This itself signifies the criticality of having stunning visual elements, especially 3D games, which have added dimensionality and environmental complexity. Today, when you search for the top game downloads, the list is full of 3D games with various art styles having a whopping 100M+ downloads and millions of daily active users, whether it be PUBG, Minecraft, or Subway Surfer.

These figures are a dream for gaming entrepreneurs but are hard to achieve without these types of immersive game visuals.

Well-crafted visuals have the capability to transport the player into the gaming realm rather than just being the distant observer. This is where the choice of the right 3D game art style comes into play. It is obvious as the visual is the heart of any 3D game.

What Is Game Art Style?

Game art style refers to creative choices that the game designers or artists make to design visual elements(look and feel). The visual elements comprise characters, objects/props, textures/materials, animation, skyboxes, and more.

Each type of art style has particular characteristics(textures, modeling, lighting, shading, effects, and more) leveraged by game creators to evoke desired emotions or atmospheres and convey the game narrative.

Now, let’s explore some of the most popular 3D game art styles.

Types of 3D Game Art Styles

From the lifelike authenticity of Realism to the whimsical charm of cartoon art, here are some of the most popular 3D game art styles.

• Realism
• Fantasy Realism
• Low Poly
• Hand-Painted
• Cartoon

Now, let us understand each one of these game art styles individually.

1. Realism

In this type of 3D game art style, the characters and environments of the game are displayed in the most realistic way possible (close to real-life characters and environment). The factors that play a key role in character and environment modeling that look real are polycount, lighting, texture, and animation.

Also referred to as photorealism art, it is the best choice for the game which mimics real life through gameplay and visuals giving the players the feel of real-life stimulation to a great extent.

It is one of the only art styles for games that intend to increase the emotional impact, visual authenticity, and credibility through the implementation of a realistic game art style. It is essential or most seen in game genres like stimulations, horror, crime/mystery games, third-person adventure games, or first-person adventure shooting games.

Some popular 3D games that adopted the Realism game art style are Read Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed, The Last of Us: 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator, etc.

2. Fantasy Realism

It is the 3D game art style where Realism meets Fantasy!

The best way to put this art style in the world is that the characters and environment of this 3D game art style look realistic but impossible in real-life settings. This art style enables the game creator to make the most realistic depiction of mystical or futuristic/steampunk characters like robots, aliens, monsters, fairies, and more.

This art style is extensively adopted by game genres like AR, VR, role-playing games (RPGs), and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) which introduce game enthusiasts to alternate realities.

The games displaying the fantasy realistic gaming realm are heavily driven by imagination and creativity, unlike the previous game art style which restricts the game designers from using imagination.

Some popular games using Fantasy Realism 3D game art style are The Legends of Zelda, Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Dark Souls, etc.

3. Low Poly

Simply put, the characters and environment in Low Poly 3D game art style are geometrical shapes filled with unique colors favoring simplicity over complexity and realism. Environment and character designs are created using densely placed geometrical shapes combined with stage lights and shadows.

Anti-aliasing and textures are not used, giving it the iconic blocky visuals with sharp edges which is the reason for this game art style’s popularity. This 3D game art style is for game creators aiming for retro and minimalist aesthetics with cost-effective and faster game production.

Low Poly art style is best suited for games that require low-demanding graphics yet unique/artistic visuals like video games. This game art style empowers the games to stay aesthetic even on low-spec computers.

Some games using low poly 3D art styles for games are Monument Valley, Borderlands, Divine Knockout (DKO), and more.

Also Read: How to Create Desirable 2D Game Art – The Ultimate Guide

4. Hand-Painted

Game characters and environments are displayed similarly to hand-painted textures imitating traditional painting techniques but using a stylus and tablet rather than computer graphics offering the game designers high creative or artistic flexibility.

Hand-painted 3D game designing involves lights and shadows, visible brush strokes but without any geometrical shapes. Unlike low poly, the edges are softer and have seamlessly blended colors. This art style inclines the overall game design towards attention to detail and watercolor-inspired visuals.

The overall gameplay experiences of hand-painted 3D games are visually captivating and immersive. The hand-painted art style is more effective in enhancing the storytelling impact in 3D games.

This 3D game art style is used in strategy, indie, platformer, or fantasy games which require elements of comic or cartoon with a hint of realism when needed. Some of the popular games with hand-painted 3D game art styles are Cuphead, Speedrunners, Memories Retold, and more.

5. Cartoon

3D games with cartoon game art style can be easily distinguished from their vibrant colors, exaggerated visuals, nonstandard proportions, expressive 3D animations, and the overall distinctive cartoonish design approach. These unconventional characters and environments are designed using a blend of low poly or hand-painted art styles.

Cartoon game art style even has some popular and widely used substyles like voxel, mixed, plasticine, and more. This art style simplified the most complex gaming concepts making it more engaging for the players.

This one of the unique art styles for the game(s) is best suited for game genres like action, platformers, first-person shooting, educational, and more. It is also the most preferred choice of game designed for kids.

Some games with cartoon game art styles are Fortnite, Overwatch, Animal Crossing, and more.

Now that you have a brief knowledge of the 3D art styles, it is time to make a tough choice of opting for one of these stunning game art styles for your game. Let us help you with the process of making this choice.

How to Choose the Right 3D Game Art Style?

With this many choices, choosing the 3D game art style that is most suitable for your game concept is a hard call to make. However, with the right strategy you can filter out the right one. Here are some of the considerations you can make when choosing a game art style for your game idea.

Understand the game’s genres or theme

Is your game a fantasy adventure, action game, horror-themed, or educational kids game? Knowing the game genre and theme would help you pick a best-fit art style that matches your game characters, environment, or the overall story.

For example, a realistic style would suit the best for military shooting games while a cartoon art style suits best for fun platformer games.

Know game audience

Regardless of whether it is a game or any other product, knowing your target audience would enable you to deliver a digital product that suits their likes or preferences. In terms of 3D games, target players can fall into categories of game groups(kids, adults, etc.), casual games, hardcore games, gamers with disabilities, or more.

Not all art styles would resonate with all the group of players.

For instance, whimsical and color art style is more appealing to kids, while realistic or fantasy realism art style is more enjoyed by mature gamers.

Analyze resource and technical constraints

The project’s practical need and limitations like team size, budget amount, or platform/hardware requirements would have a considerable impact on the choice of 3D game art style that you make. 

As an illustration, a Low Poly art style is preferable for a small team or mobile platform while a realistic art style would demand more resources, time, and budget.

Consider trends and innovation

Call it a curse or a boon of the tech and creative industry but what is popular today may not be tomorrow! Just as the gamers’ preferences evolve over time, so does the popularity of game styles. By watching what is currently trending, you can make a more fruitful choice of art style for your game.

Doing so would make your game relevant but innovation is what would set it apart. There are a lot of 3D games that have made their way to unimaginable downloads by not following the mainstream, and believing in their creative vision.

Pro Tip: A balance of both( trend and innovation) is the key to choosing the right 3D game art style!

Emotions you’re trying to evoke

Think of it as, what emotion you want your players to experience while playing your game. Is it nostalgia, excitement, mystery, or scary? Choosing an art style that aligns with the emotion you wish to evoke would help to create an immersive gaming experience.

Among others, the cartoon art style would induce fun and playful emotion while fantasy realism with dark and eerie elements would bring out suspense and tension.

