Learning to model as done within the Video Games Industry

Hi guys well i haven't posted anything up here of late and i have been thinking of a project i could get stuck into. So i have decided that i am going to start modelling some environmental work that you may find in a game like the Motorstorm series or any driving game for that matter.

The first thing i would like to point out is that there seems to be a dramatic difference in how a developer would build an object for a video game and the way that a student would be shown how to build academically.

• In the industry optimization is very important and the artist must optimize their models as much as possible. So artists have no problem using triangles in their models to get the best results. I still believe that a developer would attempt to use quads where possible but the priority is to to keep tri counts down to a bare minimum.
• In college or university speaking from a personal account i was always shown to work in quads as much as possible. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being told to work in quads and in fact it is very good practice to do so. If there is anyone reading this i would suggest to keep to quads as much as possible.

I have decided to start off with something quite easy to build, well when i say easy as you will see things are not as easy as it seems.

I started off by picking some reference material from the internet and i have chosen to try and build a traffic cone. Reference material is vital to any build that you will make so get as much material as possible. Here some of the reference material:

This is very much a learning process for myself but thought that i would post everything that i have been shown by people in the industry. Hopefully John Dwyer and Nick Sadler at SCEE will put some input into this process, but please feel free to add comments.