I think the next "big thing", where everyone can collaborate, is the generation of procedural content.
Take a look at the demoscene and you know what I mean.
It´s like a little revolution and everyone can participate - even artists, because there are editors like "werkkzeug".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation

Well at least the possibilities of procedural content seem to be near endless.

I've seen some awesome stuff from the guys at Introversion (the people behind Defcon, Darwinia and Uplink) purely based on procedural content for their next game (Subversion). ( http://www.introversion.co.uk/blog/ )

Games like Spore and Subversion with lots of procedurally generated content are really something I'm looking forward to,

Cheers

Procedural content is very good for massive environments like city, many trees aso. but when it comes to characters I don't wanne see something like this. Because thats really takes out the adventure of the whole process and it will never reach the quality of good old handwork.

I said it before I say it again learn to enjoy the process of making art and do not wait for tools that make art for you, because in the end you need to have great ideas.

I want to see hard work when I look at art and not oh thats made by hitting one button.

Bulls***, total! First of all skeletal animation also has to be done by the artist, he has to rig the character ,make the envelope and animate (transfer mocap data to the rigged character). You are talking about simulation which always has been a technical thing, but originally you talked about procedural content.

So the script thinks like the artist would? We are no machines we are human beings our brain can come up with endless ideas, that have an influence on the entire creation process and you want to include all of them in a script?

It seems like you have no idea about character creation at all. Todays 3d artists see the difference between poser and handmade models. Artists are not in this world to hit buttons they are there to create something new and interesting.

Having good ideas is never a problem? Having ideas is no problem right, if you fall in love with the idea then it is a good one.

Some Programmers always seem to think that artist are not needed, but I don't get why ?

You should ask yourself a question: Who is the artist you or your computer ?

I agree with phemox. the art isnt as much what your thinking anymore tho, they script becomes the artwork.

There won´t any big change for the artists. They´ll have their editors and authoring tools.
But the generated content won´t be saved as big file.
Not the final result is saved, but the way to achieve this result.

The border between artists and programmers will shrink.
Take a look at the script possibilities in most of the big modelling programs.
Then take a look at the approach of grafical programming through a network of modules.

And maybe, one day, they´ll understand each other.

yeah phemox didn't say anything wrong, let alone "Bulls***, total!".

procedural content isn't necessarily about using other peoples' tools. good procedural content is about artistic programmers taking advantage of technology. it's not like they make the computer do all the creativeness for them. if they're doing it right then they're still visualising and producing art with the same level of creativity, just a different means of production.

one of the best artists on the blender artists forum generates a lot of his textures procedurally before touching them up manually, and i'm sure many others do this.

no good artists will make main characters in a game entirely procedurally. but if you want a world full of individual people, are you gonna model and design each one yourself? that would be utterly stupid. procedural characters could prove to be a very important part of large-scale games -- even ones attempting realistic and varied humans.

julz

The last posts sound like a war between programmers and artists. This is totally wrong. Artists and programmers belong to each other like man and woman, like water and earth, like mother and father. Everyone alone is just a lame spammer but togehter they can change the world.

Besides that both have to understand each other. An artist has to apply much techniques and has to use very complex tools. He has to understand the working of a computer, a game engine, physics, biology, machinery, lights, camera, coloring, scene-management, architecture and much more.
Many computer artists are skilled programmers and many game-programmers can model some content as well.
A good game programmer has to understand how lighting works, how colors work together, how to create shaders involving more lights and shadows, how to read and write model files, level creations and much more.

If you think you can separate yourself from the other then you are already on the lane to loose against every team. Then you are close-minded and simply did not understand the way how teams work and how games are made.