Chapter 3: Harmonizing Across Teams & Outsourcing

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Harmonizing Across Teams & Outsourcing

For vehicle concept artists across concepting and production, focusing on cross‑team style cohesion—shape, edge, value, and palette rules—along the Stylized ↔ Realistic spectrum.

Why Harmonization Is a Style System Problem

Style drift rarely comes from bad taste—it comes from missing constraints. Vehicles pass through many hands: concept, outsourcing vendors, hard‑surface modelers, riggers, lookdev, lighting, VFX, marketing. Each group optimizes for its own success unless the style system makes shape, edge, value, and palette rules explicit and testable. Harmonization is the art of turning taste into contracts: documented anchors that let multiple teams produce consistent, shippable results at speed.

The Four Anchors Everyone Signs

  1. Shape/Massing Anchors — wheelbase/track, cabin proportion, turret ring diameters, boom lengths, door apertures. These are non‑negotiable for rigging and animation. Provide dimensioned orthos and “redline” callouts for silhouette beats.
  2. Edge Hierarchy Anchors — bevel widths by tier (primary/secondary/tertiary) and by material family. Publish a millimeter table and examples of correct/incorrect edge reads.
  3. Value Group Anchors — grayscale targets for body, underframe, glass, metal accents. Validate reads in a neutral studio HDRI before color.
  4. Palette Anchors — brand hues, safety colors, and accent limits, with acceptable tolerance ranges (ΔE) and temperature notes per lighting condition.

Write these anchors into the Style Bible and keep them versioned. Treat deviations as change requests, not improvisations.

The Style Bible: What Vendors Actually Need

A useful style guide is concise and operative. Include:

  • Silhouette Sheets: plan/elevation/side orthos with highlighted “identity cuts.”
  • Bevel Matrix: a page of Boolean samples showing how bevel size changes specular behavior; one column per material.
  • Value Ladder: grayscale swatches with RGB/linear values and examples of correct grouping on a blockout.
  • Palette Map: body/base/underframe/accent families with hex/linear color, albedo ranges, and saturation ceilings.
  • Material Stack Cards: PBR stacks (albedo/metal/rough/normal) for Paint (gloss/satin), Rubber, Cast Metal, Bright Metal, Glass, Composite—with do/don’t notes.
  • Decal/Marking Rules: line thickness, reflectivity, placement logic (not just images).
  • Wear Language: 3 masks (dust, edge chip, oil) with application zones and intensity caps per style tier.
  • Render Proofing Setup: a neutral HDRI, camera, and lighting preset file to evaluate submissions consistently.

Shape Cohesion: From Block‑In to Final

Cross‑team projects often break at the block‑in. Require a Block‑In Gate: vendors submit low‑poly massing against your silhouette sheets in grayscale. Approve or correct before detail. Provide a negative space map (door swing, boom sweep, track sag, suspension travel) so animators don’t discover conflicts later. For stylized shows, include proportion sliders—e.g., wheel +10%, cab –8%—so every vendor pushes caricature the same way.

Edge Hierarchy: A Contract, Not a Vibe

Edges translate design into lighting. Publish a bevel lookup: primary 8–15 mm, secondary 3–5 mm, tertiary 0.7–1.2 mm (example ranges—tune to your show). For Stylized passes, double primary bevels for thicker spec bands; for Realistic, compress secondaries and keep tertiaries tangible but not sparkly. Provide macro photos or renders of a test block showing how edges should render under the supplied studio light. Fail most drift at this gate; it’s cheaper than retouching shaders.

Value Governance: Grayscale First Policy

Mandate grayscale approvals. Vendors submit clay renders with the Value Ladder applied to material IDs: Body (mid), Undercarriage (dark), Glass (light), Metal Accents (specular). Reject if the 10‑meter read (thumbnail) doesn’t separate role; reject if the 3‑meter read muddies function clusters (cab, powertrain, tools). Only once values lock do you green‑light palette.

Palette Discipline Across Teams

Issue a limited, role‑coded palette per domain (crane/rescue/survey/mining/agriculture) with a single accent family reserved for signals. Supply LUTs and OCIO configs so DCCs and game engines agree. Define accent budgets (e.g., signal color ≤ 3% of surface area) and emissive caps to prevent garish results in marketing comps. For stylized shows, compress intra‑material hue variation; for realistic shows, allow temperature drift but bind it to wear and lighting, not random saturation.

Material Simplification for Outsourcing Throughput

Fewer materials mean fewer mistakes. Enforce a material cap per asset (e.g., 5 stylized / 8 realistic). Provide template materials in engine/DCC with locked ranges (albedo min/max, roughness min/max). Tag where tiling detail maps may be used and where they may not. Include an AO policy (multiply only in cavities; never on broad paint fields) and a normal detail density target so parts authored by different vendors don’t clash.

Decals, Markings, and Typography Consistency

Maintain a decal library tied to scale (1:10, 1:20). Define minimum text size at the camera distances typical for gameplay or marketing. Decals should be separate, non‑merged meshes or layered materials for easy updates. Publish reflectivity rules (slightly glossier than paint) and placement grammar (safety blocks at edges, unit IDs on planar fields, service labels near handles/ports only).

