[Portfolio] – Normalz

Normalz

Greetings everyone! I just finished my portfolio and I'm looking for feedback on my website and my work as I'm seeking to break into the industry and improve myself as an artist. Thanks in advance My portfolio: www.mbeaty.cjb.net

Brygelsmack

Add something about yourself.

The modeling looks very nice. I don't have much experience in that field so I'm sure others will do a better job commenting on that.

GummiEnte

Why do you show the '3D Visualization' at the top? It does not seem that this is actual game art (if it is, never mind). I would take all the stuff of the 'Game Artwork' section and put it right at your first page. So when someone opens your portfolio he can see all the game art stuff!
Another thing: did you actual model the fabric stuff on the katana? I would recommend to try to leave that for the normal map. It should save you some polys.
The modeling looks solid but maybe you could add another, more complex, piece.

The overall appearance looks pretty good!

Macattackk

You gotta push your texturing more. all your doing is using a flat diffuse + AO with one grunge texture overlayed on top. You should localize your texturing by showing where parts of the object split with dirt and what not. Add more details like grunge and scratches to your specular that is not in your diffuse to have extra material definition.

Texturing isnt just baking something out with one diffuse color and one photo overlay on top.

Blaisoid

your models seem very unoptimized. it's most visible on tanto knife, the grip and tsuba are super high poly.
the granade has lots of useless edges that add nothing to the shape.

also, uvw maps look like they could use space more efficiently, you can overlap some of identical parts.

Aga22

One thing i gotta say about the game models is first your polycount can be further reduced. polygons are wasted on items like the hand grenades round pin, which is a coiled cylinder, which could be made where the coils intertwine, you could use polygons to unify them , and let the normals do the job of appearance. there are other spots where polygons are needed and you've left them too low poly. for example the blade of the katana. you ve spent a lot of polys on the hilt and guard, and the blade is jagged.

KartoonHead

All three assets are very poorly optimised. You don't seem to have any problems with high-poly or texture work, so just spend more time on the low-poly models. I'd personally take all three down and retop/rebake them. Remember that if your model isn't going to deform then you don't need to stick to quads for your low-poly.

Also, that sword. The handle will get the least camera time (and will most likely be covered by someone's hand), yet it has an absurdly high polygon density, when at the same time the blade, which will get the most camera time, has a blocky silhouette. Spend your polygons sparingly, and where they're needed. You could easily get that sword under 2,000 triangles and it'd look better than it does now.

Your UVing also needs some work, you've given small areas like each individual wrap on the sword's grip a large number of pixels whilst the largest part, the blade, the part that will be the most visible in a first-person or third-person game, has been shrunk right down.

You could also do with adding a little more flare to your texture work, everything seems to be the same shiney grey and nothing really pops out at you.

Normalz

Thanks everyone, a lot of good points here.

dpadam450

There is also not much to go off of. You have very simple objects. Maybe do a car next because it has more complex shapes.

The really good portfolios all have 1 or more small scenes. You have the living room but I assume its super high poly and not rendered in a game engine.

Normalz

Very simple objects eh, well I have a L96A1 Sniper Rifle modeled. I don't know if that's considered complex but I haven't finished texturing it yet because I obviously need practice in that area. I have a hard time making scratches and grunge look realistic as I've just started learning. So back to the texturing tutorials for me The living room scene isn't game art, it's visualization but it demonstrates my high poly, composition, and lighting abilities so I think it's a good idea keep it in there.

dpadam450

I assume you don't have a degree then? It sounds like your trying to break into games tomorrow. If you just started learning then it will take a while to get up to par but you just gotta keep putting out stuff and learning. I'm not sure how often/if at all, that people get hired without art degrees.

David-J

dpadam450 wrote: »

I assume you don't have a degree then? It sounds like your trying to break into games tomorrow. If you just started learning then it will take a while to get up to par but you just gotta keep putting out stuff and learning. I'm not sure how often/if at all, that people get hired without art degrees.

People get hired without degrees all the time. Portfolio over degree wins every time, that is a known fact.

On another note. What everyone has said, improve mostly on your texturing. Good tip for optimizing your models. Look at them with flat shaders and look at the silhouette. Any geo that is not helping the silhouette can and should be deleted.

Paul Pepera

Tons of great feedback here. My comment in addition to the above is that your body of work is too small. 3 rather small game props are not enough. Your portfolio is at a crossroad - you need to decide if you want to do 3D visualization or game art and focus all your energies in that facet. Lighting for 3d visualization and lighting for games are different beasts.

Normalz

@David-J: Thanks, that's a good idea I'll try it out.

@Paul Pepera: I see, so do you think it's okay for me to leave the 3d visualization up as long as I continue to add more game art?

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the feedback.