Next gen asset creation

Okies i've choosen Cross Application Asset Creation for LAIR (Catchy) flicking through the number of articles this is the one that stood out for me most of the gameplay articles seemed too 'what if' for my liking rather than concentrating on the near future direction is taking, plus this lecturer raised questions i had been wondering about myself, how has the timespan increased for the completionof assets for a next gen game to a current gen one? Are more specialised people needed with a greater knowledge of packages? Are games shrinking in scope as it becomes harder and slower to produce all the assets required?

Gameplay quibbles aside Lair does look pretty good and seems to be throwing the entierity of the latest and greatest graphical effects at the screen to give it that next gen sheen, i was recently privy to a Art R&D talk from Volitiale games on how there approaching asset creation for the next gen - the major thing between the current and next generation certainly in consoles at least dosen't neccasirly seem to be polycount it seems to be more the number of maps being displayed at once, luminance maps, normal maps, specular maps as well as several other maps were shown designed for a specific purpose all being displayed at once interacting with each other and giving everything that lovely glossy sheen.

So if you consider that current gen games use typically a diffuse or colour map and perhaps a luminance map at once thats an increase of around 5 maps that have to be created to push an asset as far as it can currently be taken plus polycounts have to be taken into consideration as well as creating a high poly version for proper normal map extraction and you've got a huge increase in time, i don't feel like dragging up the quote but Epic said it used to take them around a week to create a new charecter for UT2004 from concept to running around in the engine in about a week now for a Gears of War charecter it took them around 6 weeks to do a single charecter. Thats a huge increase in time invested and it makes you wonder if the tools currently available for creating this content is as streamlined and compatible as possible. Indeed there dosen't exist a model viewer free or not that can display all the maps at once for a next generation model - if the tools don't even for you to preview your models before they have to be tagged and imported into an engine your left with feeling a tang of sympathy for the people currently trying to wrestle all of these new techniques and approaches into a workable solution