What can I do to improve? (My 3d models)

Raminul

Hi, I'm Sindre "Raminul" Gangeskar, I'm 19 years old and I've been modeling for about 1.5 years now.

I'm starting to build up a huge interest in the 3d world, and I figured I'd love to do modeling and texturing as a professional some day, but I don't think I'll be able to get the chance of getting into the industry unless I create a portfolio, which I pretty much want to create anyways.

I've got a few recent renders I've done, that I need some feedback on, what're things I can do to improve? What do you guys think?

Do the models look okay? Do I need to do some drastic changes to my models in order to improve?

I've only been doing this for a year and a half like I said earlier..
So I don't see myself as a good modeler, I don't even think I am worthy of being called an amateur artist even.. I'm simply a ¨wannabe¨ at this time, I guess.

I'd like to be a professional artist some day, this is something I've had good thoughts about and I figured this is something I'm quite passionate about, and it's something I'd like to do as a job if I ever get the chance.

Here are my three recent renders I've done, they've all been rendered with 3Point Shader Pro in 3ds Max 2012.

I appreciate all the feedback you may give me, please do tell me if there's something I should do, if there are any tips / advice you have for me, please do post them.

My very recent Mossberg 590



My MP5K, it's a bit old.




And finally, my Colt.

Brygelsmack

http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=42

But yeah, looks good I suppose. Generally though I would say shaded High polys are pretty pointless, show us some textured low polys if you're striving to be a game artist.

CordellC

Echoing the above statement.

Renders look pretty good (I'm sure a more experienced weapon artist here could provide some crits), but this isn't game art yet. Modeling is just one part of the process, so get some baked + textured stuff to show.

Raminul

CordellC wrote: »

Echoing the above statement.

Renders look pretty good (I'm sure a more experienced weapon artist here could provide some crits), but this isn't game art yet. Modeling is just one part of the process, so get some baked + textured stuff to show.

Thanks. I have textured the Colt M1911 though, it's already in a mod called Double Action: Boogaloo for the Source engine.

I'm not that great at texturing though, I think, but here's the textured colt.

This is my 3rd attempt at texturing, my first serious attempt, others were paint textures, more or less..

Autarkis

I feel there's some slightly pinching going on in the handle of the mossberg. Otherwise your high polys are looking good enough.
On the low poly, I feel tha tthe grip isn't reading well enough ( maybe too dark, not enough details in the spec/gloss map or their levels?)The end of the barrels might need a little more wear on it considering all the edges are reading as more worn out.
Also, on low polys, show wires and maybe write down the actual tri count?

programmer23

What is the best way to do worn edges like this, is just painting them in the best way or how? I've been searching online for quite some time and have not found anything.

ZacD

dDo and Substance Designer can do a lot of that work for you procedurally. Also baking many types of texture maps help. Crazy bump and other programs can do an edge highlight map. After that you can really just play with filters/overlays and how you combine them in photoshop.

programmer23

Thanks for the advice, I don't really have a lot of money for new software, but I did find an apparently fairly common solution to this which is baking an AO map with the normals inverted, and then inverting the colors. It gives you the same effect as an edge highlight map with no extra software.

Just putting this out for any blender users out there.

By the way, the guns look fantastic.

Sinking

I don't recommend Ddo or Substance Designer, since they are both procedural. Textures will look alright with them, but they are no magic programs and require some effort put into learning them. Substance Designer is probably useful if you make large scale environments and need a lot of variations on popular materials. I tried all of those and the only thing that sticks with me is Ndo2; and I used to have Knald, but bake (AO, Cavity, Diffuse) Maps in Maya now.

My advice is learn more about shading and lighting in the real world. Study materials and do your own research on them. In my opinion procedural programs like Ddo will always look... procedural. It's great at first glance, but to make it really convincing each piece takes as long to set up (color maps, material definitions and tweaking), as making a diffuse map in Photoshop; only advantage is it spits out great specular maps and whatnot, but from what I see, materials will work slightly different with e.g. Unreal Engine 4's system for spcularity (closer to MIA materials).

This is an excellent and short (free) tutorial on the topic and - in my opinion - still looks better than what Ddo can achieve:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=373024

And here is some cool and important stuff on specular maps. They may seem unimportant at first, but specular is what really makes your material pop. The specular is really important for the material definition:

http://www.manufato.com/?p=902

ZacD

Part of the magic of dDo and Substance Designer is you can very quickly get textures for a model to a good starting place, with accurate or consistent results. If it's for a background prop, the results from dDo or Substance Designer are more than acceptable. But for a hero asset, of course you'll want to give the textures some extra love and spend more time with them in other applications. Texturing a model is a lot quicker when there is already paint on the canvas, you don't have to save out and preview your texture on the model as often when you know it already looks right.

Sinking

ZacD wrote: »

Part of the magic of dDo and Substance Designer is you can very quickly get textures for a model to a good starting place, with accurate or consistent results. If it's for a background prop, the results from dDo or Substance Designer are more than acceptable. But for a hero asset, of course you'll want to give the textures some extra love and spend more time with them in other applications. Texturing a model is a lot quicker when there is already paint on the canvas, you don't have to save out and preview your texture on the model as often when you know it already looks right.

I'm just saying, these programs shouldn't be the starting point of any artist's texturing experience. There are only a few basic rules as to why a texture should be made in a specific way. Learn them once and you can spend a lifetime refining them; knowing these things about specularity and some color theory will also help in case you are doing some 2D work for research.

I have seen the most horrible assets done by beginners, using Ddo. Ambient Occlusion turned up tp the max, strong, white specular reflections on wooden crates, etc. Of course you can achieve great results with Ddo, etc. and just like you say: they can help making great base textures. But for a beginner it is too tempting to make a texture from a preset in 10 seconds and pretend that it looks good. Without knowing how to texture manually it is hard to understand what is happening in Ddo and what is necessary to tweak the textures you are geting from it. It dumbs down the texturing process without making the 3D artist more knowledgable about his work.