How Digital Cybercherries automated their entire asset pipeline using InstaLOD, saving days of work and empowering artists for Hypercharge: Unboxed.
Digital Cybercherries, the game studio behind the critically acclaimed first-person shooter Hypercharge: Unboxed, has dramatically transformed its 3D asset pipeline by integrating InstaLOD. By automating the time-consuming processes of retopology, UV unwrapping, and texture baking, Digital Cybercherries' artists are now able to create game-ready assets in minutes, saving days of work per model and fostering a more creative, stress-free development environment.
¶ The Challenge: A Tedious and Time-Consuming Asset Pipeline
Before InstaLOD, the traditional 3D asset workflow at Digital Cybercherries mirrored that of many game studios:
- High-Poly Modeling: Artists would sculpt high-resolution models, often utilizing ZBrush's Dynamesh and Boolean systems, and leveraging PolyPaint for vertex colors.
- Manual Retopology: This crucial step involved manually reducing the polygonal count of high-poly models to make them usable for real-time game engines. This process was extremely labor-intensive and required careful attention to detail.
- UV Unwrapping: Once retopologized, models required manual UV unwrapping to prepare them for texturing.
- Texture Baking: Finally, high-detail information from the high-poly model, including vertex colors, needed to be baked onto the low-poly mesh's textures.
- Iterative Adjustments: Often, multiple iterations of the original mesh were necessary to fine-tune the topology for a perfect bake.
These sequential, manual steps were described as "very tedious tasks that take up a lot of work time and nerves," especially when dealing with a library of hundreds or even thousands of models. The significant time sink restricted artistic iteration and added considerable stress to tight deadlines.
¶ The Solution: Automated Asset Generation with InstaLOD
Digital Cybercherries implemented InstaLOD into their 3D pipeline to automate the most arduous aspects of asset creation. Josh Lennon demonstrated how InstaLOD seamlessly handles the entire section of their 3D pipeline that traditionally involved manual retopology, UV unwrapping, and texture baking. This integration allows them to generate fully game-ready assets from high-poly sculpts in a fraction of the time.
¶ Key Features Used
- Automated Retopology: InstaLOD's remesher automatically generates a clean, game-ready low-polygon mesh from a high-resolution model, drastically reducing the manual effort traditionally required to optimize polygon counts for real-time applications.
- Automated UV Unwrapping: InstaLOD efficiently unwraps the newly generated low-polygon mesh's UVs, creating an optimal layout for texturing without the need for manual arrangement.
- Automated Texture Baking: High-detail information as well as vertex colors from the high-resolution source model is automatically transferred and baked onto the textures of the low-polygon mesh.
- Advanced optimization settings (e.g., Fuzzy Face Count, Surface Construction Resolution): These specific settings allow artists to fine-tune the optimization process, ensuring the automated retopology and simplification maintain crucial surface detail and provide optimal results for specific artistic requirements.
¶ The Results: Unprecedented Speed and Efficiency
The adoption of InstaLOD brought about a revolutionary change in Digital Cybercherries' asset production. Complex assets like their flamethrower weapon pickup, initially boasting millions of triangles, were effortlessly transformed into high-quality, game-ready models containing only thousands of polygons, all within just five minutes.
Similarly, for iterative elements such as character customization heads, artists could sculpt new designs and generate optimized low-polygon versions in a matter of minutes, with subsequent fine-tuning taking mere seconds. This drastic acceleration applied to various assets across their game, showcasing InstaLOD's ability to maintain exceptional quality while achieving unprecedented efficiency.
¶ Overall Impact
- Time Savings: InstaLOD saves "days of work per model," freeing artists from repetitive tasks.
- Rapid Iteration: The speed of asset generation allows for "quick and easy iterations" when changes are needed, fostering greater creative exploration.
- Game-Ready Assets in Minutes: Complex assets are transformed from high-poly sculpts to fully optimized, game-ready models within minutes, ready for integration into the game engine.
- Focus on Creativity: Artists can now dedicate their time and energy to focusing on the creative side of their work without getting weighed down by technical processes.
- Stress-Free Environment: As Josh Lennon put it, InstaLOD "takes a lot of the stress and the worry out of generating assets on a tight deadline and just throws that right out the window." This has resulted in "the most comfortable, stress-free environment" he has experienced in ten years in the game industry.
¶ InstaLOD: Empowering Artists, Accelerating Development
Digital Cybercherries' experience with InstaLOD highlights the transformative power of intelligent automation in game development. By eliminating the manual tedium of asset optimization, InstaLOD has not only drastically cut down production time and costs but has also empowered artists to be more creative and efficient, ultimately contributing to the high quality and rapid iteration of Hypercharge: Unboxed.
"Thank you so much for working on this tool set, it takes a lot of the stress and the worry out of generating assets on a tight deadline and just throws that right out the window. You still get a nice beautiful asset that's a game ready in a matter of minutes and it really comes down to how creative you are, how well you can model that creativity, and how well you can texture it and generate materials and that's really where all the artists like to spend most of their time and it really allows for the most comfortable stress-free environment that I have had in the past ten years of working in the game industry." — Josh Lennon, Lead Artist and Animator
https://youtu.be/pGf-I4rFufA?si=fkWawkuldfnzOFZY
First published: 28th May 2025