CSE 490 - Tech Art for Game Development

Assignment #3

Research a solution for a problematic art asset

Scenario:

Your art lead is really excited about creating a game moment based off of the latest concept art piece. However, this piece is dominated by a tricky art asset. As a technical artist it is your job to figure out how to achieve this game moment through budget-friendly means.

Summary:

Each of the supplied concept art pieces contains a problematic art asset.

• Destiny – Cloth




• Uncharted 4 – Moss




• Killzone – Volumetric Lighting




• Assassin's Creed III – Snow

Pick one of the pieces and research solutions for the potentially problematic asset. Find two solutions for your specific art asset. One solution should be expensive to implement and one solution should be cheap to implement. Outline each option and how their costs compare to each other. Keep in mind the information covered about budgets and rendering when discussing these content creation approaches.

Some great research resources include: GDC talks, SIGGRAPH papers, Fxguide articles, and the Unreal and Unity documentation.

• Gamasutra
• FXGuide
• GDC Youtube
• GDC Vault
• Advances in Real-Time Rendering
• Open Problems in Real-Time Rendering

For turn-in we will be using Collect-It on catalyst. You can find it here. You will need to log in with your UWNetID. Each week you will be submitting your files to the appropriate assignment. For this assignment, you will be turning in the following:

Minimum of a full-page document (may be as many pages as necessary)

Must contain:

• Description of the two possible techniques for creating the art asset
• Include a brief description of how each technique works
• Include any supporting documentation
• Include images or diagrams that help explain the technique
• Include any examples of other games you found that use this technique
• Paragraph that describes the budgetary implications of each technique. Including reasons why one technique is more expensive than the other.
• List of potential options that could be used for decreasing the cost of either asset

Your files are due in by Tuesday 8/15 at 11:59 PM.

Grading Rubric (out of 100):

• 35 - Solution one:
• 25 – Does it solve the problem
• 10 – Supporting documentation, supporting images, existing examples from games
• 35 - Solution two:
• 25 – Does it solve the problem
• 10 – Supporting documentation, supporting images, existing examples from games
• 20 – Description of content cost that shows an understanding of game budgets
• 10 – Listing of possible options to decrease asset cost