Thread by @delaneykingrox

One area of #gamedev I like to talk to game artist students about is setting up your creative workspace within your computer.

The workspace I refer to is the virtual creative space you navigate around in every day. It's how you set up your desktop, file structures, tools and engine so that you get into a state of effortless and empowered creation.

If you think of a real craft space such as a wood working studio, how your tools, materials, machines, lights and benches are laid out makes a massive difference to your work.

If you have to get a stepladder out to get those wood stains from the top shelf, you are less likely...

...to use them. And when you do, you have to stop your work flow to get the ladder out and put it away.

The same applies to your creative space inside the computer.

Your virtual workspace is where you will be spending the majority of your life if you are a game artist. So it pays to take some time to think about this.

Let's start with the most important aspect- effortlessly importing and exporting assets back and forth between apps and engine.
Students often see importing as a technical step near the end of their work that they hope to spend little time doing, if at all.

Usually they are given the task of making a character, which takes a few weeks, and then they stick it in the game at the end -usually after a bit of swearing, dialling in values the teacher has given them and generally wanting it to be over as soon as possible.

Instead, I suggest you start with the engine and your authoring app open and get familiar with throwing stuff back and forth between them.

Make a box that is 1 meter square. Import that into your engine.
Now set up your space to make sure the scale matches, the grid, and

The forward facing is good. (Most engines and 3d apps don't use the same cartesian space, with some left handed, some right handed, some Z up, some Y up etc).

Having done that, make a boxy person and import that. Then take your model into zbrush and back, then into engine.

Getting comfortable with that process is like building a bridge across a stream in your village. You are going to be walking back and forth between your engine and tools, so making that walk effortless is important.