Raztt Portfolio - C&C Pls

Raztt

Hi.

About to graduate here in a few weeks and heading to GDC, I want to get some input on the current state of my portfolio before then. Any comments or crits would be welcome. Thanks!

www.robtomlinson.com

CarlK3D

Site looks great.
your lighting is not very dynamic and its making all your pieces look very flat.
Most apparent in the Shield & Mausoleum

DWalker

I'm personally in favor of separate pages for each project; I find that it makes it easier to take in everything at a glance while allowing more detail on each project.

The out-of-focus banner for each project is a bit distracting. If you follow my advice and break it into multiple pages, you could use the out-of-focus image as the default, then use a proper focused version for the OnHover version.

The shield topography seems rather inefficient; given a decent normal map, I'd be surprised if you couldn't trim 20-40% without losing any visual quality. It isn't that the poly count is high as much as you could have done the same with fewer.

The texture sheet presentation leads a lot to be desired. If you don't have the space for complete sheets, then banding provides more information than your current layout.

If, as stated in your resume, you want to get into the games industry, you should try to get some experience with the complete path, from concept to importing into a game engine. You should pick (at least) one of the common engines (Unreal, Unity, Crysis, etc.) and display your scenes rendered from within that engine (and include the name of the engine on the image).

The crypt could really be darker, with yellowish point lights at each group of candles, bluish directional lights from each of the windows, and a fairly low bluish ambient. God beams from the windows might be a nice touch, with the requisite dust motes.

The candles are overly simplistic. The melted wax should be prominent as both pools of wax at their bases and as drips down the sides (which can be done in the normal map).

The planks in the warehouse seem to run the entire length of the building. Using realistic lengths would break up the lines and add some visual interest.

The warehouse floor is very clean; given the nature of the roof, you could have some puddles.

metric meditation

I feel the mausoleum is way too dark. I feel the ambient light can be pumped up much more and you can do so without washing out the scene. I understand you want the warm lights from the candles to come out and you want to keep the cool lights from the windows. you can achieve that, It is always easier to tone things down if they are too bright as opposed to making things too dark.

People want to see the environment...

Raztt

Thanks for the feedback.

materials/lighting, contrast and exaggeration seem to be my biggest hurdle at the moment. The lighting in the mausoleum is pretty much broken, it was coming out way to dark so I put a skylight in there but that seem to kill the AO from UDK, redoing that is on the agenda today.

Both of the scenes are in UDK. Perhaps I could write a blurb about each scene /project, what software/engines were used etc. The shield is based of a concept that was floating around here so I would need to give credit to the concept artist that way anyway.

The original intent was to have separate pages for each project but at the moment I don't feel that I have enough to show to justify it, so I just turned the banners into headers instead.

Thanks again.

oxblood

Hi. The Sheild is the best part for me, I think you could still work on your spec abit more so the metal shines better.
The mausoleum lighting needs to be a lot brighter, I struggle to see any details.
The third shot of the warehouse is really nice I like composition but the normals in the scene don't seem to be working too well. But i do like the scene overall though. Keep it up

Also with your site, the banners for each piece shouldn't be blurry imo.. Its really distracting,.

mystichobo

+1 on lightening up the mausoleum:

Katori

On the subject of the warehouse, yeah, something looks wrong with the normals. I'm not sure if the surfaces have normal maps or not but they need them, looks completely flat. Also this may be DOF (in engine or post) but in the last shot the floor texture looks blurry, could be a low-resolution texture.

Also add geo to those barrels! The sharp edges are distracting. You can use some of the geometry you'll save on the shield on them

Your video is pretty good, and it's good that you marked it as WIP, but try not to show Unreal whiteboxing textures in there at all. Also remove the "Special Thanks" page with the placeholder names. And your logo looks like the Rare logo--probably not on purpose but made me do a double-take.

Raztt

Made some updates on the site.

The banners are now unblurred
I have added short descriptions to each scene
In the warehouse: barrels are more round, segmented upper deck, and added the normals (they were in there just not applied to the material )
In the mausoleum: lighting update, some lightshafts
On the shield: zoomed in the render and updated the texture presentation, still have to do the recommended fixes to the topo and textures
updated demo reel will be up once vimeo lets me link

thanks for all the help so far.

Katori

Updates look great. With the update to the mausoleum I would put that at the top, it's the best piece. Warehouse looks bland in comparison (although still a good piece).

Hate to nitpick, but I'd show a different area of the normals on the shield. Normals are pretty important and the area you selected has a low resolution. I'd show the normals where the spec is now, make the spec band a bit smaller and switch it with the normals band, and make the diffuse band slightly larger. It'd look perfect then.

Your updates look great, going exactly where it should.