No, it doesn't take vastly longer.
You have all kinds of tools to assist - and the poly count is the absolutely LEAST significant aspect of creating any kind of model. You don't seem to know anything about that which you're talking. Polycount is basically just a number you enter and from there it's how fast your hardware can render it.
Ironically, I was working on this in-between posting, I'd saved pictures of the process for an interest piece post on my blog :
http://img36.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=76927430.jpg
Strangely co-incidental, the fact that the more time I spent on it, the higher the polycount went, generally. I wonder, what could the connection between those two numbers be...?
I wish I was as knowledgeable as you DArtagnan. Please, help me out, where is the "create my art for me" button in Max, I've obviously overlooked it. The couple of hours I've spent on this a total waste, so tragic.
Textures are basically images - and depending on what kind of texture, they're usually taken from some kind of auto-generated source - like a photograph. That doesn't take longer in any way.
And paintings are basically paint, on a canvas. A more complex painting doesn't take longer, in any way, than a less complex one. Because they are both created from paints, right?
Clearly, you've never tried to make a decent texture beyond a few wall textures culled from some photos then.
Animation tools are so far ahead of what they were in the past, that it's hard to even fathom.
Hard to fathom? It's not black magic mate, read the help files and do a bit of browsing as to the principles. When you understand them, come back to us and we will discuss how much work it actually takes to make animations. Again, no "just do it all for me" button. You can mo-cap it, but that is still a good chunk of time and money. IIRC, AssCreed had a couple of thousand animations for Altair alone.
and most developers re-use whatever paths and routines they made in the past.
Rubbish. But you can
prove that is the general rule, yes?
Valve have been using their source engine for god knows how many years now, and though they tweak it constantly, it's mostly the same thing. You really want to claim they don't re-use all that technology each time they sit down and create something?
Are you on some form of drugs? The artwork is what I was talking about, and the artwork from L4D, HL2 and TF2 is VERY different. That all had to be created for those games, which covers a large part of the development time even given the use of a shared engine. Hell, does anyone remember how long it takes Valve to push out HL2 episodes? What do you think they are doing during that time, marketing and hype?
You're not seeing this from the correct angle. Along with 10 more tools, you suddenly have 10 more hands to use them with.
Doesn't work like that. It's more like you have 10 more tools, 4 more hands to use them with and the mass market is demanding you have 12 more tools to make things shinier.
Take a look at some of the XNA demos lying around, and see what people literally have created in a few hours during competitions.
Incredible, I've never seen demos before! Now come back when someone releases a demo with AAA amount of content in a few hours please, if you want to prove something.
Things aren't false because you say so. Take a look at the numbers posted above. That's just for a middle-market title and only the marketing budget.
No, that is for Galactic Civilizations 2, a game which looks like this :
Not this :
nor this :
nor even this :
If you cannot understand just by looking at screenshots that the difference in scale of art creation is whole orders of magnitude, well, I cannot help you.
Gal-Civ and Sins were not "middle titles", they were shoe-string budget games done by teams that are a fraction of the size of "average" titles. Two worlds is closer to a "middle title".
You're drunk, in that case.
Not yet, but talking to people on forums often makes me
want to be.
Why would you talk about your own little house as some kind of evidence of how it is for AAA developers. That's not exactly logical.
The company I work for is one of the largest suppliers of online gambling games in the world, with a staff of over 700, a massive art department and even more technical developers, distribution to practically every continent and profits to rival any AAA video game developer on the planet.
I'm not talking about my experience with my indie efforts.
What you see as breaking backs, I see as work. I don't seem to recall asking them to break their backs - and what I'm suggesting is that they spend time developing the game - rather than corrupting the industry.
They do what the market demands. It isn't the fault of the devs that the market is constantly sending strong feedback that better looking games generally sell better. There are exceptions that do well regadless, sure, but they are outnumbered by the general feedback loop that prettier = better.
The market is filled with people saying things like
this.
From the start, it is clear that the graphics are not exactly what you would expect from a modern game.
Game looks fantastic to me, but the bar just keeps getting raised and people keep expecting more and more.
Sounds like MMOs with WoW graphics is the perfect recipe.
LOL! The models are lower poly, sure, but
every single texture in WoW is
hand-painted. That is even more work than if you start with photos as a base. WoW re-uses art in plenty of locations but there is still a ton of artwork in that game. Cartoon graphics does
not equal easier to create graphics.