The BRAWL² Tournament Challenge has been announced!
It starts May 12, and ends Oct 17. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
It starts May 12, and ends Oct 17. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
Best Of
Sketchbook: Jonas Roscinas
Hey guys, I used to post here long time ago, and the idea of having a sketchbook where I can post my works (even if 1 person sees it) is very intriguing in terms of tracking my progress.
I decided to focus more on becoming a good character artist, so this is where I'm coming from with my posts. Hopefully in the future I can post in video/commentary form on Youtube, at least that is the plan.
Have limited amount of time daily, as I have full-time work, but nonetheless should be fun.
The first character, is quite a simple idea I had of a simple still-life shot of a robot/mecha girl chilling with her cat, and just simply observing it. Nothing huge, but I'm mostly working here with the juxtaposition of a cute small animal, and her powerful/badass owner having down-time, between travels or something along those lines.
This is my initial block for the girl character.
The final look I think I might go for a somewhat stylized but with realistic materials type of render. 
Johnnynapalmsc3
1 ·
Re: Which PBR is actually PBR?
Yes - calibrated means they come with numbers you can use to set them up correctly in your renderer (assuming you have the control to do so)
These are calibrated (or at least i'm reliably informed they are)
https://polyhaven.com/hdris
I don't think you can just drop the files into painter and they'll magically work - haven't personally tried it.
These are calibrated (or at least i'm reliably informed they are)
https://polyhaven.com/hdris
I don't think you can just drop the files into painter and they'll magically work - haven't personally tried it.
poopipe
1 ·
Re: What made you feel good today?
Thought these were cool:
https://www.youtube.com/@AlphaBetaGamer/videos (what people put their time into making) swell for game designers+
https://www.youtube.com/@jamesbruton/videos (some idea of designings and the functionality that goes into making it work for "us") swell for vehicle artists
iam717
1 ·
Re: Does it even matter anymore when it comes to what 3D app to use for portfolio?
you know I hear Modo is all the rage these days, all the cool devs are using it
zetheros
1 ·
Re: The Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge | January - February (94)
Nice texture!
IMO, some of the dirt in the AO feels a bit strong. Maybe adding some variation could help balance it out
Also, your work reminded me that the light cover is actually transparent! I made that adjustment in my update as well.
Great model and render!
One small suggestion—I feel like the red plastic light cover looks a bit sharp. Making it a bit rounder might improve the look! 😊
One small suggestion—I feel like the red plastic light cover looks a bit sharp. Making it a bit rounder might improve the look! 😊
loon27
2 ·
Re: Sketchbook: Jonas Roscinas
That bike design is very cool with it's forward angled low profile, swept back fairing and brutal looking swingarm, set it off nicely.
sacboi
1 ·
Re: Does it even matter anymore when it comes to what 3D app to use for portfolio?
I used to be a Max person, but I've touched it maybe once in the past 5 years. I really miss it, but it was clear around the time blender 2.8 released that Max just wasn't getting the love from Autodesk that Maya was, and a vast majority of studios use Maya for their DCC app because it had python support first and it's rigging pipe is still arguably the best. If a studio does have Max, it's for legacy reasons for the few things that still need it and their licenses are generally far more limited because why pay for something that isn't a major part of the pipeline? So I know quite a few Max people, including myself who have switched to Blender, which I think it's an easier transition going from Max to Blender than from Maya to Blender. Professionally I do all of my modeling in Blender, then unwrapping, skinning, integration and any final model polish in Maya. On personal projects, I just use Blender for all 3D software things except sculpting in Zbrush.
What I try to tell people these days is at minimum know how to do basic things and navigate in Maya. If you are in a larger studio there is a great chance you will have to interface with it at some point. Even figuring out the right settings to get models imported into Maya correctly at the right scale/orientation can go a long way. Other than that, you can learn whatever program you want, and these days I would recommend Blender, simply because of the base program being free there is a good chance you can take it with you from place to place.
Edit Edit:
This one bit OT but nonetheless CS6 is certainly another tool I've fond memories of : )Kind of a side thing, but I have Photoshop CS5 and I've long said that Adobe can pry it out of my cold-dead hands. Well with them shutting down the authentication servers I have lost one of the 2 installs I could possibly use of CS5 with no way to free it. Turns out you now have to deactivate old CS5 and CS6 programs before you wipe your computer or uninstall it, something I never had to do before. So I guess a heads up to anyone else who have old versions of Adobe software, you'll need to do the same.
Alemja
1 ·
Re: Struggling with Shader Performance on Large-Scale 3D Assets in Unreal Engine 5
Not with any great confidence in the technical details - the issue was first raised by one of our render programmers after identifying huge stalls while profiling .
The material that really upset everything featured nested branches that were driven by non-static boolean switches. eg..
My interpretation of what happens is that all paths aren't necessarily built 'offline' and when a new path is encountered it gets built on demand (as in when the material appears on screen or something) . This is generally fine but if the branches are nested and/or precede a lot of work it can cause your GPU to stall.
Static switches are largely okay because they don't (shouldn't) feature at runtime - obviously proof only comes from profiling but i believe that's stated in the Unreal docs.
In general though, I will try to use a lerp rather than a branch if I want an option in a material. This ensures that all logic is accounted for at all times (this applies outside of Unreal btw)
It's somewhat counter intuitive but in practice, what upsets a GPU most is being diverted to a different task (that's why 'draw calls' are expensive). As such, branching in a shader is one of those things you should only do if you have to.
I don't want to scaremonger - Unreal has really good shader compiler/optimisation and outside of the more egregious situations can probably cope completely fine.
This is just something I've seen happen a few times and is a trap people can fall into when they're trying to do the right thing (i.e reduce overall material count, make things flexible/friendly).
The material that really upset everything featured nested branches that were driven by non-static boolean switches. eg..
bool
/\
bool bool
/\
bool bool(it went 5 or 6 layers deep, but the forum's code format box is white on yellow so it's hard to ascii art)My interpretation of what happens is that all paths aren't necessarily built 'offline' and when a new path is encountered it gets built on demand (as in when the material appears on screen or something) . This is generally fine but if the branches are nested and/or precede a lot of work it can cause your GPU to stall.
Static switches are largely okay because they don't (shouldn't) feature at runtime - obviously proof only comes from profiling but i believe that's stated in the Unreal docs.
In general though, I will try to use a lerp rather than a branch if I want an option in a material. This ensures that all logic is accounted for at all times (this applies outside of Unreal btw)
It's somewhat counter intuitive but in practice, what upsets a GPU most is being diverted to a different task (that's why 'draw calls' are expensive). As such, branching in a shader is one of those things you should only do if you have to.
I don't want to scaremonger - Unreal has really good shader compiler/optimisation and outside of the more egregious situations can probably cope completely fine.
This is just something I've seen happen a few times and is a trap people can fall into when they're trying to do the right thing (i.e reduce overall material count, make things flexible/friendly).
poopipe
1 ·