Prototype and iterate

The smartest approach to choosing the right 3D game art style is to sample prototypes of your game with all the art styles and choose the one that suits it the best. Iterating the game art creation would provide you with real-time experience of whether or not the art style aligns with your game theme or narrative allowing you to make more insightful decisions.

You can even test these prototypes in small player focus groups to get an idea of whether the game art style is resonating with the target audience. It would help you to fine-tune your choice of game art style, saving you from last-minute regrets.

Also Read: How to Design Engaging Game Art That Elevates Mobile Gaming Experience?

Why 300Mind for 3D game art creation?

Picture this: your dream game, brought to life with stunning and captivating visuals effectively telling your game story! That is what you get with 300Mind!

300Mind is a team of highly creative game artists with a deeper understanding of various art styles. Our team will create tailored game art after understanding your game’s theme, genre, and vision to provide a cohesive gameplay experience.

We are proficient in handling a wide range of 3D game art needs from character to environment making us your one-stop solution for game creation requirements. Game artists at 300Mind keep up with industry trends and innovations to leverage its benefits in game art creation.

Our commitment to meet deadlines and assurance of creative quality is the reason for our successful projects and satisfied clients. Outsource your game art creation to 300Mind to enable your game to reach its full visual potential.

FAQ about 3D Game Art Style

The post Types of 3D Game Art Style: How to Choose the Right One appeared first on 300Mind Blog.

As players advance through the levels, they feel a sense of pride and accomplishment that motivates them to play more and achieve all rewards. However, what seems easy on the front is a challenging task to take on the backside. A lot goes into game level design to make them engaging and adventurous.

You will know if you have ever tried designing, and you wouldn’t if you never gave it a try. If you want to learn how to design game levels, then our game level design guide will take you through the process and tell you the do’s and don’ts of it. If you want to invest in game level design then it will walk you through the process and help you hire the best professionals for the work.

So read further to understand game level designing in depth.

What is Game Level Design?

Game level design is the foundation upon which a game’s entire experience is built. It is the bridge between imagination and immersion, where players step into the world level-designers have crafted.

In other words, game-level design is the process of developing various environments, spaces, challenges, and experiences within a video game. It includes creating structures, layouts, objects, enemies, interactions, and visual elements that make up the individual levels or stages of the game.

The primary goal of level designing is to offer an engaging, entertaining, and memorable experience to players that keeps them hooked to the game for a long time.

What is the Correlation Between Game Genre and Level Designing?

There are various types and genres of games, each with its unique characteristics, mechanics, and gameplay experiences. You have to design your levels, keeping the game type in mind.

For example, levels in platformer games include challenging jumps, moving platforms, and other creative obstacles. Whereas shooter games feature open spaces for gunfights, cover elements, chokepoints, vantage points, strategic weapon placements, and tactical positioning.

Contrary to this, open-world environment games have an immersive world with diverse regions, dungeons, towns, hidden secrets, multiple paths to explore, and different points of interest. On the other hand, puzzle game levels present clues, interactive elements, and environmental puzzles.

These examples are just the beginning of the connection. There are many other types of games that you have to evaluate and understand before you start working on the game-level design.

Important Parameters of Level Designing

Game level design comprises various parameters that support the creation of balanced, adventurous, and immersive game environments. These parameters shape the gameplay experience and demonstrate how the levels fit into the game design. Here are some of the key parameters of the process.

Research & Analysis

Start with figuring out the basics of game-level design and familiarize yourself with the game genre, layout, and mechanics. Analyze levels of other games of similar genres and determine what works for them and what does not. Examine their layouts, mechanics, features, pacing, obstacles, and rewards, and use visual and audio cues to understand the player’s interest and interactions.

Take inspiration from real-world locations, historical settings, landscapes, and architecture. Their models will help you create believable and distinguished surroundings. Review game design documents and their narratives and objectives and align your vision accordingly.

Concept

Before you start designing game levels, have a clear concept in your mind. A well-detailed concept outlines the overarching idea, theme, and purpose of the level creation. It influences every aspect of the design process, provides a clear vision, and helps designers make decisions about the layout, visuals, gameplay mechanics, and other elements.

Summarize the core ideas and game premise, providing a brief overview of the main features. Define game settings, including atmosphere, period, culture, and other setups.

Gameplay Mechanics

You must define game mechanics because they create the rules and systems that govern gameplay experience and player’s interaction with the game. These mechanics decide the order of levels and their creation, the player’s communication with the game, challenges and obstacles, etc. Game mechanics are the core components of any game, and you must outline them before designing the game levels.

Storytelling

Strong storytelling adds context, depth, and emotional engagement to the game. You should set up a backstory with a clear aim, and players must know what your character intends to achieve in the game. What’s the character’s backstory, and why is it playing the game? Figure it out all before you start the design process.

In a nutshell, when levels are designed with storytelling in mind, they become more immersive and engaging for players.

What are the Stages of Game Level Design?

Game level development involves a series of stages that transform initial concepts into fully realized and playable environments. These stages ensure proper alignment and balance of these levels. Below-mentioned is the preview of the process:

Outline Narratives and Backstory

Think of a backstory you would like to put in the level and place the elements gradually. Each level has a story to tell and a mission to achieve. You have to guide the player through this mission and encourage them to achieve the objective.

Moreover, these narrative elements and backstories help players immerse in the game world, providing context for their actions. So, you should also outline these factors and integrate them into the game.

To do so, start by understanding the overarching game narratives, including the main story, plot, theme, key characters, and their motives. You should know how these narratives fit into the broader context and make an impact.

Also, understand the specific role and backstory that the level plays in advancing the game further. Define its critical points, character development moments, and side quests, adding depth to the gameplay.

Sketching

Use all the collected references and research to visualize the level design and layout. Choose design tools you are comfortable with. You can take paper and pencil or digital tools, like graphic tablets and design software. It’s your choice.

Before putting it down on the paper, define the scale of your sketch. For example, how is it supposed to look, and what will be the overview of the entire level? What will be the role of the player on the stage? How will it lead the player, and what rewards and obstacles does it offer? Start drawing the sketch and add details once you figure out these objectives.

Begin the sketch with a rough outline and use basic geometric shapes to display rooms, corridors, pathways, and other major landmarks. Adjust their size and metrics according to the decided shape and layout.

Sketch out prime locations of player engagement, objectives, puzzles, enemies, and interactive objects to give an arch to the game level. Gradually add fine details to the sketch and include environmental features, terrain, and structures, giving it a sense of the real world. Plan the pacing of the level and mark the moments of tension, exploration, and rest.

Create different variations and multiple sketches of a single design. Explore alternative pathways, placement of key elements, and gameplay scenarios before choosing the final sketch.

Blockout

The Blockout stage is the initial phase of building a basic, simplified version of a game level with primitive shapes and placeholders. The version serves as a rough framework for the layout, mechanics, and spatial arrangement. Designers can test and iterate this framework to ensure performance, balance, and flow before investing time in building detailed art assets. You can follow this process to create a Blockout of the game level.

Choose your software for 3D modeling from Blender, Unreal Engine, SketchUp, Unity, etc. Then create a rough design using the sketch and place basic geometric shapes, like cubes, cylinders, and planes, representing the sketch design. Get proportions and overall shapes in the right order, mass, and volume.

Blockout large structures like floors, platforms, walls, ceilings, and other landmarks with simple shapes, defining the pathways and areas of the gameplay. Arrange these structures to achieve the proper spatial arrangement and flow while considering the player’s movement, potential checkpoints, and open spaces during the arrangement.

