CGTrader At GDC 2016: A Modeler's Guide To VR Future

CGTrader crew visited Game Developers Conference 2016, where we hobnobbed with the shakers and the makers. We saw VR take center stage, overshadowing all. We talked with the coolest cats in the industry, attended panels, read the portents, and here’s the takeaway we came up with for 3D designers - that means YOU! Read on and be ready, because knowledge is power.

Expect an increase in demand for 3D models. VR is clearly an experimental medium with a lot of potential, and there’s going to be a lot new stuff hitting development teams. Which means more work for 3D modelers, as 30-50% of VR app cost comes from 3D design. Oh and there will a lot of new, high end apps coming since 2016 is the year of Oculus, Sony PlayStation VR and HTC Vive releases. That means that crunch times are gonna be shorter, iteration will have to be instantaneous - and all of that leads to increasing demand of stock models and 3D designers both. Nobody is really certain how VR will look in the future, so it's up to you to build it.

Low poly strikes back. Nobody has yet to successfully overcome motion sickness, and this means that frame rate is still king of VR mountain. With 90 FPS being a must for any flashy new app, you’re gonna need to optimize the living hell out of your models. Nobody will sacrifice FPS for graphics. And keep in mind, that mobile headsets will still reign supreme - at ratio of about 4 mobile to 1 PC - which means an even greater demand for optimized, low poly goodness. So here are a few things you can do:

• Bake lighting / GI into the textures (however, baking geometry into textures is not advised)
• Batch mesh and material
• Share materials to reduce draw calls
• Include LODs (some programs and game engines can aid you with that)
• Keep in mind that full screen image effects are expensive!
• Reduce poly count and texture size via...
  • Experimenting with different polygon count vs details baked into materials to find the best ratio.
  • Plan the poly budget of the game environment ahead to set optimal level of details
• Avoid CPU spikes that come with complex math and physics

Use toon shading style. Our brains can accept toons no problems, and they can also be both stylized and stylish, optimized for great performance while still keeping your product unique. It also helps to avoid the uncanny valley effect - leave photorealism for tanks, robots and rocks.

Focus on lowpoly, rigged, and animated content. You know what the studios want? Real-time optimized, rigged and animated content, which is lacking in the market. Real time optimized models sell 5 times more often than others on CGTrader, and the demand is still growing. This is the perfect time for 3D designers to get a slice of that market pie while it it’s not crowded.

Prepare for a democratized market. As of a few days ago, Cryengine has been released free of charge (well, pay-what-you-want, which can still be $0). Amazon Lumberyard is a Cryengine derivative with a lot of inbaked online functionality.They join the ranks of Unity and Unreal Engine 4, making the biggest game development platforms free to use. All of the biggest engines offer visual programing to be attractive to newbies. Everyone can create a VR app now, as long as they possess the grit and some elbow grease. Therefore have these tutorial-laden newbies in mind when you model and rig and animate your characters. Make them ready to use and easy to import into game engines. Upload multiple versions of characters with different animations as separate assets so that it is ready to use immediately.

Test your content in game engines. Hey, you know what free game engines mean? It means that you too can test your models in-game games for free. All the major engines are free, so you owe it to yourself to prepare your models for use with them. Provide native files and test the assets in these engines.

Prepare to experiment and gather the know-how. 2016 will be a year in flux, full experimentation. Buyers will come in a steady stream, but not in a wave. However, nobody knows what novel VR experiences we’ll come up with, and what the demands will be. All you can do is work, collect experience and great feedback and be ready to a big name in 2017.

So remember, low-poly and rigging rule the day. If you can make your models able to integrate into projects with minimal hassle - great, stressed and overworked developers will love you. Use the free new tools to give and ever better service. And who know, your name might just be in the credits of some the greatest early VR masterpieces.