New/updated portfolio site

JordanW

Put up a new website for myself...mostly highpoly stuff and normal mapped models. Gonna put some additional stuff on it this weekend as well i hope.

http://www.mutantspoon.com/

D4V1DC

Nice site, Like the normal/mudbox/work.

Thumbs up! Can't wait for the update.

Striff

Thats some nice work man.

I would recommend for the panel stuff, don't have your shot looking straight at the panel. Its really hard to show off the normal map that way...

steady

awesome tinman, more!

EarthQuake

nice looking site man

poopinmymouth

Nice, my only crit is I think you cropped too much for your thumbnails. Make it painfully obvious what they lead to. You know because you made the large version and the thumb, but the viewer visiting the first time has no clue. They are navigational aids, allow them to function as such.

motives

Yea agree on the thumbs, also i think the actual renders are pretty small aswell. Hard to see all the detail you put in there with those.

Joao Sapiro

i love your stuff you definately know your way around next gen another inspirational artist !

pior

Put your name at the top!

aniceto

nice site what about wires and poly counts?

kakikukeko

Clear website!
About the art, I really dig you techno stuffs.. (about the organic, I would like to see some less blobby/monstruous anatomy..) wanna see more
+ agree with above

JordanW

Thanks for all of the comments, I definatly will take these into account when updating the site this weekend. One thing I wish I had a better method of showing off would be the next-gen textures, I plan on having a lot of these and the best way to show that kind of stuff is with a moving light. Does anyone have any recomendations for this? Possibly an animated gif???

Sage

Nice work Tinman. I think back in 1999 when I was learning web stuff I came across a book that mentioned that you could make animated jpegs but the problem was bandwitdh. You can always show a quicktime movie if the viewer wants to wait and see it load. The other thing that would kind of work is show a jpeg of the model in a filmstrip. Show shots of your models moving in a sequence and let the viewers brain put it together.

Alex

Clos3d

Clean website and easy navigation. What deserve to be there is there and nothing more=)

I'm currently revamping my folio as well^^
You should add your name/e-mail on all your work images tho.
And If I were you I'd remove the ''2d'' part unless you plan on showing something worth.

Here, I don't know where I got this link but it can help in some ways.

http://www.thejonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/

JordanW

Finally updated the page with the changes people suggested, some better thumbnails, name at the top...Gonna add some wire frames of the General and the Franken guy tomorrow, I also threw up some new Next-gen textures and added a past-gen link. I didn't want to include my way older work on the main page as I wanted to keep it focused to my most current work. Anyways check it

www.mutantspoon.com

JordanW

Finished modeling another piece for my site...I might take it into zbrush after this

blankslatejoe

looks awesome! what is it?

JordanW

just a pillar with lights and an electrical box, it could be broken up to not have 4 lights but 1 and sit against a wall, etc...

Lee3dee

sweet stuff! are you allowed to post some of your mad doc work? or not until the game ships.

Kevin Johnstone

Might be good to look toward balancing out between fine level detail and large details. Throughout most of your work you tend to maintain the same thickness of chamfers on edges and all the bolts are super chunky and most of the bends are a similar thickness.

This doesn't indicate scale as well as it might as a result.

For instance, the big bolts on the triangular outcroppings at the base of the structure, they really ought to be 1/5 of the scale, otherwise this reads as being about 2feet tall.

I have a tendency also to make things chunky, but theres a time and a place for that, the more restraint your maintain on the overal , the more the chunky bits will then read as strong and chunky, otherwise it reads as a lego toy a little.

I like the smooth rounded forms at the top , nice flowing cuts in the metal there and the straucture is solid and sturdy, but the size of those bolts, the over large wires and the all over level of detail are bringing down the impact of the work as a whole.

Sometimes, less is more. Some smaller thinner chamfers and extrusions, a bit more subtle detail rather than having everything being chunky would really make this piece pop and wow people more.

Its good solid work, its feels like it just needs s a little more restraint is all.

r.

JordanW

Thanks for the tips, I'm gonna make another pass at it keeping the stuff you said in mind.

blankslatejoe

ahhhh those are lights, like fourescent-tube lights--without texture/glow it was tough to tell, but that makes sense now.

wait, mad doc? Man, every day I discover another polycounter who's local...there's a lot of us around it seems!

Parnell

Portfolio was easy to navigate, and your work is coming along nicely.
For crits I'd say try to get more textured final pieces up there. I'm sure you got a ton all under NDA just waiting to show!
It's always cool to find a local Mass. Game Artist.
We aren't alone!
B

JordanW

Figured i'd just post in this thread...

Finally got around to starting the low poly for the elements and normal mapping them

ultra

Great work man!

pior

Hey Tin great work and nice site!

Got a question still - how do you do get that intertwined look on your highpoly grass/roots and cables ?

