[WIP] Portfolio City Scene
polycounter lvl 18
Hey all.
I've been diligently putting together a new scene to enhance my portfolio in the hopes of landing an environment artist job. So far this is what I've come up with. I'd love to get some feedback on what I've got started here.
Here's the main scene. It's sort of a city on the edge of civil unrest as the theme. The armored personnel carriers are there to keep the peace at a recent shop front bombing.
Here's a nice set of shots for the APC itself, including its flats.
Here's a piece of furniture from the rubble. I'd love to know how to get rid of that butterfly crease down the middle. Smoothing groups don't seem to solve it and I'm really at a loss.
Dumpster from the background. Being a dumpster. Doing what dumpsters do.
Oh, and if you know anyone who's looking for a seasoned environment artist in the Austin, TX area, let me know! I'm very eagerly looking for work!
I've been diligently putting together a new scene to enhance my portfolio in the hopes of landing an environment artist job. So far this is what I've come up with. I'd love to get some feedback on what I've got started here.
Here's the main scene. It's sort of a city on the edge of civil unrest as the theme. The armored personnel carriers are there to keep the peace at a recent shop front bombing.
Here's a nice set of shots for the APC itself, including its flats.
Here's a piece of furniture from the rubble. I'd love to know how to get rid of that butterfly crease down the middle. Smoothing groups don't seem to solve it and I'm really at a loss.
Dumpster from the background. Being a dumpster. Doing what dumpsters do.
Oh, and if you know anyone who's looking for a seasoned environment artist in the Austin, TX area, let me know! I'm very eagerly looking for work!
Replies
I'll also see about trying out UDK for better lighting. Appreciate the feedback!
One little note on the height of the door knobs on the doors in this scene. I was going off of some photos of the Wooster area of NYC and they had doors like this. They're still a little lower than the above-waist-height of the barricades, but I think they feel a little less low now. Thoughts?
I still think your lighting is hurting.. For your single assets, you should look into doing a 3 point lighting setup.
Check here:
http://wiki.polycount.com/Model%20Presentation#Lighting
Theres a ton of tutorials for setting up proper lighting.
As for your scene, the only interesting lighting is the headlights. The rest of the scene's lighting seems very flat and boring.
Try getting some contrast in there to add visual interest. Maybe you could make the far end of the scene fade to black? Right now your scene is kinda wide open with a random grey background. Having it fade to darkness would kinda close off your whole scene IMO.
As for fading it to black? I can see about that.
Thanks for the presentation lighting How-To, it'll be really helpful!
I'd say give some life to the lights coming from models in your scene to make some nice, harsh contrasts that you otherwise wouldn't have justification for. Such as red glow from the traffic light and lights from the vehicles.
Also +1 to putting this into UDK. If you're going for this kind of job they want to know you can set up your materials and use an/the engine properly. A lot of your lighting issues would be solved with it being done in UDK, too.
A mansion interior shot to show off my tiling textures and modular environment art design.
All textured and lookin' snazzy.
How it's lit.
Also, currently working on learning how to drop my two scenes into CryEngine 3, since the place I'm aiming at getting employed at uses it. More to follow when I get that working
Having all your environments rendered in Marmoset in your portfolio kind of shows that you are taking the easy way out and avoiding something like UDK or Cryengine. I do not know if that is true or not, but that is the impression I am getting from the work you are posting here. Hope that helps a little bit.
It's mostly been an issue of learning curve versus wanting to make art and put it out to portfolio so that I can get it seen sooner than later. As I said, I'm also training up on CryEngine 3 now that I've got two solid pieces done and ready for that kind of work.
I'm looking forward to using the stuff you mentioned, especially light baking and fog.
No need to make assumptions of laziness though, that kinda comes off rude.
@Paulchen83:
Thanks! Glad you like it. As for tips and tricks, well, I must say that picking out a palette beforehand really helps unify a scene. Making sure that your colors all compliment each other and just "fit" right. I used the same wood base for each of the wooden textures and created a widget set for the decorations that made them fit together thematically. Outside of that, I got lighting tips here and from various friends outside of Polycount. It really helps that in this scene there are several very obvious sources of light, so pooling the light where I wanted it was a little easier to sort out. As for colors in the lights, I went with subtle tones that would compliment the textures used. Warmer for below to make the rest of the assumed house feel lived in, and cooler light above to catch some nice reflections off of the rich, red-ish woods.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any particular questions about setting up a tiling texture sheet and a trims page. They're both vital for efficient environment construction.
I like your armored personnel carriers,and textures used are awesome.
I'll re-state what the majority of everyone has been suggesting to you since the first reply... Put your environments in an engine. It kills me to see environments rendered inside of marmoset. Marmoset is great for rendering individual props, but not full scenes.
My suggestion to you would be to slow down on the environment creation and focus more on learning an engine. Like Bardler mentioned, it does look like you're taking the easy way out. Trust me, you'll have so much more control on lighting than in marmoset.
Side note relating to this; you mentioned above you're looking for work and are a "seasoned environment artist", but it's kind of a false statement considering you have no experience working inside a game engine. I've never personally worked in the games industry yet, but I'm sure 99.9% of industry environment artists use an engine on a daily basis for work.
Well you asked for critique so anything I said was completely based off of what you posted, not anything personal. Also I never said the word lazy, I said having your environments all in Marmoset reflects poorly on you as an environment artist, and makes it seem like you are avoiding a tool like UDK or Cryengine.
Every single position for an environment artist is going to list knowledge of Unreal, Source, Cryengine, Radient, and/or any game engine under mandatory requirements. If you don't know an engine than you are not going to be qualified for the job, it is as simple as that. You could get away with it as a prop artist if you wanted to work your portfolio towards that, but otherwise you should be learning an engine.
That being said, I am definitely going to start messing with CryEngine more in the coming days. So there's that!
Naughty Dog, Double Fine, Retro Studios all use their own in house proprietary engines and do not care if you show your work in an engine. Good art is good art. What matters is clean mesh, great textures and an understanding of fundamentals like color theory, form, and composition.
Know what you're talking about before making judgments.
I understand what you are saying and yes good art is the number one priority, and I do not want to take away the focus on that. I also think the OP has some really strong work here which I do not want to overshadow either. However, almost every environment artist position lists knowledge of a game engine as a mandatory requirement, even if the company uses their own propriety one. Prop artists, character artists, animators, ect not so much, but its almost always listed for environment artists.
I don't think you need to know every little detail and every tool inside the engine, but understanding how to put a scene together in one is extremely important. I just do not agree that you shouldn't learn it because their are some jobs that don't list it as a requirement. With the availability of tutorials out there, documentation, forums like these, ect, it makes learning something like UDK or Cryengine not incredibly difficult either.
This is my opinion of course, so take it as you will OP.
But with your EXTENSIVE experience perhaps he should listen to you.
I see where you are coming from and it makes sense. I think at least familiarizing yourself with an engine is worthwhile time investment before you get a job. I guess I just see it as preparing yourself for the job better and trying to round yourself out. I stand corrected, and admit I was wrong.
This is unnecessary dude.