Define the playable space and leave enough room for players to move around, jump, run, and interact with objects in the game. Put placeholders, including puzzles, indications, switches, doors, collectibles, enemies, etc. These placeholders will help you test the element coordination with the game level layout.

Blockout all elements and create an efficient layout while minimizing unrequired complexities. Test it thoroughly to know how the final design will look after deployment and make adjustments according to your experience and opinion.

Gray Boxing

Gray boxing refers to creating a more refined version of the game level by replacing the geometric shapes and placeholders of the blockout model with untextured and monochromatic 3D models.

These models represent the level layout, scale, and gameplay features and serve as an intermediary step between the initial Blockout phase and the final level design. The version makes it easier for artists and designers to align their visions and understand the placement of these elements within the environment.

Replace the geometric shapes of the blockout with less detailed 3D models, representing the elements firmly.

Take the support of basic shapes, extrusions, and simple forms to display structures and objects, but avoid intricate details at this stage and keep them for the next one.

Check the objects and level design alignment and keep the color palette monochromatic. You can also try using basic or neutral colors to keep the focus on gameplay and layout rather than visual aesthetics.

Level Designs of Variable Difficulties

After grayboxing, work on the type of level you want to build for your game. Two types of level designs with variable difficulties are as follows:

1. Level Designs with Easy Difficulties

When designing levels for easy difficulties, the primary goal is to provide a more accessible and enjoyable experience for players who may be new to the game or prefer a less challenging experience.

While designing levels with easy difficulties, the main aim is to provide a more accessible and less challenging experience to the players. These levels have simplified obstacles, reduced enemy difficulties, more ammunition and power packs, clear objectives, better chances of survival, lower time pressure, optional challenges, balanced progression, adjustable settings, etc.

When you start working on the design, you must focus on making them more intuitive and forgiving. Along with it, you should reduce the complexity and difficulty of puzzles, platforming sections, or combat encounters.

If your game has combats, make enemies less aggressive and minimize their health risks and damage output. Ensure that fights are easy to win without requiring expert skills.

Reduce hazards like traps, bottomless pits, or environmental dangers. Make the environment less lethal and forgiving, and minimize the chances of falling or making mistakes.

2. Level Designs with Hard Difficulties

While creating levels with hard difficulties, focus on offering a satisfying, effortful, and challenging experience while maintaining fairness. Your players should win the game, but not that easily.

These levels have complex puzzles and challenges, aggressive and powerful enemies, limited checkpoints, fewer chances and resources, time-bound challenges, deadly hazards, traps, and other hardships. These difficulties offer a thrilling ride to players that is hard to master and conquer.

During the design phase, you should put the difficulties and well-designed challenges at the level and avoid introducing unfair mechanics or enemy behaviors. Players must feel that success is achievable but with skill and strategy.

In combat scenarios, make enemies more durable, aggressive, hard to defeat, and intelligent. Let the players achieve victory through clear strategies and advanced tactics.

Encourage proper management of resources and reduce the availability of health packs, ammunition, and power-ups.

Make objectives less obvious and require players to think critically and explore thoroughly to progress. Avoid excessive hand-holding or clear markers.

Provide less time to finish the game and add urgency, forcing players to make quick decisions.

Make hazards and traps more deadly and perilous, but provide clear visual clues to help players get through them.

Character Engagement

Character engagement with the game, environment, collectibles, and enemies is a significant part of level designing. You must design these parts, keeping engagement, exploration, and exploration in mind. Here is a basic overview of this process.

1. Character Interaction with Environment

To ensure proper character engagement with the environment, put yourself in the player’s shoes and think about the game. Ponder over the facts, like what will make the game more interesting or character relatable? Also, consider the player’s expectations, desires, and motivations.

Outline goals, rewards, and obstacles in the environment for players within the level. Plan for character development and growth over time and allow them to make decisions, evolve in the atmosphere, and face challenges.

Use storytelling techniques, including dialogues, cutscenes, and in-game events, to evoke emotional responses from players.

Design landscapes, architecture, props, and other required elements, keeping character interaction in mind. Also, design surface details and choose colors and material properties defining the visual appearance of the assets.

Properly define the environment, so your character interacts with it. Some players just rush through the layout in search of victory or rewards without interacting with the environment. Make sure your players don’t follow this.

2. Character Interaction with Collectables

Apart from interaction with the environment, collecting items also plays a role in diversifying the player’s engagement.

To enhance the interaction, make collectibles visually distinct from the environment. Use contrasting colors and unique shapes of glowing effects to draw attention.

Use audio cues or sounds like soft chimes or others during the pickup of each collectible.

Integrate a clear system that displays players’ progress in collecting items. You can add a counter, progress bar, or checklist with received collectibles.

Put collectibles in different locations, hidden areas, branching paths, and secret passages and attach rewards or achievements with them.

Use indicators to direct players near the collectibles and put visual and auditory cues like highlights or ping on the minimap to help players locate the items.

3. Character Engagement with Enemies

Design a wide range of enemies or a few powerful ones, each with unique abilities, behaviors, and weaknesses. The variety of enemies will encourage players to adapt to better strategies.

Implement intelligent enemies using AI that can react to players’ actions and make tactical decisions.

You can keep different weapons or powers to fight different enemies. The variety will extend the game and keep it unique till the end.

Design levels with environmental elements like destructible objects, cover, traps, and hazards. Allow enemies and players to use these elements during the gameplay.

Give enemies clear visual or audio cues before they execute powerful attacks. It will allow players to react and strategize, adding an element of anticipation and skill.

4. Accessibility of the Environment

Make the environment, landscapes, architecture, props, and other required elements easily accessible for players.

An accessible environment will make players feel connected to the game world, storyline, characters, and challenges they encounter. It will make them feel like they are a part of the world and must achieve victory to survive the ordeals.

Maintain flow and pacing to avoid player’s inactivity and frustration during the breakdowns. Proper pacing and flow ensure a balanced classification of levels and challenges.

From here, we will move on to post design steps of the process. These steps will enhance the overall look and feel of the design and provide final outputs.

Polishing

Integrate all elements and move to polishing to execute the process. The stage involves implementing final touches and refinements to the game level. This stage is all about adding the extra layer of detail, immersion, and quality that makes the game level visually appealing.

Adjust the placement of objects, enemies, obstacles, and interactive elements to ensure a seamless gameplay experience for the player through the level. Improve the visual quality of the level by refining textures, lighting, and effects.

Ensure the game level’s aesthetic alignment with the game’s overall art style and narrative, add more details, enhance textures, adjust color palettes, and refine visual effects. Now, move to the audio elements and review background music, ambient sounds, and special effects. Improve their quality before proceeding to the level testing stage.

Testing and Finalization

Review the layout and conduct quality assurance testing to identify last-minute issues that might have occurred during the polishing process. Address technical issues and fix bugs at the level, including collision problems, AI behavior issues, scripting errors, etc.

Refine user interface elements, like health bars, minimaps, and objective indicators, ensuring their integrations with the level. Perform a final pass of the level to ensure its cohesiveness and make sure all the individual elements work together seamlessly.

What is Bad Level Design?

Bad game-level designs consist of elements that hinder the gameplay experience and disrupt immersion, making the game frustrating and unenjoyable for players. It may have unfair difficulty spikes, poorly placed checkpoints, cluttered and chaotic layouts, repetitive environments, unintuitive puzzles, unresponsive controls, etc.

