New 'folio site, Reel, Environment Scenes

Tulkamir

www.MitchArt.com

Hey everyone, I have been working myself to the bone of late, but it's paid off (hopefully), I finally have a reel and a website. I'd love if you all could take a look. I greatly value the critiques and opinions I get here, and my work would not be where it is without all you crazy polycounters.

Some of the work has been shown here before (and improved upon since), some of it is brand new. I'm still updating the site with some content as well. I'd love critiques on anything, website, reel, gallery, the scenes themselves.

Thanks a bunch!

Joao Sapiro

what i like more in your stuff is the mood of the lightning , its very pleasing to the eye ! congrats ! , you could improve some textures here and there , but nothing major , congrats

Uly

Two quick critiques before I head off to work. On your cathedral, the wireframes on the first two shots are too 'opaque'. If you lowered the opacity a little bit, it would clash less and probably read better.

Second, Jpeg quality! Blargh! The site needs to load fast, yes, but you're losing a lot of detail in some of those shots due to Jpeg artifacting.

seankaremaker

Its cool, i think you Environments look very "Video game" A lot of people miss out on adding dramatic elements for effect and focus too much on realism.

with the fountain scene though it looks like you may have rushed the everything except the fountain, its doesn't look bad but very repeated and the quality of the textures is not consistent with your other work.

It might just be me but with the desert scene I think there might be more of a pattern to how the rocks would be formed. right now the ridges are formed very unevenly and I don't really understand the wind trend that would have formed that.

Everything looks pretty cool though, nice work.

Em.

The brick wall and vine textures in the fountain scene are bugging me a little, I feel like there should be some harder edges in some places in the brick and the shapes of the leaves in the vines are odd. It'd be nice to add a smidge of dirt to the barrels in that scene as well, and maybe a little more dirt everywhere. I think one more pass on the textures and it's good. Overall everything looks nice, and is well lit, solid. Good job.

Tulkamir

Johny - Thanks man.

Uly - I'll fix the wireframes up, thanks for pointing it out man. And yea, I wasn't sure how much I should compress. I'll resave the images at a higher quality. Thanks for the crits.

Sean - Thanks man. And yea, the fountain was a bit more rushed than I'd have liked. It was originally supposed to be a stand alone piece, but Su wanted me to make an environment around it, and I didn't quite have the time required to do it as nicely as I'd have liked. And good point on the rocks. They probably are a bit too random. The scene was more to show that I can use a level editor than anything, but I should have been paying more attention to that. Thanks for all the critiques man.

ogleme - Thanks for the crituqes man. The vines are definitely buging me as well. I'm almost wishing I'd have taken them out. I might go back and fix them soon here though. I might actually try to do another full texture pass on the fountain scene though as you mentioned. Won't be in time for my school portfolio show, but oh well.

Thanks again for all the critiques guys. Anything else anyone has to say would be great as well!

Quasar

Good stuff Mitch, I think the lighting's great in your scenes! Just one minor crit about your site, I think the text blends in with the background image in certain areas. Try reducing the opacity of the bg image, or change the text colour.

Thegodzero

Bigger textures! (1024x for 10ft walls and try to keep the pixel density the same as that)

You need some next gen stuff too.

To entice all different kinds of company's its best to make a divers selection of locations.

Good standards are:
scifi/techo lab
modern city street
forest
something old

Tulkamir

Julius - Thanks man! And good point with the text. I'll work with it some and try to figure out what works best.

TGZ - Yea, you're definitely right that I need more current gen stuff. And yea, something I've thought about is what you said second there. Now that I'm graduated I will be working on only more projects in hopes that I can somehow land a job, so my next project is going to be a sci-fi scene that is very next gen. Thanks very much for the input.

Thanks again guys, the more comments the better!

chinups

Hey man, one thing that was bugging me was the camera, in the church scene its constantly swaying and bobbing. It was a nice peice but i think you could have shown it a little better. Overall looks nice:)

Thegodzero

also quick fixes to help the fountain scene would be to fix the normal maps, i think a few of them might be inverted. Also make a better lighting setup. Say a few red lights rite under a few of the lanterns with a very short fall of so they don't light much area But slightly hit the fountain. A blue/white light in the water in the fountain to under light that with a small fall off. From the camera point light thats blueish/white and very weak. This will give you a nice at night scene with some good contrast.

oh and to make sure the normal maps are working rite test them on their own on a plane with one light in a different file.

Nogan

Your demo reel looks great Tulkamir. The only suggestion I have, which could be nitpicky, is that when your camera is looking at the flowers in your fountain scene, there's a small bump that sort of breaks the "flow" of your camera movement. It threw me out of the reel for a second.

Also, chinups has a good critique about the bobbing in your cathedral (ie: going over the chandelier) of your camera in some areas. It's not too bad, but it could be better.

All in all though, great stuff!

Tulkamir

Thanks chinups, and yea, I suppose I can see what you mean about the camera. I may re-render at some point if I get the chance, though it's a bit lower priority than the fountain.

TGZ - Thanks for the help man, I played around with some of your suggestions tonight, definitely made it look far better. I'm going to work with it a bit more to get it right, but what you suggested is of great help, thank you muchly!

Nogan - thanks man.

Penzer

Pretty much agree with whats been said, I like it. Just wanted to add that I think you did a great job on the camera work, the way it tilts slightly as it pans around the cathedral is good. Looks more like an actual storyboarded camera movement, as opposed to the "move the camera around and look at things" camera.