[Portfolio] Hector Mateo - Environment Artist

Sugus

Edit: After a year working at The Chinese Room I am now an Environment Artist at Creative Assembly.
Portfolio Link: hectormateo.co.uk/
Gumroad Link: gumroad.com/hectormateo

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Hello Polycount!

My name is Hector Mateo, I’m currently a 3rd Year Student Games Art student at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. In a few months’ time I’ll be graduating and hopefully will obtain a Junior position as an Environment Artist in the videogame industry.

I would appreciate it very much if the lovely community of Polycount could give me some critique on my work. I’m looking for feedback on both my work and my website (usability, how professional it looks, what bits I should remove etc…)

I’m currently a member of The Maestros team, an upcoming RTS by the University of Southern California (I’m working off-site from London as an Environment Artist). The experience of developing a game has been incredible and I truly hope I can do this professionally as a member of a studio.

Here’s a link to my website: http://hectormateo.co.uk/

Here are some samples of my work which include samples from my professional work done at The Chinese Room.











Many thanks for taking the time to view my work,
Hector

CarlK3D

I really like your portfolio, it was one of the ones i took inspiration from when I started working on my new portfolio.
The Maestros looks cool reminds me of Warcraft 3 and dawn of war

your work looks great, high quality and really creative.
The only thing that stands out to me is the tires on the Panther, they have no tread...for such a large vehicle I expect large treads

All in all great work for only 3 years. hope my stuff looks as good when this year is up

Sugus

@Carl: Thank you very much Carl! It's wierd and nice to think that i'm inspiring other fellow artists out there

I totally agree with the tires on the Panther... the normal map isn't really doing much. I'm currently re-doing the tires to see if i can get some tread action going on.

Also if you would like me to have a look at your work just send me an email and i'll gladly give you some feedback.

Thanks for comments, really appreciate them!

CarlK3D

If you want get them done fast you can always make a quick tread design with vectors and nDo them, gives great AO to. It would be more beneficial however to do the whole High to Low bake thing like normal but nDo is good for fast fix up and detailing.

Thanks for the offer, I have a few different threads over the last few months critiquing me stuff so I know whats wrong with it, basically quality which is also linked to the technique I use and time I put in. currently working on it all now over this year

* 1 other thing is, you need more angles unless you've done enough work for the 1 render.
I would remove all the texture sheets since there's no point having them as they are in the environment
Again, more angles, closeups etc. 2 to 4 are normally enough depending on the environment size

Sugus

Good to hear!

I could potentially add more angles for the environments but, is it worth it? I mean, i put a lot of effort into finding a good composition and work towards that composition. Adding stuff for the sake of adding stuff doesn't seem appropriate

I don't really agree with removing the texture sheets. A potential employer will want to see if I can unwrap efficiently, and what my textures look like.

Also, i'm looking into making another final piece for my portfolio, but i'm currently stuck with what i should do. Is there anything that my portfolio is lacking that should deffinately be in there?

Thanks!

BJA

I like the site, it's straight to the point. I also like the variety of your work.
I don't think you need to have more different angles for your scenes, you're showing all the assets from different angles, so that should be ok. Also the more you can show the better, you're textures look good so definitely keep the texture sheets.
Imo, you should really rework the lighting of your scenes and make it more interesting. It's pretty dark with some random placed orange lights it seems.
Some assets also seem to have a pretty high poly count for what they are, would be worth to optimize your stuff a little bit more.

Keep it up!

Sugus

BJA wrote: »

I like the site, it's straight to the point. I also like the variety of your work.
I don't think you need to have more different angles for your scenes, you're showing all the assets from different angles, so that should be ok. Also the more you can show the better, you're textures look good so definitely keep the texture sheets.
Imo, you should really rework the lighting of your scenes and make it more interesting. It's pretty dark with some random placed orange lights it seems.
Some assets also seem to have a pretty high poly count for what they are, would be worth to optimize your stuff a little bit more.

Keep it up!

Hi BJA! Apologies for the late reply, dissertation has kept me very busy lately.

Thanks for the input on the angles, i'm aware i'm not showing many but I still think it holds

I'm thinking of porting the tower scene to UE4 and play around with the lighting in there. I've received more feedback on it so it's deffinately on the list of things to do.

Thanks for the input!

Jeff Parrott

Specialize! Your work is a mix of AAA style/hand painted/etc. I would pick one style and focus on being awesome at that. At least starting out. Once you're working you can branch out more once you improve in one style.

Your portfolio works I think. Larger images always are awesome.

Ribtibs

Your environment work is excellent. Love the fact that you have mixed in some hand painted stuff, but i wish your hand painted work was to the same quality as your realistic work. On your Nexus I can't tell if that is supposed to be stone or metal because the highlights are super strong.

Keep on pumping out awesome things man! Expecting great work from you

slosh

Nice stuff man. Although more angles would be nice, I think at the very least having renders from the same angle without textures so you just see geo(either flat untextured, or just with the normals, or wireframe) would help. It's always nice to see the breakdown from the same angle. I know with characters, I always do that because people definitely ask for it. Though I like how your stuff looks, I do agree that the style is sort of between stylized and realistic which can be dangerous. Games are rarely a mix and studios want to see one or the other. You can keep what you have but it might be nice if you cranked out a couple complex props that were super realistic. Oh, and I agree that you should definitely keep your textures sheets in. Fantastic stuff and good luck on your job search!

atomander

Really cool stuff! Got a chance to see the Maestros at GDC, great environment work. Good luck on the job hunt.