These levels lack clarity, responsiveness, variety, and visual interest, making the gameplay monotonous, frustrating, and hard to navigate. You can understand bad game-level design with examples:

• If a game has a sudden boss fight, that is more challenging and almost impossible to win compared to previous encounters. Then, it will lead players to uncountable failures and frustration.
• Another scenario of irritation and disinterest could be players repeating a lengthy platforming sequence every time they die.
• If a game doesn’t explain its goals or mechanics adequately, players may feel aimless.
• If a game has unreliable and sudden collision detection, the player may experience frustration while trying to navigate through the obstacles.
• If a challenging side quest offers an unnecessary or underwhelming reward, then players may see the level as a waste of time.

There could be many other examples of bad game level design. You should test it multiple times and make edits according to the player’s behavior and preference to avoid such designs.

Do’s of Game Level Development

The game level design process is a combination of creativity, technical skills, and a deep understanding of player engagement. There are many things to consider while working on design. Below are some of the most important ones:

• Start with a simple layout, slowly put forward new levels, challenges, and obstacles, and allow players to progress, learn, and adapt to the game with time.
• Keep hidden secrets, areas, and rewards throughout the level and encourage players to explore the environment to get them.
• Balance obstacles and intense actions with easy segments, maintain pacing and leave some time for players to relax.
• Use environmental and visual cues to guide players and spike points of interest.
• Experiment with different playstyles and design comprehensive levels catering to various approaches and strategies.
• Collect player data, behavior, completion and engagement times, and other information. Analyze these details to identify areas of improvement.

Don’ts of Game Level Development

It is necessary to avoid certain pitfalls and common mistakes to refrain from damage and technical errors. Here are some of the most important ones:

• Avoid overloading levels with too many elements, rewards, challenges, and elements that could confuse or frustrate players. Anything in excess amount will lose its value.
• Don’t use excessive tutorials or try to guide everywhere. Let players discover mechanics through gameplay.
• Don’t create challenges that support luck or trial-and-error methods. Your challenges should be based on skills and strategies.
• Avoid making the game too hard to play or win. There has to be a limit to difficulties or obstacles. Otherwise, too many failures will frustrate players and diminish their interest.
• Do not directly copy level designs from other similar games without comprehending their mechanics and storyline. You can use them as a reference and adapt and integrate successful design principles into your work.
• Don’t design dead ends that confuse players and restrict their movements. Always keep a way for them to switch the level or move to the next point.
• Don’t make the level seem unrealistic or out of place for players. You can experiment with unique layouts and concepts, but ensure they fit into the game properly.

Required Skill Set for Game Level Design

Game level design is a multidisciplinary field that requires years-long experience and a diverse skill set. You should evaluate the following skills while choosing developers to design levels for your game.

• Expertise using the latest game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity. You must have scripting abilities and know how to use their level editing tools.
• Experience with 3D modeling software like Blender and Maya to build and modify game levels.
• Knowledge of level editing tools like Unity’s Terrain tools and Unreal Engine’s Landscape Editor.
• Familiar with scripting like C# for Unity and Blueprint Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine to create interactive elements and behaviors in your levels.
• Strong knowledge of lighting techniques and shaders for visual effects to set the mood and atmosphere of game levels according to the selected theme.
• Understanding of collision detection and physics systems to make the object interactions believable for players.
• Proficiency in implementing user interface and user experience principles, intuitive HUD elements, and menus in game-level design.
• Skilled in optimizing levels for performance enhancement, draw calls reduction, LOD (Level of Detail) techniques implementation, and asset management.
• Ability to integrate sound effects and music, AI behaviors, NPCs, and interactive elements in the atmosphere and game levels.
• Skilled in creating clear and precise design documents and level notes and using level design patterns and principles such as pacing, player flow, challenge progression, etc.

Why Choose 300Mind for Game Level Development?

Game level design is a specialized field and requires extensive expertise to create level layouts, environments, structures, challenges, and overall experiences that players interact with. You must hire expert-level designers to pace the gameplay and integrate advanced features and moments of thrill, exploration, and relaxation for players.

300Mind is a reputed game design studio and your perfect design partner. Our level designers weave the narratives seamlessly into the gameplay environment. They analyze game layout, theme, design principles, technical constraints, user response, market demand, and many other factors before finalizing the level design for your game.

Our team builds levels that are easy to navigate for beginners and adventurous for hardcore gamers. We help you serve a wide range of audiences, propelling the growth of your game to the ladder of great success.

FAQs on Game Level Design

The post Comprehensive Guide to Game Level Design: From Architects to Adventure appeared first on 300Mind Blog.

Okay, we know you have! But one more question, please! What did you notice or feel connected with while playing the game? Features? Weapons? Sound Effects? Game Layout? Nothing at all, then let us guess better. Umm…characters? Have we cracked the code? Yes, we surely did! It’s a game character or character design.

Of course, this guess was obvious, too! After all, characters are the heart and soul of the game. You interact with them, and you interact through them. They are bound to hold a special place in your heart. But have you ever thought about what goes into making these characters look realistic and attractive? Or have you ever tried designing a character for your game but couldn’t crack the code?

Character designing is a long and creative process that may numb your mind if you don’t follow all the steps. Still, don’t worry. We are here to help you with the game character design guide. The guide covers the types of game characters and takes you through their creation process. So take a look at it to know how game designers created your beloved characters.

What is Character Design?

Character design starts from a concept and ends with an appealing story that the character tells in the game. In other words, character designing is the process of conceptualizing, creating, and developing visual and functional aspects of characters. These aspects include artistic, technical, and narrative elements that bring characters to life within the game. These characters appear in video games and play on behalf of devices or players, following their commands throughout time.

What are the Type of Game Character Designs?

Developers mainly design two types of characters using various software and tools. These types are:

2D Characters

2D characters are designed and portrayed in a two-dimensional space, mostly on a flat surface like a screen or page. They are graphical representations of characters and objects on a flat plane and have height and width as the primary dimensions.

These characters lack the depth and ability to perform certain actions. Their movement is slow and limited, controlled by the players only. However, even though 2D characters lack depth, they still add charm to the gameplay. Expert designers can create engaging experiences within the constraints of a 2D plane.

You can take the example of Mario and Sonic. Both characters were controlled by the players and could move left, right, up, and down. But they were a big hit and brought huge revenues and popularity to the game.

To know more about 2D arts, listen to this podcast.

3D Characters

3D characters function within a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment. 3D characters are created using 3D modeling software.

They have detailed textures, shades, and animation that depicts real-world environment and establish personal connections with players. These characters can move and rotate 360 degrees and interact with the game space. Unlike 2D characters, they have depth in addition to height and width, intricate facial expressions, and natural and immersive movements.

How to Design Game Characters?

Designing game characters is an iterative process that consists of many steps. Here is the overview of the process and step-by-step breakdown.

1. Research and Ideation

It all starts with an idea and moves to the backstory. Before you lay your hands on the design, research the character’s background and understand your concept in depth. Familiarize yourself with the game genre, environment, settings, and mechanics, and set a backstory accordingly. You can seek inspiration from the real world to fit the character into the game world and make the game seem more realistic.

For research, analyze similar games, movies, literature, and other media. Also, collect visual references, including concept art, illustrations, and images that align with the character’s intended style, personality, and role. Demonstrate the character’s role as protagonist, antagonist, or supporting character, and identify its personality traits, aims, vision, thought process, and overall movements.

