can improve my technical skill, not just learning about the looks or the details, but also about the performance and the engine limitation.


Talk about Level artist it is different from studio to studio, but in general Level Artist is a set skill to design and create art for the levels that the player will play through in the game, understanding of game mechanics, 3D space, art, lighting, and performance.


A.    Where do I start?

Usually I start with a plan and write it on paper or Notepad. Without planning you'll probably end up wasting time, don't waste your time on details when you're not sure if the general idea will work, make it simple to describe, so the others can be understood as well.

Prototyping, still make it simple if you’re not sure the general idea will work, but try to focus on the geometry in scale and implement any gameplay that you can, this is the best time for you to improve the layout, scale and performance.

Art time! when everything works like you and your team wanted, it’s time to adding the details, do the modeling, sculpting and texturing but keep an eye on performance and do the lighting.

Optimizing, make sure there is no room for wasting memory. For example, I usually open all my test folder where I do testing and experiment, and just delete all the un-use files.

Testing, make sure your level works good and looks good, finding and fixing the bug as much as possible. We play, we test and we learn, then test it again until the last minutes.


B.    The Level Design Challenge!

I like to call it challenge instead of a problem, it’s motivated me to solve the problem.

I.    First Challenge! Idea

My ideas of level art design usually from a combination of other games, movies and my real life experiences, the idea should be base on benefit for the game not base on individual ego. Of course, the idea is base on your experiences and your knowledge, but it’s important to keep an open mind and trust people around you to help. Because in my experience everybody can have the idea, but some people just give the idea without knowing the engine limitation, how can you transfer all the detail with a hardware limitation? How will frame rate be affected? All these factors you have to think when you plan out your level. Don’t forget if you working in the team, you have to listen and respect your teammate, because Level Artist is like hub position, you will work closely with programmer, concept artist, lighting artist etc. So my tips to get an idea is make a prototype, make sure you and others are happy and then you will find the best idea for your design.

II.    Second Challenge! Background Art

This is challenging and complicated tasks, each environment usually starts by creating simple shapes like boxes or cylinders in a 3D to describe gameplay spaces and platforms. We will use this simple mesh to create a level, test the gameplay and the player or AI path. You will work with the concept art team to develop a look and feel for the level, then the modeler will start modeling base on the simple mesh and keep an eye on performance.

III.    Third Challenge! Bug

The common issue when you designing the level is from the collision, the player can be floating or even stuck, and it will affect the NavMesh Map or AI Path and the gameplay of course.


I’ll explain few important things that you need to know about how the collision work specifically in Unreal Engine 4 through images. Concave, Intersection and Pivot, these three things are commonly causing the problem for the collision.


Avoid Concave!



The player will be floating.



Beware of Intersection!



Pivot!
Make sure your pivot for the collision is final, if you or someone change the pivot all the entire levels are gonna be messed up.

IV.    Fourth Challenge! Optimizing

There are a lot of tricks to optimize your level, but I think I don’t have to explain all of them, Ain't nobody got time for that.


But I'll give you some important tips that can help you to optimize your Level.

For the Material and the Static Mesh, the method that you can use is using instances or modular kit, this is saves modeling time since you can standardize elements for the Material and the Asset.

For the texture, I usually using RGB Channel method. Textures like Metallic, Roughness, Specular, Displacement, Ambient are using black and white color only. So I just combine at least three of them in one texture. For example :


Using the square “power of two” texture (for example: 256x256/1024x1024), some hardware has limited support for textures that don’t have the power of two dimensions. They’ve been designed to process them in that way, today most card will allow you to load textures with non-power of two dimensions, but it will have a negative impact on your performance.


Still for the texture, usually I reduce the Normal map size into a half from the Diffuse size if needed. For example, if my Diffuse map is 2K (2048x2048), my normal map will be 1K (1024x1024) so technically it’s not half but four times smaller and saves four times memory.


Since the Normal map has reduced, I’m using Smart Sharpen in Photoshop in order to increase the quality look of the Normal map. For optimizing the shader, you can read my first post here.

V.    Fifth Challenge! Be Organized

Level art design it’s very tedious job, you didn’t want to add more problem later, so being organized it’s very helpful. You need to learn about Naming Convention, folder management etc, it makes you and others work easier.

I need to remind you again that my post here is not to explain everything about Level Art Design, Level Design process is more complicated and sometimes painful, there is a lot of things that I need to learn and experience it, not just from art perspective but also from every different aspect and multi-discipline. Be more creative and love to learn, because in reality technology always changing and improving, but here's what I believe "you can change the hardware you can change the software but you can’t change the creativity". So it’s really important to keep an open mind for personal improvement.

Thanks for your time to read my blog, hope it help and have a great day.

Irfan CG,

-Level and Environment Artist-

Since a lot of my fellow artist asked me about how do I made the foliage on the Our Ghost of War game scenes and make it run optimally in the game engine, so I think I should make a tutorial and share some of the tips and tricks from my R&D Environments.


First, let me introduce myself, I'm a Level and Environment artist, I began my career on Game in 2014 with a local Game studio as a Level Artist, my job was making an open world environment with other Level Artist using Unreal Engine 4, the project was called Grimm Odds, it's an Open World Sci-fi survival game, sadly the project has been canceled.