Naughty Dog looking for 'next-gen' character artists

Uncharted developer Naughty Dog is looking toward the future generation of consoles, according to new job listings.

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Uncharted developer Naughty Dog is looking toward the future generation of consoles, according to new job listings. The latest job listing at Naughty Dog indicates the studio is looking to expand its character artist roster, specifically citing the person would be tasked with helping to build "next-gen games."

The job listing, discovered by GameSpot, say that new artists will be expected to make "million-poly models game-ready." For comparison, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves featured an average character polygon count of "80,000" [via GameTrailers].

It is unclear if the project is related to any of Naughty Dog's current properties (Uncharted, Jak & Daxter) or something new.

The California-based, Sony-subsidiary is currently in the middle of developing a fresh intellectual property entitled The Last Of Us.

[Above, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception]

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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  • reply
    January 23, 2012 5:00 PM

    Xav de Matos posted a new article, Naughty Dog looking for 'next-gen' character artists.

    Uncharted developer Naughty Dog is looking toward the future generation of consoles, according to new job listings.

    • reply
      January 23, 2012 5:31 PM

      Is this next gen as in ps4, or the next gen as in name marketers like to use for games coming out on current consoles?

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      January 23, 2012 5:41 PM

      If you want "million poly characters" start making games for the PC, they can already do million poly characters and will ALWAYS be years ahead of consoles.

      Stupidity angers me.

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        January 23, 2012 5:49 PM

        Those dumb guys AAAAARRRRGGGGG! So mad.

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        January 23, 2012 5:57 PM

        [deleted]

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        January 23, 2012 6:00 PM

        Yeah, stupidity angers me too. Like when someone who clearly knows nothing about video game production mouths off about how it's done. There are no million poly in-game characters in video games, PC or otherwise. If you knew anything about how game characters are created, rigged and animated, you'd realize how insane a claim that is.

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          January 23, 2012 8:09 PM

          I know the model creating process because that's what I do for a living... I do realize no platform is near a million polygons I was just using what was posted in the article. I don't think any single model would require a million polygons unless its huge and has a ton of detail.

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        January 23, 2012 7:29 PM

        a high poly ingame model might be like 10-20k on current platforms. which is like, nowhere near a million polys. we are not getting 7 figure poly counts on a single model this gen or next on any platform. the consoles have been holding things back alot, but not "a million poly characters" alot. not to mention there is really no need for a million poly count shit in any capacity in any game. your probably gonna get to the point of diminishing returns way before you get to 6 figures.

        not to mention the fact that i dont think you could tell the difference in something that had a million poly's and something that had like 20 thousand and was well put together with good use of normals/bumps etc once you render it in your engine. hardware limits are only one reason we dont have "million poly characters". the other is that it would be a waste of cycles and memory.

        your source materials, before it gets made into the actual game model, im not sure what kind of shit goes into that, but the amount of work to craft something that a game engine would bring down to a million polygons is mind boggling and scary.

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      January 23, 2012 5:56 PM

      This is flat wrong. I've been a character artist for 8 years, worked on many AAA PC and console titles, the "next gen" will NOT have million poly characters. The job post is referring to high resolution zbrush sculpts that are then baked down into normal maps for lower-res in-game characters.

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      January 23, 2012 11:25 PM

      I don't want or need much higher poly character models in my games. I do want lots more interactive and destructible environments - that is what will make any game situation more believable. I already 'believe' in the characters as they are.

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