Also read: A Perfect Guide to Creating a Game Design Document

2. Concept Art Creation

Concept art includes initial visual representation and defining certain characteristics, anatomy, style, and mood of the game character. It explores ideas to design a character’s appearance, personality traits, and role within the game. The process includes defining the overall look and feel of the character on paper or software.

In this process, you have to create various sketches, drawings, and digital paintings while exploring your imagination and different visual directions.

You can follow these tips to achieve perfection in your concept art design.

Art Style

Experiment with various shapes, designs, colors, and art styles. Create a unique and eye-catching design and choose the perfect art style for the character. You can experiment with various art styles, like abstract, stylized, and realistic, and choose the best fit.

Anatomy

Character anatomy involves comprehending and depicting the underlying structure, physical attributes of the body, skeleton, joint placement, muscle structure, facial anatomy, etc. While defining anatomy, understand the art style in-depth and break it into shapes. You should know how you want your character to look after this process.

You can gather visual references, photographs, illustrations, and anatomical diagrams of human, animal, or shape anatomy and study these in detail. During the study, understand the proportions, analyze specific art styles, and the visual aesthetic of the character, bone structure, muscles, and joints. At last, add anatomical details and exaggeration according to the game’s backstory, environment, and visual representations.

Silhouette

This step involves defining distinct and recognizable outlines and shapes of the character in silhouette form to make the character detailed and identifiable. During this step, you must focus on creating distinctive shapes, silhouette readability, stylization, details, visual impact, and appeal, effective use of colors, outlines, and storytelling.

Your silhouette should be unique and instantly recognizable. It must convey the overall structure, proportions, and key elements at a glance. Players should be able to identify the character after seeing its silhouettes.

Outfits, Themes, and Accessories

These factors are important for character design. You should create the concept art based on geographical location and cultural representation of the gameplay. If your game is based on a forest theme then design your character and choose clothes, accessories, weapons, and other items representing the forest theme.

If it is based in a city, beach, or some other location, design the clothes, weapons, and other elements accordingly. Your character should belong to the background. Don’t make it look like an alien to the surroundings. Moreover, these clothes and weapons will make the character more appealing and easy to connect with.

Expressions and Turnarounds

Before starting this step, you should be well-versed with your character and its role in the game. You must know what it brings to the story, how it reacts to certain situations, and what are its aims. You should know your character’s mood better.

What is it, smart, clever, joyful, sad, angry, mischievous, goofy, or secretive? Consider the overall vibe of the gameplay, story, and character and define mood and expressions accordingly.

Define your character’s turnaround and show it in different poses. You should present a 360-degree view of the character to make it look realistic and believable. You can rotate the character in different directions to analyze how it looks when it turnarounds.

Limitations

You can put certain restrictions or limitations on your character. You can make the character unable to do some tasks like high jumps, rolls, or any other tasks that make the character seem imperfect. These limitations will make the character more realistic and engaging.

After considering these points, create a few designs and finalize one and proceed forward to complete the rest of the process. From this step, we will switch to 3D character design. The process ends here if you are designing a 2D character. You can do the final changes, animate the character and render it. Also, ensure its proper functionalities and preview the design before rendering.

3. Modelling

The process of character modeling includes creating 3D digital assets of characters for gameplay. Here is an overview of the steps included in the process:

Base Mesh Creation

Create a basic 3D mesh representing the character design. Define its overall shape, proportions, and other elements in this base using 3D modeling software like Blender and others.

Sculpting

During this step, you have to focus on adding fine details, surface details like scars, skin bumps and pores, and intricate features. Load your existing design into sculpting software like Blender. Build a new detail layer that enables you to expand and manipulate high-resolution sculpting without changing or editing the base mesh.

Block out major volumes and shapes and use large brushes to sculpt the overall proportions and prime features. Mainly focus on. Anatomy, figure scaling, and facial structure.

Slowly sculpt the rest body and work on secondary forms, like wrinkles, skin pores, veins, and small muscle details. Use small brushes to obtain intricate textures and patterns.

Later, add surface textures while controlling the depth and intensity of the design. At last, smooth out rough edges and areas and ensure a natural flow of details and design consistency.

Retopology

Rebuild the character geometry using the high-resolution sculpt or base mesh and create a lower-resolution design with clean and optimized topology. Also, adjust the edge flow to maintain the loop integrity, and evenly distribute quads and edge loops, aligning it with the anatomy.

Place vertices strategically to define major anatomical landmarks, such as joints, muscle groups, and prominent features like the eyes, nose, and mouth. This initial placement establishes the character’s basic form.

Establish the character’s basic form and place vertices strategically to highlight prime features, including muscle groups, joints, and facial structures like eyes, nose, and mouth.

After this step, plan the direction of the edge flow to connect the line with vertices across the surface. Keep the edge flow natural and anticipate its movement and deformities during animation.

Define “edge loops” and circular chains of connected edges encircling certain parts of the character. Perform loop topology to control deformation and ensure a strong framework and flawless movements.

UV Mapping

It unwraps a 3D model’s surface onto a 2D plane. This mapping ensures the coordination of UV for texture application onto the 3D model. To obtain perfection in this process, finalize your 3D character with proper topology, edge flow, detailing, sculpting, and texturing.

Analyze the geometry of the character and visualize the unwrapping process. Outline areas requiring high texture detail and seams and define the overall distribution of UV space. Place the seams in less visible areas to minimize their impact on the texture.

Unwrap the UVs using a UV mapping tool, cut the mesh, and unfold it onto the UV plane. Arrange and pack the UV islands tightly to increase texture resolution and minimize wasted UV space.

Texturing

Apply textures to the character’s surface, add colors and details, and work on clothing, weapons, or other accessories to make it more realistic and visually appealing. You can hand paint textures or use tools to add realistic materials and surface details justifying the art style, concept art design, and game environment.

Also read: Game Environment Modeling – Unveiling Secrets to Keep Players Engaged

4. Rigging

It includes building a digital skeleton with controls, allowing the character to move and deform realistically in the game environment. To conclude this process, work on the bone structure, joints, spine, limbs, and facial features. Carefully position joints to make the skeleton serve as the framework for character movement.

Create control rigs to allow animators to pose and animate the character intuitively. Apply constraints and define limitations to ensure movements within the anatomical range.

5. Skinning

The process of skinning includes attaching the character’s mesh to the skeleton to ensure proper deformation during animation. You should start the process by assigning ‘skin weights’ to each vertex. Then use skinning tools to paint skin weights.

Adjust the influence of bones of vertices to get natural deformation. Skin the character’s features and expressions, test the structure for deformation, and adjust skin weight to avoid stretching or distortion.

6. Animations

In video games, most animations are created using other short animations. Character actions are tie-ups of many animations together in sequence. You will have to overlap these animations in a series. While animating, you must maintain fluidity, readability, and context. Your character and its movements need to sync properly to move further.

You must prepare an outline of the types of animations you want to add to the character. Consider actions like walking, running, attacking, idle poses, jumping, and other activities according to the gameplay theme.

Create keyframe animations, utilize animation layers to combine and blend multiple animations, and decide timing and spacing while ensuring a realistic sense of movement. Work on subtle details, test them thoroughly and optimize the animation for performance.

7. Final Touch-Ups and Rendering

Look out for the things you have left or missed and add those details. Adjust your character shape and structure to match the game environment. Work on your mistakes and imperfections and complete whatever is left. Test the character design and put it on render after ensuring perfection and a natural look and feel.