Sugus

@Jeff: Thanks for the input Jeff, I see where you are coming from when you say Specialize. I know the importance of Specialization, hence me doing only environments/things related to it, but I always thought it was a good idea to showcase the ability to work in multiple art styles. Over here in the UK there’s a wide variety of studios which range from AAA to mobile, so when I started this year I thought to myself it would be good to show that I can do different styles (which in my head translated to “ability to adapt to any art style”).

Having said that, the main reason I have hand painted stuff in my Portfolio is because of the Maestros. I joined the team mainly because I wanted to be part of a team and work towards a videogame (it has been awesome so far). The art style for it happened to be Hand painted so I just learnt hand painted hehe.

From a potential employers point of view I’d like to think that things such as participating in a game such as Maestros will give me more points to secure that job.

Over the top of my head I think that’s the explanation I have as to why I have both types of art style in my portfolio hehe.

Thanks for your comment, much appreciated!

@Ribtibs: Hi Ribtibs. Thanks for pointing that out. I keep everything in organized PSD’s so it shouldn’t be too hard to go back and tone those highlights down

@Slosh: That’s a very good idea, I had never actually thought of rendering those kind of screenshots, I’ll deffinately get those up as soon as I can.

I understand tackling both realistic and stylized is a bit risky. I guess I’m doing it so that I don’t completely shut off any games company and hopefully remain as employable as possible. As for doing super realistic stuff, I’m currently working on something which should cover that a bit more, with some good hard surface modelling. I’ll be rendering it in UE4 which means I’ll have to learn the whole PBR thing quick (wish I had had the chance to do it earlier ) This leads me to a question I keep asking myself:

When people say realistic, do they mean realistic in terms of texturing/presentation? Or in terms of themes? (or both?). The project I mentioned above is based on some Bioshock Infinte concepts, would that count as realistic?

Speaking of characters, really liked your comicon entry! Thought it was a really cool design

Thank you for your input, much appreciated!

@Atomander: Hi Atomander! I’m glad you saw The Maestros at GDC, I wish I could say the same I hope you had the chance to try it aswell, everyone has put a lot of effort into it and hopefully that will show Thanks!

slosh

When I say realistic, I just mean the materials should read as real. It can be a scifi gun or whatever that may not actually exist IRL but it should read like real metal, etc.

Sugus

slosh wrote: »

When I say realistic, I just mean the materials should read as real. It can be a scifi gun or whatever that may not actually exist IRL but it should read like real metal, etc.

I see what you mean! What i'm working on at the moment should cover that Thanks!

Joost

There's nothing wrong with doing both realistic and stylized, but you shouldn't do it just to increase your hireability. You should do it because you're passionate about both. Focusing all your energy on one subject might improve your chances more than doing 50/50 on both.
Don't take my word for it though, I'm looking for a job myself

Sugus

komaokc wrote: »

There's nothing wrong with doing both realistic and stylized, but you shouldn't do it just to increase your hireability. You should do it because you're passionate about both. Focusing all your energy on one subject might improve your chances more than doing 50/50 on both.
Don't take my word for it though, I'm looking for a job myself

Hi Komaokc, apologies for the late reply. I used the easter holidays to travel about and visit family back home so I missed your comment!

It's not like I do it exclusively to increase my chances of getting hired, but also because i do enjoy both styles. I find that if i've been working on something stylized for a while, switching to realistic refreshes my mind.

Good luck with the job search aswell

Sugus

Hi guys!

Been a bit unactive on the internet front but i've been doing plenty of stuff behind the scenes.

For the past month and so i've been doing a few Art Tests and interviews.

I'm really happy to anounce that i've accepted a position as a Junior Environment Artist at The Chinese Room in the UK. Happy times

Many thanks to the polycount community for the constant motivation and inspiration, every single time I browse here my jaw just drops! Thanks as well to everyone who at some point in the past 2 years has critiqued my work and given me feedback! Many many thanks!

Joost

Congratulations on the job!
Art tests look really nice too

CandyStripes05

congrats, and I like the way the ram head turned out

Jeff Parrott

Congrats man! Love the sleeping bag scene. Nice seeing those mini scenes.

jsargent

Congratulations on the new job! The art tests look really great

jamiemurphy

Congratulations on the job, the art tests look solid!

Sugus

Many thanks everyone! It has certainly been a very busy year and i'm glad all the hard work payed off!

I'd like to learn some CryEngine before I actually start so that i'm right on track, so i'll probably be doing that for a while.

Again thanks to everyone, it means a lot!

Zinco

Awesome work and congrats on the job!!

Sugus

Hello Polycount.

A lot has happened in the past year and I thought it was a good time to update this thread and give some updates. I spent a year working on Everybodys Gone to the Rapture at The Chinese Room and was really happy to see my first title out.

As a change I have now joined the amazing team at Creative Assembly to start working on Halo Wars 2, something which I am really looking forward to.

I’ve had a chance to update my portfolio recently. I decided to not code it myself because I’m absolutely no good at that and opted for Squarespace instead.

I also updated my folio with some of the work I did for “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture” which released a month ago on the PS4. Here are a few screenshots of the game but you can find more on my website:

Hectormateo.co.uk







On top of that I’ve recently also joined the Gumroad platform. At the present time I only have photo packs which can be used for reference, design, modelling etc. In the future I plan on making some tutorials to share with the community but as of now I’m not entirely sure when that will happen.

For the time being here is the link to my page:

Gumroad.com/hectormateo