Crappy progress dump

ClusterOne

Every part of me tells me not to share my crappy work but since its my birthday I decided I would muster up the courage to share it. I started teaching myself 3d art in mid January this year, until then I really hadn't done any serious art--just occasional sketches. I've since been cramming down, trying to improve. I apologize for the quality and lack of content. I really wanted to have more to share but since I only recently made the decision to seriously pursue environment art over character art I don't have a lot of work to show. Most of my time has gone into learning the various programs and methods for creating textures--and 99% of the textures I created I ended up hating with passion.

I'm currently trying to get my texturing skills to a comfortable place before moving on. Here's a tiling brick texture I made using photoshop to clean up an image from cgtextures and the noise maker in zbrush to make the normal map. I slopped it on a blockout I did in maya--don't mind the unfinished crap.



Here's a WIP characters sculpt I started two weeks ago--a second attempt at my first ever sculpt. I've been working on her in my spare time. Very incomplete. (I'm still using the hair planes I created for my first sculpt 4 months ago, haha)



I would really appreciate critique and suggestions, especially in regards to the texture. I'll try to keep updating this thread with my work as a I progress.

Having just turned 21 I shall thoroughly enjoy a craft beer and The Last of Us, which I got as a present (I watched a play through a long time ago but have since really wanted to play it myself!).

Needless to say, thanks for all the help and inspiration, Polycount! I think I would have given up on 3d art quite quickly if it wasn't for this awesome community that is always willing to help a noob out.

Kimon

That sculpt is in NO way crappy. Really solid start and im really digging those folds to be honest. Keep it up, I wanna see more of your work

ClusterOne

Thanks a lot Kimon! I'll definitely try to put more time into her.

I realized my first texture post wasn't very easy to critique , give how little information I actually included, hopefully this one will be easier. I whipped together a wood texture in photoshop and zbrush using an image I found on cgtextures. I was going for a rough, worn-down look, inspired by some of the dilapidated textures in The Last of Us. I figured that most of the actual wear and tear would be added through decals in order to avoid obvious tiling in the texture.

order: diffuse, normal, spec, gloss



This is my first time creating this many maps, I would really appreciate critique on them. I tried to imitate a few spec and gloss maps I found but to be perfectly honest, I have no freaking idea if I'm doing it correctly. Any pointers would be highly appreciated. I wanted the texture to be really rough and dull.

Marmoset toolbag view:





I'm gonna try to put together a scene in udk using some of these textures.

ClusterOne

Did a new tiling brick texture, first was a little too noisy. Once again, not very sure about the spec and gloss map.

order: diffuse, normal, spec, gloss






The normal feels a bit shallow but I don't think I can do anything about that without rounding out the bricks. Any and all critique, suggestions, tips and what-have-you, are highly appreciated. Thanks!

thepapercut

I personally think you're beating yourself to hard. The work you posted so far I would never even use the word crappy to describe, let alone come to mind when viewing it. Crappy would be like to describe my situation (or pathetic, your choice): attempting character art for 2.5 years to have nothing but shitty local workshops that are basically nothing but scams under your belt and a folder or of models that makes you want to throw your monitor out a window. In short, you're well on your way and just keep pushing yourself to put your best work out.

sargentcrunch

n/a

ClusterOne

@thepapercut, thanks a lot for the kind words! Believe me, I have an entire folder of junk that I would never, ever, let anyone see. When I approach anything I try to have a benchmark for whats good (usually work by pro which I can compare and contrast my piece to). If my final result can't compare in any way or if I get caught up too long on a single piece of work I either scrap it or toss it in the boneyard, where it will sit incomplete for all of eternity.

@sargentcrunch, you are correct. I actually created a few tiling brick textures using Tate Mosesian's technique. The only reason I don't do it often is the time required. Cleaning up a photo and creating maps from it is so much easier with very little margin for error. Tate Mosesian is apparently a wizard who can bend the laws of polypainting so that his bricks can maintain perfect polypaint fidelity despite being decimated over 99% (which he doesn't explain at all in his tutorial). Because of this he can use the IMM method which is much faster and easier. Unfortunately, I can't . I can't stably have 40 million polys in my active view port so I have use the 2.5d method of dropping each brick on to the canvas. The only problem with this method is that is really time consuming and super difficult to get your bricks level--after you rotate each brick you have to drag it onto another one to make sure its relative distance from the grout. Obviously I could use the IMM method without polypaint fidelity and make the diffuse entirely in PS. That'll probably be what I do next. Thanks for the tip, definitely something I need to master!

ClusterOne

Planned to post more, unfortunately I ran into many technical problems. For whatever reason whenever I tried to bake the high poly sculpt in Xnormal it would bake my low poly onto my low poly instead--I've never ran into that problem, not sure what or why it did that but I wasted more time than I should have trying to improvise--perhaps I have to use a cage. The final product turned out to be really crappy so I decided not to post it--I'll probably rework it tomorrow.

Here's a tiling plaster wall texture I created. Critique would be highly appreciated, still not sure if I'm using my maps correctly.

order: diffuse, normal, spec, gloss


view in tool bag:

ClusterOne

Smaller update. Got past my Xnormal problem and finished (maybe) the baseboard model I was working on. Created a basic high poly in zbrush and overlayed another normal in PS to create the appearance of a rough wood surface. The diffuse was created by layering cavity and convexity maps over my basic wood texture and then covering it with a simple paint texture ripped from a photo and adding a small shadow drop in the layer effects. Not exactly happy with it--I feel like I made the imperfections too large which will make it tile obviously.

order (top to bottom): diffuse, normals, spec, gloss



view in toolbag:



Any feedback would be appreciated

Kosai106

I feel like the cracks in the paint should appear on the normals. Other than that, I don't really have any comments yet.

ClusterOne

Thanks for the feedback Kosai106, I completely scrapped that and redid it from the ground up. I included the paint in the normal map this time around--I also reduced some of the wood texture in the normal that was making it all a bit too noisy. I was too lazy to include all the maps but here's some screen caps from toolbag. As usual, all feedback is appreciated