What are the Prime Factors of Game Character Designing?

Character design is a multifaceted process that explores various factors to develop compelling and memorable characters for video games. Some of the prime factors of the process are as follows:

Adaption of Art Styles

Art style adaption and determining the game’s visual style is a crucial part of the design process. You can go with realistic, stylized, cartoonish, or other distinctive approaches, but they must set the mood and tone of the game.

Exaggerated cartoon artstyle

Realistic art style

Stylized art style

Perfect art style ensures consistency between characters, environment, and other assets, creating a unified and believable universe. Moreover, a well-adapted art style often garners players’ attention, immersing them in the game. Characters that resonate with the art style have the potential to form an emotional connection with the players.

Personality and Narratives

Characters with different personalities forge emotional connections with players. Relatable traits and quirks make characters feel like real individuals, allowing players to see themselves in the character’s shoes.

Similarly, an engaging narrative puts characters through different challenges and make them undergo development and growth phase over time. They bring compelling arcs, captivating players for a longer period. All in all, the characters’ attractive personalities and narratives influence players and add depth to the dialogues and gameplay.

Conventional Design Choices

Conventional designs stand for established and well-recognized design elements, styles, or traits that players have seen in other games, media, and cultural events. They communicate characters’ important aspects, personality traits, and backstories without much narration and exposition, evoking a sense of familiarity with their appearance. They also streamline communication and fit within the game genre or thematic norms.

Collaborative Design Approach

Collaborative designing includes a multidisciplinary approach in which the team works in harmony to create and refine the game character. In this process, artists create visual concepts, writers work on backstories, designers define gameplay mechanics, and animators bring the character to life through movements. The entire process ensures alignment on visual, narrative, and gameplay aspects with the character.

Animation and Interaction

Animations convey emotions, reactions, and personalities, bringing charm and adding life to characters. Well-detailed animations enhance characters’ communication and provide visual cues to players, helping them understand the character’s state, actions, and gameplay mechanics. 

Fluid and natural animations help characters move and behave realistically, engaging players with the environment.

Tailored Presentation

Tailored presentation is the process of the character’s introduction, presentation, development, and alignment with the game environment, narrative, mechanics, etc. It impacts several factors, like story narration, character arcs, player perspective, gameplay integrations, emotional impact, pacing, visual identity, and playing experience.

Expert game character designers keep these prime factors in mind while drafting the characters. They strike a balance between artistic vision, technical elements, and gameplay functionalities. The synergy among these factors helps create compelling, engaging, and immersive characters, enhancing the gameplay experience.

Required Skill Set to Design Game Characters

As a game character designer, you must have a combination of artistic, technical, and creative skills. Some of them are below-mentioned:

• Experienced in creating visually appealing and memorable character designs that convey distinct personalities, emotions, and uniqueness
• Ability to create concept art exploring different visual styles, expressions, poses, and body shapes
• Solid understanding of human and creature anatomy, proportions, and character styling
• In-depth knowledge of color shading, lighting, color harmony, and color psychology
• Mastery in sketching and ideation to quickly translate imaginations into concepts onto paper or digital platforms
• Capability to use digital art tools, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and so on
• Expertise in using 3D modeling software, including Autodesk Maya, ZBrush, Blender, and many other
• Knowledge of texture mapping, material creation, shading, character rigging, animation principles, and sculpting

Why Hire 300Mind to Design Your Next Character?

Well-designed characters resonate with players emotionally, fostering strong connections and evoking empathy, excitement, and attachments. You must work hard, experiment with various art styles and genres, implement effective strategies, and edit the final output down the line until you achieve perfection.

You can consider hiring an experienced game development company like 300Mind if you lack the expertise and required skills.

We are an eminent game development studio possessing boundless expertise in game character design. Our designers have an in-depth understanding of design principles, anatomy, proportions, and aesthetics. They efficaciously use their skills to create visually appealing, functional, and impeccable characters for your game.

Our expert team stays updated with the latest trends, tools, and techniques in character design. They understand the evolving demands of the gaming industry and create characters after analyzing audience preferences and perspectives. They anticipate issues related to modeling, rigging, skinning, and animations and find creative solutions to prevent technical constraints during the development process.

300Mind team brings a unique perspective and innovative ideas to the table to infuse distinctive traits, personality, and storytelling elements into characters. We are an ideal company to design your memorable and engaging game character.

Also read: Key Factors to Consider When Outsourcing Your Game Art Project

FAQs on Game Character Design

The post The Ultimate Game Character Design Guide: From Ideation to Creation appeared first on 300Mind Blog.

Are you a video game lover? Of course, you are! So, you probably have played FIFA Soccer, Call of Duty, Uncharted, and Asphalt 9: Legends, like other 3D games. How was your gaming experience then? It must be captivating, engaging, exciting, and thrilling. But do you know what makes them such interesting games? It’s the 3D animation used in such video games.

With its three-dimensional magic movements, 3D animation brings many imaginations to life that fuels the soul into your game. Because of the depth and realism like wonders done by 3D animation, you can provide your players with a top-notch gaming experience.

But how to effectively use 3D animation in your video game is the biggest question. Worry not, as 3D animation experts are here to help you!

In this guide, we have shared our secret code to creatively and strategically use 3D animation in games, so your game can do wonders like other popular 3D video games.

So, let’s begin our 3D game animation journey!

What Is 3D Game Animation?

3D animation is a process used to create moving screens, characters, and objects in a three-dimensional space. These moving objects are 3D modeled and brought to life using computer-generated graphics, also known as CGI. So, this is the 3D animation that gives us the illusion of their movement and motion.

Unlike 2D game art and animations created on a flat surface, it provides depth and a sense of realism to the object and its motion by stimulating light, shadow, and perspective. So, 3D animation is preferred in concepts where intricate and lifelike animations are required to showcase complex environments, scenes, and characters.

3D animation for games covers the integration of 3D characters, environment, objects, and gameplay, following players’ interactions with the game.

In this, skilled 3D game artists utilize modeling and animation tools to model game entities and bring them to life using keyframes, skeletal animation, physics simulation, and other techniques. This way, the game development team can provide players with a realistic and dynamic gaming experience.

What are the Different Types of 3D Animation You Can Utilize in Your Games?

Based on the types of graphics and object modeling for games, it can also be done in different manners. So, here are different types of 3D animation you can apply to your video games:

Keyframe Animation

It’s a traditional animation technique where 3D animators manually create specific keyframes for the location, rotation, and scale of an object in a three-dimensional space. With this, they also define starting and ending points of an animation. Then they animate these keyframes where the object appears to move the screens smoothly over time.

Let’s take an example of a walk cycle animation of a human character. In this, keyframes are set for the position of limbs and torso on every frame to create the illusion of walking. See the image below for a better understanding:

So, once all keyframes are done, animated, and rendered, you will see something like the one shown in the video given below:

So, that’s how the keyframe animation works.

Skeletal Animation

This type of animation is extensively used in character animation. In this, animators use the bone or rig structure of characters and move their skeletons to make, capture, and animate their movements.

Have you watched puppet shows before? If yes, then this skeletal animation is created just like that.

Physics-based Animation

It is a successor technique to keyframe animation that helps you animate your game subjects in a way that they do not fall into unnatural movements that many games have witnessed like Fallout76, PUBG, etc.

In physics-based animation, artists use physics simulations to achieve natural and realistic movements of the game subject while considering factors like gravity, friction, and collisions.

