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Re: AI Art, Good or Bad? A (hopefully) nuanced take on the subject.
@iam717 Hm, as I see it, the person promotes their original reference packs in a blog post, by showing artworks from others that made use of their packs. Maybe they have permission by the artists? Briefly looking at some of the packs, doesn't look to me like artworks from others were re-packaged or consist of AI-generated content. That's why I don't believe what the person does is related to the topic of this thread (AI art). But happy to be corrected if I missed something 
Fabi_G
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Re: artstation/portfolio review advice
Hi Ruz!Ruz said:some interesting points there @NikhilR - are you not working in the industry yet?, your work is pretty cool, but as mentioned its kind of tough
these days.. Your post was very interesting/ informative
yeah gavin Goulden is a long time PC guy from what I remember, thnk he was a character artist, work was top notch, so his advice is worthlistening to.( shh he might be listening)The current culling in the Industry is pretty bad. I doubt that i would ever be going back a studio full time, so does n't really affect me, but sucks still
I am aiming at working with startups, crypto games etc, more of the non traditional routes, via long term contracts if possible
Thanks for appreciating my work! I was working at EA in 2023 until my contract ended in July.
I'm hoping to rejoin, though there are a few alternatives but it is a tough market so I'm not sure where I'll end up.
For the moment I've been upgrading my artwork and exploring some alternative business ideas where I can express my creativity more fully
So this current portfolio won't be the one I'll be applying with, I still have to curate it!
I'll be applying for positions in character art (realistic and disney)
I do understand Gavin Gouldens approach but its difficult to take that level of scrutiny seriously when I see the actual work that goes on inside studios and how much of it is focused on efficiency rather than innovation, not to mention the quality of what is actually published in the end.
Many people entering the industry aren't aware of how important outsourcing is and how there is a very active push towards automation. The general idea sold is your portfolio gets you the job and I don't think that's the case in every instance.
I'm more in the camp of the portfolio should tell the reviewer if a candidate has the minimum required skill set to participate an art test, that's it.
With an art test reviewers have a set bar where they can assess a wide range of candidate skills sets with a single outcome.
If 10 candidates pass the art test and 3 are selected after interviews, the other 7 are added to the candidate file so they can be contacted in case there are new openings.
Expecting incredible standards from star candidates, compromising on the product because of budget and laying off employees after product is shipped isn't sustainable and really damages morale.
It is important to realise that the industry does seem to be turning into the finance industry where everyone becomes a number, so its vital to maintain ownership over our artwork and learn to market that within our own personal brand at some point in our careers.
The layoffs really do cast a shadow on the value corporate see's in an artist.
For example if we have a senior artist and a junior artist competing for a role and they both have senior level art ideally the work experience and published titles would favor the senior.
But with the emphasis placed on portfolios, it seems that juniors have a shot.
And the winner in this situation is corporate that can undercut both.
But corporate didn't set the bar for art, artists did.
Because if corporate had to choose between Last of us and Palworld, they would have picked Palworld in the same way they've accomodated AI.
This video should be required watching for everyone considering joining the industry,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-653Z1val8s
NikhilR
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Re: artstation/portfolio review advice
I think you guys are really participating in a race to the bottom, even if you fully intend to be helpful.
Ruz has been doing 3d since the dawn of time, he has a clear, distinctive style, clean work - we can nitpick minutia of topology on any random model. If Ruz was the employee and he puts extra density where it doesn't make sense, I can just explain it and then he'll fix it. If he does it twice then I make a guideline to follow. If he can't follow guidelines at that point he is a problem. I don't think that is the case because Ruz has been working in the industry for a long time. If he had an attitude problem it would have stopped him a long time ago.
The feedback he got was borderline disrespectful and full of as many assumptions and opinions as it was actionable advice.
I wouldn't try to say the generic advice to improve presentation and only show the best stuff is not the surefire way to a job, but it does seem to assume the people hiring are fucking idiots. As a modeler are you responsible for lighting and presentation at all? Does a portfolio with three well presented pieces tell you more or less than one that is full of decades of tinkerings and finished works that went towards some commercial project?
If I look at Ruzs portfolio I have a pretty good sense of his history, his style, his interest, and even his humor. If I see a students work and it has three highly polished pieces I know less about them. If I want to decide if I can trust a person or not, I defintely go with the one who has a clear, decades spanning passion for the craft and confidently puts all of their work out there. This artist is "wearing their heart on their sleeve" so to speak. Whereas somebody who has carefully tailored their presentation to only include their most overdone pieces that go well beyond the job description indicates to me that they are open to exploitation. It does not tell me that they are necessarily a better artist or not.
So long as there is some finished work I don't understand what the issue with inclusion of some unfinished or viewport stuff is. Everybody does experiments and tinkers. The job is paying money so it's not like because a person doesn't finish every experiment that means they won't finish their work on the job. And I cannot understand how a persons portfolio is only as strong as the weakest link. If michael jordan shoots an airball is he suddenly not michael jordan? Ruz is contributing to decades of projects and if we had a game full of models made in his style it would be a fucking slick looking game. He doesn't need to pose and light the models for me to see that. But then I am not a fucking idiot I can take a moment to think about context. I guess people hiring can't do that? No, they are too busy, right? So we have to accomodate them by jumping through more hoops. So that we can get an insecure, underpaying job... isn't that a race to the bottom?
