In this article, we will discuss some points that need to be included in the technical design document for 3D artists.

Asset Creation Workflow

Modeling

In this section, you have to mention everything related to the modeling process such as:

• Scale: are you going to use centimeters or meters for example
• Topology: mention what is allowed to be used (quads only, tris, or both) or what is not allowed to exist like n-gons (faces with more than 4 vertices) to maintain a clean topology
• Pivot point and where it should be reset

In this link, you will find some good modeling practices:

https://resources.turbosquid.com/stemcell/stemcell-3d-modeling-workflow/stemcell-modeling/

This video is a simple explanation of the idea of topology:

https://youtu.be/HGL6QpVRyXk?si=H-MI8V2K0xJN2tCA

UV Unwrapping

So after the modeling, we go forward with UV unwrapping and at this point, we have a couple of things to cover:

• Unwrapping practices whether we will allowed to use overlapping UVs, or UDIMs in the assets
• One of the most important points is Texel Density to maintain balance in quality for each scene and consistency across different scenes.

In those articles, you will find a detailed explanation of the Texel Density concept:

https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/nVn7/texel-density-and-other-bits-of-texture-theory

https://www.beyondextent.com/deep-dives/deepdive-texeldensity

Texturing

The texturing rules will be global for all artists working on this project such as:

• Workflow that will be used, whether PBR (Physically-Based Rendering), URP (Universal Render Pipeline), HDRP (High Definition Render Pipeline), etc.
• Texture size: 2K textures, 4K textures, etc…

Integration in the Game Engine

Naming Conventions

Naming conventions must be consistent across the files to make it easy for programmers and other team members so, we usually don’t use spaces in the naming.

The naming convention rules should be applied to everything integrated into the engine, including assets, characters, materials, textures, animations, etc…

You will find here a good naming convention practice supplied by Unreal Engine Documentation:

https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/recommended-asset-naming-conventions-in-unreal-engine-projects

File Structure

Also, assets in the game engine have to be clearly organized within folders among the team so that the technical guidelines should contain the preplanned folder structure.

Recommended folder structure article by Unity:

https://unity.com/how-to/organizing-your-project

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Performance & Optimization

In this section, you have to mention guidelines related to asset optimization such as:

• Polycount per object according to the technical director's plan for the scene
• LOD management and the required specifications for LODs
• Certain practices to reduce draw calls like combining meshes or materials, using object instancing whenever possible

Bonus

Finally, I would recommend a very well-structured course although it uses Unreal Engine, it is like an introduction to the technical aspect of game art it covers the terminology used in the game industry, and some guidelines for artists, so in case you are working with Unity the theoretical and technical sides of the course (which represent most of the course actually) still valuable for you.

Becoming an Environment Artist in Unreal Engine:

https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/courses/Gm/becoming-an-environment-artist-in-unreal-engine/VP2/introduction-to-becoming-an-environment-artist-in-unreal-engine

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