You can also utilize physics-based animation in different types of concepts and subjects utilizing its sub-types:

Rigid Body Animation: It simulates the solid object’s movements based on its real-world physics values, such as weight and gravity. Falling subjects, bouncing balls, etc., are great examples of this type.

Fluid Animation: As the name suggests, this type of animation is done in the fluid elements, such as waterfall, flowing river, lava, etc., by considering its properties like viscosity, density, and turbulence.

Pyro Animation: In this, the flow of the fire, smoke, and gas elements’ motions are simulated based on factors like temperature, density, and buoyancy. So, you can provide your players with the realistic experience of their game avatar experiencing real-world-like fire and smoke.

Fabric Animation: Using this, you can fuel fabrics, like curtains, clothes, etc., with their natural stiffness, elastic, and wavering movements.

Particle Animation: In this game environment, such as trees, fireworks, leaves, etc., are animated to create their movement as they act in the real world.

Popular games like FIFA and Assassin’s Creed have used physics-based animation to provide their players realistic gaming experience.

Stop Motion Animation

If you have this hobby of art, you must have dreamt of creating a scrapbook of animation in which each page shows the progress of your concept. When turning all pages quickly in sequence, you get to experience the illusion of them moving. That’s how the concept of animation came to life.

So this type of animation is known as stop-motion animation. In the case of games, it is done with the help of a computer, sketch, and animation software.

Motion Capture (MoCap) Animation

It is a very highly advanced animation type extensively used in movies and bigger games with hyperrealistic animation requirements. In this, an actor is hired to perform the act (i.e., running, walking, falling, jumping, fights, eyelids movements, etc.), which is recorded using the motion capture suit.

Later, the animator uses that act to create related rigging for respective 3D models and animate accordingly.

Procedural Animation

Procedural animation is achieved through logical conditions or rules set on an object using nodes. It employs less data as input compared to others and lets animators easily work on edits.

You can use it to show the growth of vegetation or vines growing on a surface like a wall or tree. To execute it, the logic for the object and texture is used to set the growth and density of vines.

Artists at 300Mind, always try to do something creative, out-of-the-box. A few months back, they created and posted “Procedural Fence, Brick & Vegetation Generator” in Blender, which was also featured in the category of “the best Blender Goodie in the Modifier Setups.”

These are only a few types of 3D animation, but there are others as well. After reading these animation types, you must be getting thoughts like how they can benefit you. Well, the next section is all about that.

What Benefits Can 3D Animation Bring to Your Video Game?

3D animation in games can bring many benefits, and some of the popular ones are stated below:

Realism and Immersion

With the help of 3D animation, the game development team can help you create realistic and immersive game worlds with lifelike characters, objects, and environments. It lets you create a virtual universe that feels alive. With this, you can give your players a highly captivating gaming experience.

More Interactive Game Environment

Your game environment is itself a new reality/universe to players, which they surfer and delve into. Using 3D game animation, you can enable players with a game environment with which they can virtually interact, manipulate elements, and explore them in a way like they are traveling a completely new world. It creates a positive and additive feeling for players, which makes them play it often.

Smoother Game Performance

The application of 3D animation in games allows players to move smoothly and realistically. Meaning, every action commanded is executed in real-time, putting more emphasis on the game’s performance. Of course, apart from the animation part, the high standard of coding also helps to make the gaming experience smoother.

Attention to Details

As 3D animation promises realism and immersion, it will focus on details. So, when using it, you can give character design all details for facial expressions, emotions, and subtle movements.

Apart from that, the environment of your game also provides players with a more lifelike feeling, improving their attention to the game. All of these elevate your game’s narratives.

Cinematic Cutscenes

If your game concept is similar to Uncharted, Jumanji, and cinematic feel-like games, 3D animation can do wonders for you. It helps you create cinematic cutscenes that advance your game’s storyline and provide impactful moments for players. The continuity and depth of narration in your games can help you bring an enriching gaming experience to life.

Future-proofing

It’s not that long since 3D animation entered the media and gaming industry. Since its inception, its progress has been continuous and quite notable. And we all have witnessed it. So, not just us and you but anyone can say that the 3D animation is going to stay here for longer.

3D animation will advance towards becoming even more realistic than it is today. And with it, it will take the gaming industry to a great extent. So, if you’re planning to use 3D game animation, then do it without a doubt because it is and will remain relevant and competitive in this rapidly evolving gaming industry.

Increased Player Retention

With 3D game animation employing realism, immersion, future-proof, and much more in your game, it’s obvious that your player will find it interesting. And their interest in the game will make them come back often to play, leading to surety for player retention. 

All of these benefits are okay, but you do want to know the most popular ways to add 3D animation to your video games. Let’s explore that!

How is 3D Animation Used in Games?

As you’re here reading this from the start, you might have an idea of how 3D animation is utilized in games. Okay, let’s not extend this guessing game and explore three effective ways you can use 3D animation in your next video game:

Character Animation

Have you ever thought about how your avatar is in the game, meaning the character jumps, walks, runs, and does all the actions you’ve commanded?

All of these movements and actions of virtual characters are brought alive with the help of character animation. Your game character concept and design are made realistic and lively using different 3D animation types, which we discussed above. It allows you to control your game and make them interact with other game objects the way you’ve wanted them to.

Considering the impact of 3D character design and animation, we have 3D modeled and animated our star character of Forbidden Islands to showcase its actions in the game arena.

The character animation in this game is done to make this character smoothly walk, run, jump, and pick up objects, the way you want to navigate it. See the GIF given below for better insights:

Environment Animation

Along with making the game characters look realistic with character animation, you should not leave your game environment simple and sketchy. You can take the help of game environment animation to make this realistic and lifelike.

Starting from terrain to architecture, props, objects, water bodies, weather effects, and many other things composed under a game environment can be animated using physics-based animation.

This way, you can make your players immersed in the virtual game space you’ve created and enjoy it. Just the way, we have done environment animation for our Stylized Aztec concept as shown below:

Special Effects

When playing any high-resolution and animation-based game, you must have noticed special effects like fire, smoke, lightning, etc. Along with that, you do know how realistic they look. Want to know a secret? Realism in the game’s special effects is brought up with the help of 3D game animation techniques.

So, harness the power of 3D video game animation, elevate the gaming experience of your players, and make them become dedicated players.

See how we have leveraged animation for the special effects of our game – Valley of War, to make it look eye-catchy and provide realistic gaming feels to the players.

Till now, you have gathered a lot of information about 3D animation in games but must be curious to know tools that can help you make it happen.

What Tools to Use For 3D Game Animation?

You will find countless tools for 3D game animation, but here are a few that most game animation experts suggest use for your game project:

Blender

Blender is a free, open-source companion for 3D game animators to fuel life into their gaming concepts with modeling and animation. It provides tools for modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, and more.

It gives artists the freedom to create character, object, and environment animation through keyframe animation, skeleton rigs, and shape keys. It offers different animation feature sets for various areas, like character pose, independent movement controls, kinematics for fast poses, and sound synchronization.

Not just that, Blender also allows the use of rigging to model and animate posable characters with enveloping, skeleton, weight painting, mirror functionality, bone structure, etc.

In short, the range of features of Blenders makes it an ideal match to create stunning visual effects and character animations when working with complex game environments.

Autodesk Maya

Maya is a robust industry-standard tool widely used to provide animation for films, creative ads, and game development. You can even call Maya a successor of Blender for character rigging and animation, as it offers toolkits to add character behaviors and interactions.

