Making (and reading) an art breakdown

An art breakdown is a set of images, and sometimes short videos, that shows how a piece was built and exactly what you made. The beauty shots show what you made; the breakdown shows how, and that you could repeat it on a team.

Blizzard art director Dion Rogers asks artists to "show your process and reference" (Activision Blizzard Newsroom: Land a Job in Video Games with More Portfolio…). Recruiter Jay McDougall likes ArtStation because you can "stack multiple images in each thread", showing angles, the elements you worked on and a description in one post (Skillsearch: Pyxel-Perfect Portfolios #2: Environment Art). For the bigger picture, see portfolios.

#What to include

Not every breakdown needs every item. Pick the ones that prove your role.

#How AAA artists do it

Many of the most useful breakdowns come from shipped games. They show the structure clearly, so they are worth studying image by image. More are collected in game art breakdowns: a curated library.

#Jared Sobotta: a material walkthrough

Naughty Dog's Jared Sobotta opens his The Last of Us Part I post with "This gallery is a breakdown of the River rock work I did for The Last of Us: Part 1" (ArtStation: River Rock Breakdown). The order is clear and easy to follow (ArtStation: River Rock Breakdown):

1. Overview image of the material set, then a video of a shoreline built from two tileable textures and prototype geometry.
2. Large rock: short clips of the sculpt in ZBrush, the finished sculpt with polygroup edges marking tiling areas, and the ID mask.
3. Texturing in Substance Designer as GIFs: height added to the normal map, then colour built up layer by layer ("Step 2: I begin to layer in some more of the larger-scale color detail"), finished with a shared crevice dust layer.
4. A Marmoset re-render of the result.
5. Small rocks: sculpted rock atlases, scattered with Atlas Scatter nodes from largest to smallest, shown as height, normal and colour.
6. Blending: small rock as the base layer with the large rock blended in, plus mud, moss, wetness and parallax; then 3D rock meshes, because tessellation can't be used everywhere.
7. In-game outcome, then a link to the GDC talk he gave with Jonathan Benainous.

#Paweł Kostecki: tomb kit breakdown

MachineGames senior environment artist Paweł Kostecki's Indiana Jones and the Great Circle tomb kit post shows a kit used "to assemble all of the tombs" on the Gizeh map (ArtStation: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Tomb Kit). Two features of the post are useful to copy:

• Credit first. The first image's caption names the environment artists involved, and the text says he took over the kit from an initial architectural pass by Michael Tran (ArtStation: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Tomb Kit). The GDC 2019 panel asked for this: "Be clear and honest with what you're responsible for" (ArtStation Magazine: Top 10 Portfolio Tips for Game Artists).
• Render and wireframe pairs across 36 images, with links to separate posts for the stone wall, ceiling and floor materials (ArtStation: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Tomb Kit).

#Adrien Thierry and Vytautas Katarzis: sheets and notes

Adrien Thierry, who was "responsible for the creation of the models and textures of the Golden Cat bath house" on Dishonored, follows his beauty shots with module images and a texture sheet (ArtStation: The Golden Cat). Vytautas Katarzis's Shanghai breakdown for Indiana Jones takes a different approach: most of the information is in the text, which explains his modular, efficient approach for a small team and his narrow reference set (ArtStation: Indiana Jones and The Great Circle - Shanghai…).

#Reading a breakdown

A breakdown is also one of the best ways to learn. When you study one, ask:

• How is the kit split? Count the pieces and find the variants. See modular kits.
• What is unique and what is shared? Look for trim sheets, tileable materials and decals doing the work.
• Where is the detail? Is it in geometry, normal maps or blending?
• What did this person make? Read the credits and role notes.
• What would you copy? Note one structural idea for your own next post.

#Further reading and watching

• game art breakdowns: a curated library — the handbook's curated library of AAA breakdowns.