Gaming Industry Explained: Concept Art for 3D Games
You can bet that all of the characters, objects, and environments in your video game start out as concept art. It might seem daunting to transform a collection of 2D lines into something that moves in 3D space. That’s not entirely unfounded — taking a drawing and forging it into a virtual object does take time and a new set of skills. But through practice, 2D artists are able to form a streamlined workflow and get the hang of it. The first trick, however, is just to learn what it is.
What is 3D game concept art?
Concept art is an umbrella term for the visual representations game content ideas. It isn’t those beautiful, photoshopped posters advertising a game’s release. It serves mainly as a way to save time when making the visual material in a game. Concept art doesn’t have a specific format — it can mean anything from simple sketches, detailed drawings, to computer-edited computer. It can be wide shots of whole areas, or close-ups of detailed parts. All concept art for 3D games shares two things in common: it’s comprised of 2D still images, and it’s used to speed up modeling.
Who creates concept art?
As we all know, roles at video game studios aren’t set in stone. In a large studio, concept artists lay somewhere in the middle of art director and asset creators. Their responsibilities range from providing original 2D art to keeping modelers and asset creation on schedule and on-brand. The biggest game studios have whole teams of 3D artists and level designers that work with the designs that concept artists provide. In smaller studios, concept art might make up part of each individual modeler’s tasks as they create game content, or might even be relegated to just one person.
How is it made?
In the brainstorming phase of game production, concept art begins with research. Having a wide base of visual references is key to nailing the style of a 3D game. Getting a general feel of how the game world will look (and perhaps creating some appealing advertising content) is an important first step. Slowly, more detailed objects, environments, and characters are drafted up. After that, it turns into an exercise in problem solving — specifically drawing and designing for use in 3D. For example, imagine you need a weapon to carry out a certain function: this is a design problem for a concept artist to solve.
How is it drawn?
The first part is as easy as putting pen to paper. Then, you need to know your angles. After drawing an initial image from the front, artists make a few other drawings from different viewpoints. If it’s something that will appear in a 3D video game, they need to think ahead of time about what it will look like not only from the front, but also the back, side, and top. If what they’re drawing has symmetrical parts, it might make these drawings quite easy. Many artists translate their drawings into digital format by either scanning or photographing them. Some light editing might also be helpful here — clear, high-contrast images help to see what they’ll need to model their creations in 3D software.
What are the tools?
Although not all concept artists work in 3D, this is the part of concept art that could require new skills for those who do both the 2D design and the 3D building. The offering of 3D modeling software available to artists is quite well-developed, and easy-to-use after mastering its interface. We’ve reviewed the top 3D modeling software in the industry here. In general, modeling from concept art requires using 2D images as references for overlaying 3D shapes and forming a wireframe. Often, artists use primitive shapes first. This process is sometimes called “blocking.” By successively creating basic shapes that fit the drawing, they slowly approximate the dimensions and volume of the 2D object. After they have a skeleton, its history: the rest of the 3D modeling process (UV mapping, texturing, lighting, rigging, and animating) unfolds as normal.
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