But you always need to evaluate if these details will really be essential if your assets is to be placed in a dark corner of a room, or hidden by other assets. Sometime, Adding too much story and detail on the asset can feel heavy and create visual noise which may become an issue once it’s placed in a fully set dressed environment. So you sometime have to let go a bit and favor a modest layer of generic dirt.

However, If the goal of the object is to impress the player by having a crucial role in the theme, mood or composition of the scene (Hero props), then it deserves that you spend some days on it. Of course, reality is never that binary… Sometimes you have to take in account how big is the object on the screen even if it’s a generic asset, such as a building facade. In that case, it obviously also merits your complete and deepest love

Lit Materials

As said previously, we’re not in charge of a precise level and its lighting. We get an object, often already designed and modeled and we add some texture magic on. Nowadays texturing is getting easier and easier with new software like Substance. If you want your work to be unique, you’ll principally have to find ideas, not techniques. Your goal is to find the little details, the right story to tell into your texture.