Just like here http://www.mutantspoon.com/portfolio/hpfrank.jpg
here
http://www.mutantspoon.com/portfolio/vinewallhp.jpg
and here
http://www.mutantspoon.com/portfolio/modularpillar.jpg

Looks to me like you figured out some clever trick, hence if you don't mind sharing... :P

JordanW

Actually, I remember Rorshach mentioning the Path Deform modifier once and I started messing around with it. Basically you just draw a spline and you can have shapes follow that spline with it. So in the case of the vines or cables I would just model them straight and then deform them along the spline.

Also there's a Surface Deform that uses a nurbs surface, you can do some crazy stuff with that as well.

pior

Cool thanks, I'll check this out! It would be perfect for something I'm just about to start on :P

Sage

Nice work! Is this the kind of stuff that will get someone hired as for as envirnment artist for next gen work?

Alex

JordanW

kakikukeko

good! I like it! I hope you'll texture them all! :P

Fuse

i am not sure the spec is working too well, looks like you just upped the saturation nad contrast of your diffuse, maybe give it a slight blue/green tint if it's metal ?

hobodactyl

Wow, your stuff is looking very nice! I'll be looking at your stuff when I start making some environments

pior

I love it, but I don't understand why you aged it that way - like, how come that the paint goes off in such intricate places? same thing for the neon holder, it looks like it's been dragged on a concrete floor or something. The texturing itself is very nice, it's just the tear and wear locations that seem a bit off to me.

Very nice still!

StrangeFate

Yeah, scratching every edge in sight has always been very popular.

It would look better and less noisy if 80% of the mesh asn't scratched. usually you only add scratches to parts you think would be exposed to such thing.

I can see the metal around the front of the light being hit and scratched while the rest would be just mainly dirty and darkened, as they're hard areas to access for cleaning.

Also, unless those pieces are about 2x2 meters, all those tiny scratches will either look like noise, or blurr away with rather unnice results.

Some single and larger chipped pieces of paint would look better, for realism, and as detail in engine.

One good thing to keep in mind is that textures are usually mipped down by default, if you have small detail you think wont be so great once mipped down, you have to ask yuorself whether the mesh and texture it will look better without that detail, or if's better to have it there and scale it up.

JordanW

Thanks for the crits guys, I'll take another pass at how i'm handling the wear and tear.

Slum

Very cool textures. As for what Fuse said, I actually have to disagree. I think the red spec is working really nicely with the purple diffuse; it gives a nice car paint effect, which it would kind of lose with a blue or green spec.

JordanW

did some revisions on the floor support before starting on the low poly:

nfrrtycmplx

Looks good man.. nice stuff. I second Pior's comments about the decay/paint chippin... but solid non-the-lez

shotgun

really liking your stuff tin, as always

i feel id like to see some deep browns in your shadows,
i like the greenish touch u've got on some areas, push it harder!
if the normal-map dictates working within small value-range, push it with color.

as for the scratches, it does look like u'r trying too hard with them. if you cant come up with anything particular - let it go, no need to over-scratch everything. "draw without greed"....

JordanW

Thanks for the comments and tips,

Did some messing around in max tonight with modifiers, wasnt making anything in paticular but just messin with the Shell modifier and some follow to path junk,

<edit>
adding another pic, started messing around with probooleans some to see what's possible, feel kinda guilty actually using booleans...

Sage

Great work as usual.

Alex

pior

I think it looks great! That image alone makes me want to play with Proboleans:


I love that depth layer you have here, kinda leather-looking. Sorry to ask again, what exactly is follow to path? There is so many things I want to do with splines, but I always find the spline tools slightly wonky to work with in Max compared to Rhino's for instance. Things like projecting a spline on a surface... I hear Maya can also do that, what about Max?

Joao Sapiro

is it pathdeform tinman ?

Kevin Johnstone

Looking good tin, the floor support has much more sense of scale and the latest piece is a big leap, curved surfaces make much better normals and you can see much more clearly how it was contructed and fits together.

r.

fritz

i bet it's pathdeform pior. the pathdeform modifier is really cool.

if that's the case....make a line...build something outta geo...highlight that geo...pick pathdeform modifier...click "pick path"...then click your line....BAM...now you can mess w/stretch, rotation, twist, etc. it's the greatest way to make tubes.

hey tinman...a tutorial on your site would be awesome.
your stuff looks REALLY cool. i like it a lot.

JordanW

Here's a quick image of the process, I will rant for a second about some of the tools, The pathdeform modifier is cool, but it seems to work best when you use the World Space Modifier version, but it doesn't seem like you can collapse that after it's been applied, am I correct about this? (if so it's annoying) It also looks like you cannot apply it to a group. I also tried using the SurfDeform for the caps on top of the shell but it distorted them too much so I ended up sticking with the Path one . Anyways here's a pic of the process, I hope it makes it somewhat clearer.

rooster

cool! nice tut

fritz

tinman....i owe you a pint!!!

thanks

IronHawk

thanks tin!!

rooster

hey tinman if you want to collapse down that wsm shape I tried something that works- clone your wsm deformed object and delete the modifier, then apply a morpher to it. Then as a morph target pick your deformed shape and when you drag the slider to 100 it retains the shape.. mine was rotated 90 degrees out but im sure its possible to compensate. then you can collapse the morpher and viola