We asked 100 modelers and 3D graphic designers how they collaborate. Here’s what they said.
3D designs aren’t built in a day. And not just by one person, either! When you work in 3D modeling, design, and game development, collaboration is a key part of your job. We ran a survey which looked at 100 professionals who work with 3D graphics in a team setting in order to get a better look at this important process in the design workflow. Check it out:
About communication
An important part of the design workflow is communication and collaboration. After all, many of our 3D design teams have remote coworkers. Communication is everything! Take a look at the following pie graph about how often our respondents present their 3D project files:
That’s 80% who present their files at least sometimes during the design process! When we asked our respondents what the main reason for communication with team members and clients, we found that 68% do in order to clarify or learn something about the work process. Almost everyone (95%) unanimously reported that communication is used to get opinions & feedback and final approval on model meshes and textures. That’s a lot of communication — both during work and after its completion. 57% also reported the need to communicate in order to give feedback on someone else’s models, as well as to approve or teach others (48%). Some valuable insight we gleaned from this question? It’s pretty simple: a respondent commented,
“the more I communicate, the less problems I have.”
About their tools
To better understand the manner in which this happens, we asked about the medium of communication. We asked our respondents to check all the methods they use to send and receive their work files. We found that 48% of users use email, and about a third use cloud services like Google Drive (38%) and Dropbox (35%). We also wanted to know who the people involved in these conversation are. 68% of our respondents discuss or present their 3D projects with other 3D graphic designers during the design process. Project managers (56%), clients (48%), technical team leaders (45%), and creative directors (35%) followed. 2D graphic designers (22%), developers (21%), and sales (4%) also were in on the discussion.
About decision-making
Solidifying good ideas into finished models is one of the final pieces. Deciding what models are finished can be complicated. When we asked who’s involved in final decision, we found that 53% of the time it’s the graphic designers themselves, 37% the project managers, 30% clients and 29% of the time it’s a creative director. Besides that, other 3D graphic designers (20%), technical team leaders (19%), and developers (9%) also have a say. We even had 7% of respondents in a very democratic situation — they reported deciding entirely as a team! Sharing the completed 3D projects with the end user is the other final piece. How does that usually happen? The tools our participants used in delivery are similar to the ones they use during the creative process: about half (49%) use email, and about a third use a cloud-based service, like Dropbox (30%) or Google Drive (25%).
What’s important?
Overall, collaboration is a significant factor in designing anything using 3D models. We found that the time 3D graphic design teams spend collaborating is not negligible. 35% report that it takes a 10% chunk of their work time, and 46% of our participants say it takes over 20% of their work time. That translates into hours spent communicating, sending, reviewing, approving, and re-sending. It raises the question: what could we accomplish if this collaboration time was spent purely on our creative endeavors instead?
A few respondents gave us a few comments from their experience working hard in 3D design. While it can be hard to know what’s best for each project, team, and idea, there are some things to be said about collaboration that can help us all. Take a look at some of our respondents’ advice:
“Collaboration is a necessary requirement of building complicated projects. Without it, you increase workloads and times. People should be able to easily communicate problems or issues, and find solutions to complicated tasks without bringing the whole project to a stop.”
And of course,
“Collaboration is both necessary and useful.”
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