By following the conventional standards for portfolio presentation it seems that the job market would select not for effective or experienced people, but rather for pedantic people and those willing to jump through any hurdle, even if it has little to do with their job. A team foolish enough to turn away so much experience because viewport screenshots are not as exciting as a posed and presented character isn't doing themselves a favor. Any of ruz's characters or cars can easily fit into any rockstar game that I have seen and I'd bet that he can do them faster and more efficient than artist with less experience.
If Ruz has had no issue staying employed over a few decades, but now that he is old he does, that would indicate more that there is an age prejudice more than a portfolio issue. Because the portfolio has already been proven to be adequate. So even though he did ask for a portfolio review, it seems kind of stupid to me to assume the portfolio is so egregiously bad that it pretty much needs to be nuked. Like it just seems like bad logic.
Alex_J
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Re: artstation/portfolio review advice
@sacboi . working on a car production line sounds great, get a close up view of how things are assembled close up.
re subd - I haven't totally abandoned that philosophy, just maybe I am not that great at it. I am experimenting with making a car with subd 1,collapsing the subd then add details. I think that will work ok for more organic shapes, rather than boxy 1980's cars, but its an evolving process for me
Ruz
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Re: How should I rig this simple character ?
if you have an IK rig setup already i'd just go straight to the animations and see if it makes for feasible workflow.
I mean if you have a handful of animations to do that maybe amounts to like <50 hours of work, not sure that spending another 20 hours or more to make some additional rig features that might improve ergonomics slightly is worth the effort.
If you are trying to learn in general, sure do it all.
If I was animating, I expect I'd be using IK for the tenctacles mostly, but I think this largely depends on the prejudice of your animator. Maybe your animator thinks its sacrilege to not use FK for some reason. That's just to say, tools oftentimes have to fit the team rather than some arbitrary "best practice".
There are some pretty advanced toolsets out there which can more or less automated secondary animations, like tentacles waving, snakelike motions, etc, but again if you only have a small amount of animation to do, not sure its worth time to go after such things. If you were going to be animating this character over the course of like an animated tv series, yeah in that case you probably want the most efficient tooling.
Alex_J
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Re: artstation/portfolio review advice
@HarlequinWerewolf - yes some good points there, especially the thumbnails, will look in to that, cheers
looking at other artstations over the last few days has really helped too.
looking at other artstations over the last few days has really helped too.
re the more realistic characters, it's a tough one, because I do occasionally enjoy them, but the whole process becomes so long and tedious
and if you are aiming for that uncanny valley, it's hard to get there. you can get stuck on the piece looking 90 percent finished forever. Just doing the hair
is a specialisation in itself. The overall standard now is just ridiculously high, so that's hard to compete with.
and if you are aiming for that uncanny valley, it's hard to get there. you can get stuck on the piece looking 90 percent finished forever. Just doing the hair
is a specialisation in itself. The overall standard now is just ridiculously high, so that's hard to compete with.
re the foodpack I know what you mean, but then people would start critiquing the table too
But I will look into a more uniform presentation for those as I have more model packs in production right nowAlso re character work I only seem to get cartoony commissions anyway and commercially they are faster to produce for the same money, so it's a no brainer. I do some zbrush work on them but mainly for facial morph targets
I have an interview on the 29th Jan, so we will see how that goes. generally interviews through recruters come to nothing, but you never know
Ruz
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Re: Seeking feedback for my WIP stylized UE5 environment.
With that in mind, would you recommend removing the zoom-in and vertical fly shots and just using the last shot where the camera zooms out, so the lack of details is less obvious?
Hi! Yes, if you don't have the resources to improve the fidelity of the structure, I would leave out close up shots. Can add it back in at a later time if you decide to give the project another round.
Fabi_G
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Re: Seeking feedback for my WIP stylized UE5 environment.
Ah ok! I didn't see the original post so I didn't realize it was supposed to be chipping paint, with that I mind tho, if it isn't super obvious what material it is made of it may need to be revisited, as not everyone will look at the concept you worked from. I see that you're close to calling this done, so that something to keep in mind for future projects! I look forward to seeing the artstation postHalfAsleepArtist said:Heya, thanks for the feedback! I guess I was a bit too tired to spot that overblown light. Thanks for pointing it outThisisVictoriaZ said:Looking great! One thing that jumped out to me in this is that your lights are looking really hot on the paneling of the side of the building, making it hard to see your textures...Also, if you mean the brown walls with green stripes, those are not meant to be wooden planks, just regular paint. In case you missed it, the reference image can be found in the original post.
ThisisVictoriaZ
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Re: Sketchbook: thomasp
Some WIPs I rendered in Marmoset 3 of assets I did for 3dscanstore:
thomasp
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