LOD & Proxy Guidance That Preserves Style

Provide LOD targets with style‑aware collapses: drop tertiary edges first, then secondary panel seams; never collapse identity silhouette cuts. For stylized assets, protect bold bevels even at low LOD; for realistic assets, protect functional separations (cab vs. tool vs. underframe). Hand off collision proxies and animation limits so vendors don’t guess.

Feedback Rhythm: Paintovers, Not Paragraphs

Adopt a two‑pass review: 1) shape/value, 2) material/palette. Feedback as drawn paintovers on orthos plus a one‑line summary per issue. Use a traffic‑light rubric (Must Fix / Nice to Have / FYI). Cap notes per round to avoid shotgun feedback. Keep a “delta board” that shows what changed between rounds to prevent regression and train vendors in your style language.

Color Management & Lighting Unification

Ship an OCIO config and a studio rig (key/fill/kicker, neutral HDRI) for all submissions. Require vendors to render a turntable and orthos with this rig. Internally, relight only after style approval. For stylized projects using outlines/toon ramps, include shader assets and an edge‑thickness spec tied to pixel density so outlines match across assets.

Naming, Versions, and Handoff Hygiene

Create a short taxonomy (VEH, CAB, BOOM, UNDER, TOOL, DECAL, FXHOOK). Enforce semantic versioning (v1.2.3) and a changelist per submission (shape/value/material changes separated). Provide scene templates with exact layer names and display sets (BLOCKIN, DETAIL, DECAL, FXHOOK, PIVOTS). Require transform freezes, pivot placement at real joints, and unit scale conversions documented.

Outsourcing Pack: A Checklist

  • Style Bible (anchors + examples)
  • Silhouette orthos (dimensional)
  • Value Ladder and ID map template
  • Palette swatches + OCIO config
  • Material templates (engine + DCC)
  • Bevel matrix and sample block
  • Decal library (vector + materials)
  • Studio lighting rig + camera presets
  • LOD policy + collision proxies
  • Review rubric + submission naming

Ship this pack once; update version numbers visibly. Vendors love stable targets.

Cross‑Discipline Agreements

  • Rigging signs off on anchors before vendors start detail.
  • Lookdev signs off on the material cap and roughness ranges.
  • Lighting signs off on Value Ladder and palette contrasts against typical environments.
  • VFX receives FX hooks (emitters, cable paths, dust zones) early to avoid retrofits that break style.

Managing Stylized ↔ Realistic on One Project

If the project spans both ends (game + cinematic, or main cast + toy line), maintain a single hero asset and derive variants by rules, not taste. Define slider deltas (proportion, bevel scale, roughness spread, wear intensity) and publish as a table. Example:

  • Realistic: wheel +0%, primary bevel 8 mm, roughness spread narrow, wear 60% intensity.
  • Grounded Stylized: wheel +8%, primary bevel 12 mm, spread medium, wear 30%.
  • Hero Stylized: wheel +20%, primary bevel 20 mm, spread high, wear 10%, decals bold.

Vendors build once, then apply the rule table to branch outputs.

QA by Image Tests, Not Only Checklists

Beyond technical checks, run image tests: 10‑meter thumbnail test, 3‑meter mid‑shot test, and 1‑meter detail crop. A submission fails if the role is unclear at 10 m, cluster logic collapses at 3 m, or edge/material reads are inconsistent at 1 m. Keep these tests in the contract.

Escalation & Change Control

Style changes happen. Route them through a Change Control Board (AD, Vehicle Lead, Lookdev, Tech Art). Update the Style Bible and bump minor versions. Communicate changes with a side‑by‑side delta sheet so vendors see exactly what moved (e.g., “body roughness max from 0.45 → 0.35”).

Compact Case Studies

Cranes: Vendor A delivered a telescopic boom with razor‑thin bevels that glittered under sun. Fix: enforce bevel matrix and studio rig checks; add oxide wear mask only at pin bosses; value‑group underframe darker to re‑separate mass.

Rescue: Two vendors diverged on palette saturation. Fix: lock OCIO + LUT; add accent budget; publish a reflective‑tape spec with value targets so night scenes match.

Survey: Rack anodizing came back blue‑purple from one vendor and grey‑green from another. Fix: provide material templates and ΔE tolerances; force grayscale approvals first to keep value grouping intact.

Mining: Dust was authored as noisy albedo. Fix: move 70% of dust into roughness/normal variation; keep albedo change under 5% to preserve macro value reads.

Agriculture: Swappable implements arrived with inconsistent outline thickness in toon pipeline. Fix: edge‑thickness set by pixel density; supply postprocess profile; add an edge scale per LOD.

Closing

Harmonization is a design service to every downstream team. When you codify shape anchors, edge hierarchy, value grouping, and palette discipline—and ship them as assets, not memos—outsourcing becomes scalable, predictable, and stylistically coherent. Your vehicles keep their voice across studios and time zones, and production spends energy making the work sing, not arguing over what “green” means.