game ready

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Austeja from CGTrader

Hi Trippy

"Game-ready" is an ambiguous term that has never been written in stone because it changes with time. The definition itself is bandied about by people that haven't the faintest idea of its meaning at all.

I'll try to give some points that I feel, and what the industry has asked of me that denote a "game-ready" model.

1. First and foremost, a good topology made of tri-shapes or quads that can easily be split into tris by the game-engine you're creating for. NEVER Ngons.

2. The above is one of the many reasons why Blender models are shunned by the gaming industry and prefer Maya and 3DS. Blender cuts up your model on saving into what it thinks are tris, but fails 99% of the time to get it right. It also has exporting issues with several popular formats including FBX and Collada. (The Blender lovers will hate me for this one lol)

3. A small "game-ready" model, such as a background prop must always use a single texture set, i.e. A single UV map that is utilized to the maximum and a single material. This allows the game-engine to use a single draw-call when rendering the model on-screen, therefore saving valuable processor time for more important things like characters and foreground meshes.

4. Textures should show good use of normal mapping where possible instead of hard surface modelling, this will allow the use of lower polygon models, again, saving processor time and effort.

5. Textures should be of appropriate resolution for the task at hand, and also should be supplied in powers of 2. i.e. 512, 1024, 2048. (2048 appears to be the current average for the past couple of years when I've been employed to make sets).

6. Wherever possible use high to low poly baking. Again, it's all about saving time and effort.

I could go on forever here but I think that's enough explanation for now. Lots of models on here are game-ready, but lots are not. Your best bet is to contact the creator directly and let them know what you want from their model and how you're going to use it and I'm sure you will get the answers you're looking for.

Good luck!

Simon.

This is a very good guide by Simon Griffiths. I think that nowdays "game ready asset" is an asset purposefully made for specific engine. Days when requirements for game assets were more or less the same are long gone.