It lets you add advanced layers to rigging and animation. Moreover, the integration with game engines, like Unity, makes it a convenient option to choose as it enables easy transfer of gaming assets and animation across software and game development environments.

Unlike Blender, Maya is a licensed/subscription-based product, which can lead to thinking twice before employing it. However, it’s worth investing in such a robust animation tool.

Cascadeur

In the world of 3D game animation tools, Cascadeur is a specialized tool designed explicitly for creating realistic physics-based animations, especially character animation. Using physics principles, it simulates the animation scenarios to generate natural and believable movements.

Cascadeur also helps with motion caption animation and easily integrates its MoCap data to better refine animations blended with physics-based simulations.

In short, Cascadeur is highly recommended for dynamic poses and realistic 3D game animations.

After knowing the tools, you will also feel curious to know more about the process of creating 3D game animation.

How to Create 3D Game Animation?

Here’s a step-by-step process of creating a 3D game animation to elevate your gaming experience:

Conceptualize the Game Animation Needs

There was an idea that emerged for us to discuss this topic. To develop an enthralling game with out-of-the-box animation, you need to dream about it and brainstorm on it to conceptualize it and work on the game animation.

It’s always about perfecting the concept and being sure about it before sending it for production. That way, you can utilize the best potential of 3D animation in your pivotal game.

Prepare the Game Storyboarding

Storyboarding is a crucial stage in game development in which you plan everything from game flow to animation and graphics needs, along with much more.

For this, you might need the help of a storyboard artist to prepare sketches of each scene, character actions, cinematic directions, visual effects, and much more. Using this, you can create game concept art, to begin with your game design.

Let’s take a look at the concept sketch of a game character on one screen who is a student and thinking of going on an adventure with a happy face.

The below-shown image will give you an idea of what that screen will look like when it is 3D modeled.  Using this drawing, your 3D artist will model it in something like this:

This was just an example of how the game storyboarding works. The ultimate goal of using game storyboarding is to ensure the smooth flow of game design and development.

Also read: Why should you create a game design document?

3D Modeling

After all the conceptualization and planning phases, the modeling is the functioning part where your imagination starts to get shape. An initial 3D model is built using a mesh of points, lines, and curves. Your computer sees this basic 3D model as a geometrical shape and we as a skeleton.

After adding the details, colors, and textures, you can see that model as a real object. You can use Blender, Autodesk Maya, and other popular 3D modeling software that we mentioned above for this task.

Add Details and Textures

For now, just the geometry-based 3D model is done. You still have a lot of detailing and texturing work remaining in the object’s outer layer.

The detailing and texturing can include skin, fur, hair for a character, metal finish for the machine, apparel, brickwork for the wall, and much more.

You can apply all of this texturing using tools like Adobe Substance Painter, Blender, etc., which play a small part yet has a huge impact on 3D modeling.

Apply Rigs

Rigging is the process that helps you apply a skeletal framework with rigs in an animation. Using this, you can control the movements of characters and gaming objects. But how can you identify rig structure in the character or object? See the media attached below for better reference:

In the above media, you can see the skeletal/joint-like structure with overlaid boxes and spheres. That’s your rig structure applied to the 3D character model to control the movements of this character and execute the character animation.

Start Animating the Game Subjects

In the model, once the blocking has been approved, you can move the rigs of the game objects and characters to bring them into action and record the animation.

While animating the game subjects, you also apply visual effects, apply lights, and do much more to make that scene alive. 

Rendering

The animator animates each game scene on parted screens, but to bring that into one whole piece, you need the help of rendering. But what is it?

Well, rendering is the process of assembling all animation sequences and playing them in line to set perfectly so you can enjoy an entire scene in synchronization.

This rendering process not only helps you get your animated pieces of the game in synchronization but also music and foley.

During this process, you can also fix game graphics compositions and visual effects to make your game animation look more realistic as a final result.

Now that you have gone through the 3D game animation process, what about the best practices and considerations? Don’t you worry! The next section will cover all the information you need.

3D Game Animation Best Practices

Let’s take a look at some of the 3D game animation best practices to achieve the result you want without falling into any hurdles:

Follow the Latest Game Animation Technology Trend

The evolution of technology is inevitable, and keeping up with it all the time can be challenging.

Hence, the selection of the right 3D game animation tools and team becomes to save you time and get a better gaming solution.

When selecting your game development team, you should ensure that they are using the latest version of tools and using popular tools, like Unity, Unreal Engine, Autodesk Maya, 3Ds Max, After Effects, and other tools.

After all, their mastery of such powerful gaming tools can benefit you.

Observe Real World Scenes

Nowadays, 3D animations in games are getting so realistic, making it hard to guess whether it is a graphics work or a real-world scenario. Well, I have faced this confusion many times. Have you?

It’s the magic created by the thorough observation of the 3D animator. The more observer – your 3D animator is, the better realism they can fuel into your game subjects. Along with it, the knowledge of physics concepts also gets on the road, which the animator must have.

The knowledge of physics, gravity, and much more calculations helps them make game subjects do movements more convincingly.

Follow Human Emotions

If your 3D game includes characters that require complicated interactions, then the animator has a lot to work on. They need to spend more time observing and understanding human facial expressions and the physics behind them and then showcase them in the character’s facial animation. And that’s the best practice behind knowing more about human emotions.

If the 3D animation artists are quite experienced, then they are well-versed in this kind of knowledge. Using these skills will help you create perfect character facial animation mimicking exact human emotions.

Go from Basics to Details

Animation is quite an attention-taking process and contains many details in which anyone can easily get lost. Hence, there’s an expert suggested game animation process that every game animator should follow to avoid ongoing distractions.

All of this starts with game storyboarding and rough paper sketches. After that, the core design process takes place with 3D modeling, detailing, texturing, layout, rigging, and ongoing adjustments to lights, shadows, and other details.

How Much Does a 3D Game Animation Service Cost?

Estimating the cost of 3D game animation service is quite a complex task due to various affecting factors, such as:

• Animation complexities;
• The quality of the animation;
• Wow, effects needed to be included in game animation;
• Required experience level of the 3D game animators;
• The country of the game animator;
• The scope of the project, and many others.

If you see, there are various engagement models available for this service. However, amongst those, only a few are widely popular, which are:

Hourly Rate: In which you’ll hire the talent for certain weeks or months, or a year based on mutually agreed working hours in a day.

Fixed Cost: Here, you get to provide your clear game animation requirements, and the team will get it done within a certain time as agreed upon.

Project-based Cost: Here, you’ll hire a game development studio for the entire game development project, from conceptualization to game design to animation to development and post-delivery fixes and updates.

Among these three, many experts suggest going for hourly hiring, meaning dedicated hiring, where your hired team will work dedicatedly for your gaming project.

How Can 300Mind Become Your 3D Game Animation Partner?

Overall, we can say 3D animation in games has revolutionized the way we play and experience games. They have enabled us to develop games with realistic graphics and animation. Of course, the use of game animation creates a positive impact on players, leading to your game business benefits. Then why not employ it? To do so, you do need the help of expert 3D game animation experts.

That’s where 300Mind comes into the picture. We have a dedicated team of 3D animation experts who are highly skilled and exceptionally creative, supremely competitive to work on your gaming project no matter what kind of complex concept it is.

So got an amazing game development and animation idea? Share your requirements with us to get an effective solution with cost estimation.

FAQs on 3D Game Animation

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