2nd Year Student Environment Work

Mogyie

Please give me brutal constructive criticism I really want to improve and I find the best criticism is the worst ones, please feel free to tell me what I could improve on and how to go about that, I'd love to hear what you all have to say and I will take all replies into account and use that to push myself harder before i finish up this year.

I have been working in partnership in class on an environment, we worked together to put together an environment in just under 2 weeks in game and with all textures applied, it was a tall order for us and we managed to do it, although because of time a lot of areas failed and it was fun to push ourselves to reveal what some of the biggest faults are in our work, somethings being lighting, texture work and modelling. It was an amazing learning curb to produce the following and a very good way to really bring up some of my weaknesses as well as strengths and to learn more and more. I'm proud of the achievement but also disappointment that I know I could improve greatly in many area's of the design.


Grey Boxing Day 1

Modelling my half Day 3

All pieces of model together Day 5

Textures done and In Engine Test Day 8
Final In Engine Environment Day 10

alexk

Here are some quick notes that I can think of

- Texturing is too plain. Assets need more interesting details. Right now you have the broad strokes. You have the shapes, but you don't have any medium and small details. In real life, railings have parts that connect together, they aren't made of one continuous tube (most of the time). The majority of your assets have this problem where they look like it's just one solid object, but in real life, things are often made with different parts put together. Practice your attention to detail and put it into your models

- With that in mind, your normal maps are too plain and is not an efficient use of the normal map. Your normal map could be used greatly to give more interesting details to your models. Whether it's by making unique high poly bakes, or a trim sheet.

- Needs better material definition. In your day 8 picture, the orange supports look like it should be made of metal or hard plastic given it's shape, but there is a concrete noise normal map on it. Your concrete floor is also way too shiny to be concrete. Actually, alot of your flooring looks like concrete but the shapes you have give the impression that it should be metal

- Might be a nit pick, but I find the yellow railing too big/fat

- I think the lighting serves a very basic purpose at the moment. It's lights the room, but it doesn't add to the mood or help direct the eye to a focal point. To begin with, I would try to adjust your lighting so that there are more interesting shadows being cast. Lighting is an art in itself. I would look at how some of the AAA games do their light, and see how they use color, shadow, and light to guide the player and the eye. Naughty Dog uses lighting expertly in their games. Also check out photography in general and how people use light. Theories in photography can easily be applied to lighting in games. This is a super old tutorial but it's still very relevant on game lighting http://www.moddb.com/tutorials/lighting-in-game-environments-the-hows-and-whys

Mogyie

@alexk

Thank you so much for the feedback I feel everything you said couldn't of been said better I really appreciate the feedback as its going to push me in the right direction. Thank you I appreciate it I look forward to exploring more with normal's and pushing them more and work more with my lighting, a lot of things need improving and the feedback was what i was looking for to help me better my faults.
Thank you for the feedback once again.
I will have a look at the link and find ways to push my art more and I will post more work in the near future with all improvements taken into account.

Thank you kind regards
Tarsha Anne Schaller