I suck, and I don't know why.

DarthBartus

Yeh, so, I pretty much suck. All my models look blobby and plasticky, smooth and cheap, as if they were wax figures put into a heated oven, and, quite frankly, I can't pinpoint what am I doing wrong, which skill am I missing. Even worse, I think I might have stopped improving.

Here are some of my more recent "creations":





For comparison, here's my take on Wrex I did a year ago:



And my newest "opus", an attempt at Tyranid Trygon.



I know I'm doing something wrong, but I don't entirely know what, and though it might be trivial to some of you, I'd really appreciate it, if you pointed me in direction I need to go.

Griffin

Seems to me its an issue of Material Definition. There are plenty of great tutorials and guides on the subject, a quick polycount search came up with this nice little walkthough, http://www.manufato.com/?p=902

Lord McMutton

Have you been utilizing the magic of specular maps? The Polycount wiki separates them as Gloss and Color maps.

They control the size and strength, and color of the highlights, respectively. Here's a good example of some that are really well done. (They're the first and third maps on the second row of the second image)

[HP]

You're sounding a bit negative and harsh on yourself, it's incredibly important to know where you stand in terms of your skillset and it seems you're well aware of that and that's great since you know you still have a long road ahead of you (we all do)

Ask me, I think you're doing great, you just need to focus and practice Materials and Presentation work. Knowing how to use a spec map is not enough, you need to understand WHAT is a spec map, what is a roughtness map (gloss), how do these mats work with environment cubemaps and present them in a properly lit environment.

I would recomend by starting out with importing your models to a game engine, if it makes it any easier, use marmoset toolbag since it will force you to tweak your materials and give them some love to achieve the look you're going for. (It's also a really fun last step since the changes you'll be making are pretty much real-time) it seems to me on those renders you're using are either a default scanline render, or you're doing a bad job rendering those (again, no lighting and mat work)

Swizzle

Your models lack material definition. This means you can't tell what two adjacent materials are supposed to be on an object. This happens when your textures aren't working well with lighting to give the impression of a specific surface.

This is a tutorial for 2D artists, but it's still very helpful when creating materials for 3D stuff: http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm

Read through the whole thing and then do some material experiments with some of your models to try and understand things better. Try to judge where you should be putting things like sharp speculars and reflections.

Hard objects (rock, metal, wood, etc.) tend to get shinier where people touch them. This is because touch smooths out the surface and polishes it, causing light to be reflected very well. Hard surfaces tend to get duller where they take damage, such as on the corners of tables.

Softer objects (rubber, plastic, clothing) tend to get less shiny where people touch them. This happens because little bits of the surface chip away and the surface gets rough and doesn't reflect light as evenly.

Vertrucio

No, I don't think the problem is in his textures or materials, that's only part of the problem. The biggest problem is that the underlying models don't have enough form and hard plane changes.

You have some hard plane changes in areas where it would be obvious, but not enough in areas that need those hard plane changes in a more subtle way, areas like the head plate on the krogan (although Grunt's had more hard planes, Wrex's was mostly smooth in form with wrinkle detail until the edges). Deadpool is a good example, as you haven't put in the well studied forms and plan changes of the human body, which are exaggerated in comic book superheros, who are all basically wearing skin suits and are super toned.

The same goes for forms. The forms you have are a bit muddy because of the lack of those plane changes, but so many of the forms you have still look a bit like a basic primitive with stuff thrown on top. Really push things while you're learning to get things down.

Once you have the form and planes down, then, and only then, can you add subtle surface detail, such as the wrinkles on the krogan's head plates, veins, or any kind of texturing.

So, in a ways, it's the classic beginner's trap that many people, myself included, get into where we start adding details like cuts, and wrinkles too early, and then try to cover it up with textures.

Stop trying to get to the texturing point so early, and focus on making a really good sculpt.

CharlieD

Just to add to the materials discussion, here's an extremely helpful and to the point tutorial for materials by one of our very own.
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/materials

Also, a simple fix for your blobby looking models is to sharpen the edges. If you're using zbrush, the dam standard brush is magical.

tac0m

hey man, don't get so down on yourself. EVERY artist looks at their stuff from time to time and thinks it sucks. You're stuff isn't bad. It isn't AMAZING FANTASTIC OMGCOPTER. There's room for improvement but so far you're doing well.

I'm having an especially hard time with an asset i'm working on at work. Here's something i've found when i'm struggling with sculpting. Grab your clay buildup brush (or clay tubes whatever you are more comfortable using) and just using that brush and that brush only start adding more shape to your sculpts. I'm not sure what it does to my brain but once you get into the zone all you see is, build up or remove. There's not inflate or trim dynamic or anything. You will really start to see forms more clearly in your reference images because it's either a build up or take away.

I agree that some of your stuff does look a little muddy but nothing a little cleanup wont fix. Go on youtube and check out some speed sculpting timelapse videos and see how other people have tackled their sculpts. Maybe you'll find something you can work into how you do your stuff.

Best of luck

Yedp

I'm really a beginner myself and I still have that muddy look that you are talking about but I'm working on fixing that.

My advice for the modeling/sculpting part is to search for references and try to copy it as well as you can, it takes a lot of time (to me at least) to understand the shape and volumes even with reference, so trying to do it without any references is really hard and will often give me a weird looking muddy geometry.
You are probably using references too but yeah trying to get the shape right and smoothing properly at an early stage will help you remove the muddy look later when adding details at higher resolution.

If you need to sharpen details you could always try using pinch, trimdynamic and some other brush and test to see what would work best for you.

The rest is just playing with textures and materials like the others said, adding some texture to the fabrics with some bumps or normal map instead of having a simple flat material color can help you give more depth to your models.

Hope it helped, I'm a beginner myself but training and watching other people work will inspire you! Good luck, I think you are doing well don't give up and keep up the good work

JR

Another thing you could do, is doing paintovers from time to time, to help you figure out what needs to be improved. You could do paintovers on top of your clay renders, to help defining forms better, and over the material/texture render, to help you defining material parameters, like specularity, glossines, SSS, BDRF and so on.

Always keep an eye on references of top artists. Understand their tricks to make good presentations. If necessary, copy their works (or presentation styles) in the begining, as a reverse engineering resource. I believe this will help you a lot. And don't be so harsh about yourself, everybody here, even the top guys, were a beginer someday.