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Art Test - Portfolio Renders

This is an art test that I finished awhile ago but just started to add to, for my portfolio. The art test was a sketch concept with little detail, and instruction, because they wanted to see what you did with it. So here was my interpretation. I just added the terrain, skybox, and foliage, along with touching up lighting and adding some post-processing effects, the test only called for the buildings to be modeled and textured, no terrain, background, and only basic lighting, so I kicked it up for portfolio shots. Comments and crits welcome it's still a work in progress though I feel I'm getting close.

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Replies

  • Oniram
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    Oniram polycounter lvl 15
    not a fan of the first and third shot. shows too much of the terrain and cutoff. and in the first shot its extremely overexposed. the second shot however does this piece a lot more justice.

    as for the piece itself. (ill be going off the second shot mostly). the textures on the right building seem to be very blurry. dont know if its cuz they're low res or if its an engine thing. thats basically the only bad thing i see about this.

    composition is good, nice balance of colors and shapes. i really love the metal.. spec really sells well for it. it seems like this would be a really neat RTS model (third shot is what convinces me of that). if you plan on adding it to your portfolio id go ahead and work a bit more with the lighting and terrain maybe. see if u cant break up the tiling in the terrain, get a better skybox and maybe toss another clone of that somewhere near but rotated for the backside.. i think if u were to push this as an rts model it would really sell.
  • Mike Yevin
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    Mike Yevin polycounter lvl 11
    i agree about the first and third shots showing too much of the terrain, and i would suggest keeping the shadows from being pure black. from how bright the environment is, the front of the building under the overhang looks pretty dark.

    the shapes are awesome though, any wireframe shots or texture sheets you can show?
  • NoChance
    The terrain in the background is actually lower poly then the terrain the scene is focused on. I agree I'll either have to increase the tessalation or keep it out of the screenshots. The shadows are showing up to dark I'm tweaking them currently trying to get them to be not as darker and also make the edges a little less hard.
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    Redo the terrain. There's no reason not to put as much love into the terrain as you have on the focal stuff! Also, turn off or tone down the SSAO (the black shadows that halo around the edges of objects).
  • edoran89
    I think you have a nice piece of art thats being brought down by your environment and skybox. Make it all the same quality level as your main piece and it will be great.
  • RexM
    Any chance of some texture flats?
  • NoChance
    K softened shadows, tweaked foliage, redid terrain, added a depth of field to help with the background, and added a wind source and sway to the grass to help sell the flag and cloth.

    I'll post textures tomorrow heading to bed now, nneeeddd slllleeeeppp.

    Edit: Looking at this I already see some problems with the grass, I'm getting some harsh shadows on the back side of it anyone know a way to make them light more evenly or do I just need to play with it.

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  • SaferDan
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    SaferDan polycounter lvl 14
    This looks awesome!

    Can i ask what art test it was? maybe even see the sketch you worked from?
  • vofff
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    vofff polycounter lvl 10
    me want some grey blue shadows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Serp
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    Serp polycounter lvl 17
    Yeah the black shadows seems way too harsh. Change it to more blue. Look at some reference of paintings or something for the shadows.
  • Oniram
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    Oniram polycounter lvl 15
    NoChance: in case you are unsure, the shadows can be changed in

    View > World Properties > Lightmass > Environment Color.
  • NoChance
    Changed shadow color, tweaked foliage more, modified post-process, added a slight emissive to the windows so they aren't black, and changed the lights up a little bit.

    Also as far as who the art test was for and posting the concept while I did get approval to post this on my portfolio and don't feel comfortable spreading that information around, since I didn't get permission for that specifically.
    Also posting some texture flats that someone requested.

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  • RexM
    You didn't make any specular maps?

    Man, that is essential for metal. Try to remove the specular highlight from the second texture from the bottom too, and then make some specular maps. I knew something was off in the renders, and it was the fact that I can't see specular highlighting the parts that you would expect it to highlight. Specular really helps to sell metal. Intensify specular on scratches, edges, places where the paint has worn down to reveal the metal underneath, and also have details in the specular that aren't in the diffuse.

    Once you make the specular, you could also invert it, create a normal map from it, and then mix that normal map with the normal maps you already have. Make sure it is really subtle though.

    Also, that is a ton of texture memory just for one object like this.... you should definitely look into more tiling textures as well. Tiling textures are primarily how environments are textured these days, because texture memory usage adds up.
  • NoChance
    RexM wrote: »
    You didn't make any specular maps?

    Man, that is essential for metal. Try to remove the specular highlight from the second texture from the bottom too, and then make some specular maps. I knew something was off in the renders, and it was the fact that I can't see specular highlighting the parts that you would expect it to highlight. Specular really helps to sell metal. Intensify specular on scratches, edges, places where the paint has worn down to reveal the metal underneath, and also have details in the specular that aren't in the diffuse.

    Once you make the specular, you could also invert it, create a normal map from it, and then mix that normal map with the normal maps you already have. Make sure it is really subtle though.

    Also, that is a ton of texture memory just for one object like this.... you should definitely look into more tiling textures as well. Tiling textures are primarily how environments are textured these days, because texture memory usage adds up.

    No, there are specular maps I just didn't post them and the art test limited me to 5 materials so I couldn't use tiling textures.
  • Uly
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    Uly polycounter lvl 15
    you really need to normalize the values in your textures. it's really causing your models to light inconsistently from one asset to the next.

    the mirroring on the corner of the trailer really sticks out. its also plain to see that you didnt do this to save memory, but its in your actual texture page. it's distracting, and a complete misuse of texture space. take the time to make the surface flow properly. if you were doing this to save texture space, at least paint out the extremely obvious mirroring details.

    you've wasted tons of texture space in the smokestack things. where you've taken this paneled metal, copypasted it and given the grunge very slight, almost irrelevant variations. on the left side of the texture page, it's very easy to spot where you've masked out the origin of some leaking rust. rust would not build up in this way without a proper point of origin, and is making the texture look very muddy.

    if you are using specular maps (its very unnoticeable if you are.) then remove the baked in specular that you've included from the original photographic texture. when you're mapping this metal surface to an area covered in shadow, the specular looks wildly out of place, and very unconvincing. also, dynamic and baked in specular will double up on eachother and look terrible. paint/texture it out, or find another base texture without the specular.

    the circular metal caps in the top left of the smokestack's texture page are looking pretty blotchy, dodge & burny due to excessive layer blending on top of the original base texture. stick to simple blend modes unless it gives you a convincing result, and try and keep the number of layered textures down to as few as possible. stacking handfuls of unnecessary additional texture layers on top of a base texture just creates a muddy, inconsistent looking surface. also, the base texture's grain very easily shows up underneath the overlaid metal strip.

    like others have already mentioned, the terrain is really bringing the rest of the piece down. it undulates far too radically in smaller spaces, and is also very noticeably chunky when viewed beside models with far more fidelity.'

    pay attention to the scale of your details as well. what's with these itty bitty levers at the base of the trailer? the door looks gigantic in comparison.

    the water-pump looking things are are the best looking thing in the scene, but still have some of the same texture issues found in the rest of the assets. the larger of the two pieces looks like it got proper love while you were modeling it, while the smaller one has a very noticeably chunky silhouette. this wouldn't be as noticeable if you hadn't placed it next to such an object with far smoother curves by comparison.

    as a whole, its an interesting design with a nice silhouette. fix the textures, terrain, and lighting up and it could be a pretty solid piece when alls said and done.
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