Environment Art Portfolio

eedobaba7726

I'm currently in the middle of my sophomore year at college, concentrating on environment art. I just finished up the winter quarter and decided to take some time to add some new content to my portfolio site and my video reel.

http://everettgunther.weebly.com/

Let me know what you think!

Some snippets:

Fenyce

I really like your portfolio! You've got some great stuff in there, and we page itself is great, too.
Some of the pictures did a little longer to load, but since you have so many pictures on there I justed skipped them (3-4 times).

That first environment you have in there is just awesome (Abandoned City). Love it. Good job!

dpadam450

Great portfolio and environment design. Nice to see people using blender I still love it. Very highly promising if you have 2 years before graduation. Seen quite a few bad portfolios from people that claimed to have spent 4 years at college and not close to this.

My issue, which isn't about the portfolio,presentation,ability to be hired, or the texture work: its the texture contrast/graininess. I'm going to be as in depth as I can real quick:

http://everettgunther.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/5/5/22551664/7286543_orig.png
These barrels. Make the metal rings 3D, no need to be that low poly. Unless you state its for mobile specifically. The wood on the closest barrel on the right has super deep normal maps, it seems off. Also the normal maps on the metal are weird bumpy, no metal is bumpy like that almost like it has a sand dune normal map on it. Same grain issue with the brick walls. I get things can be worn and cause tiny tiny nicks to be grainy, but pick certain parts of the wall to apply that to, while the rest is more or less a plain color with some +/- 10% color varation. Could just be another high noise/grainy normal map with too much contrast to make it too bumpy.



http://everettgunther.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/5/5/22551664/9838804_orig.png
More graininess/noise. The canon front barrel looks like a watercolor piece of paper normal map was aplied to it. Should be flat with some scratches. Texture resolution looks low/grainy. Again it reads more like marble. So much contrast in that texture. As well as the cloth and the canon wood(wheels base).

I think overall it may just be your textures are too low which is pushing the over-contrast to make it seem more grainy than it is. What is the texture resolution on the canon barrel?

The cactus kind has the same thing. Really bumpy/scarred looking. Doesn't really even look green. For that I suggest really referencing a real saguaro cactus. And if you do remodel that one, don't normal map the humps in the cactus. The high poly LOD_0 should be geometry not normal mapped. Once it gets away from the camera the fully normal mapped one (like you have in the image) would kick in. Very clearly flat.

Same with the RV. Choose your grunge wisely. Not the whole thing. And depending on the texture size, up it. The rocks are def way to low res, not sure about everything else, but I think it is safe to say that they are probably too low res.

dpadam450

Good example on the top banner of what I mean by not super contrasted +/- 10 color variation. Its not black and then white to make it gray, its just a bunch of gray colors.
http://www.polycount.com/wp-content/header-images/ainsley.png

eedobaba7726

@dpadam450

Thanks for the detailed critique. All of the examples you're pointing out are from my older works (which is why they're low on the page), but I definitely see what you're getting at about the graininess and resolution issues. That cellar scene started out originally as a set of unrelated models that I decided to add into the scene, with some noticeable differences in art style and quality.

But yeah, I think I get you mean about the use of contrast in my textures as well. I think I've improved my use of colors a lot in my newer works anyway.

dpadam450

The first image reads really well just every texture seems to have the problem. The wooden create, and the window sills pop out the most.
http://everettgunther.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/5/5/22551664/2783432_orig.png

AlexCatMasterSupreme

I think overall you have good work, but could maybe work on your material definition and having a bit too much material noise. It works but I think you're almost on the edge. Some more spec would be nice to see as things read quite flat even in the sun. Good work though still

JavierP

Very nice, I like it.

eedobaba7726

AlexCatMasterSupreme wrote: »

I think overall you have good work, but could maybe work on your material definition and having a bit too much material noise. It works but I think you're almost on the edge. Some more spec would be nice to see as things read quite flat even in the sun. Good work though still

The material noise is seeming like a common complaint. I'll definitely keep that in mind and try to keep my textures a little cleaner in future work.

firstplayer

Amazing portfolio, man. Simply inspiring! Abandon City and Rundown RV have "the spirit" of The Last of Us in them. It was the first thing I thought when I saw them, however you can tell the style is unique to you. Good job! The Chains Plaza and Basement Gambling Den are similar in that regard and both have great lighting. I definitely got a sense of Bioshock Infinite especially with the colors.

Keep up the good work man and I look to seeing more of your work in the future!

firstplayer

NomadSoul2501

Great portfolio and amazing site!
I love the gallery image solution.
How did you do that, it's like magic

firstplayer

Amazing portfolio, man. Simply inspiring! Abandon City and Rundown RV have "the spirit" of The Last of Us in them. It was the first thing I thought when I saw them, however you can tell the style is unique to you. Good job! The Chains Plaza and Basement Gambling Den are similar in that regard and both have great lighting. I definitely got a sense of Bioshock Infinite especially with the colors.

Keep up the good work man and I look to seeing more of your work in the future!

firstplayer

DarkStar

I personnaly think that your portfolio is one of the best environment portfolio i have seen so far. Your textures, modelings and environnements breath fresh air and are exquisit to look at.

You show great talent and great expertise.

As for improvement, it would be interesting to see some very detailed highpoly models. it would permit to show to future employers that you're able to make next-gen assets.

eedobaba7726

firstplayer wrote: »

Amazing portfolio, man. Simply inspiring! Abandon City and Rundown RV have "the spirit" of The Last of Us in them. It was the first thing I thought when I saw them, however you can tell the style is unique to you. Good job! The Chains Plaza and Basement Gambling Den are similar in that regard and both have great lighting. I definitely got a sense of Bioshock Infinite especially with the colors.

Keep up the good work man and I look to seeing more of your work in the future!

firstplayer

Thanks. The Last of Us was absolutely an inspiration on the Abandoned City environment, as well as the destroyed city scenes in Crysis 2 and 3. Glad you like my work!

NomadSoul2501 wrote: »

Great portfolio and amazing site!
I love the gallery image solution.
How did you do that, it's like magic

The site creator I'm using is weebly.com. It's a really simple site creator that I'm pretty happy with. The only issue is a somewhat low bandwidth hosting, but hey it's free.

DarkStar wrote: »

I personnaly think that your portfolio is one of the best environment portfolio i have seen so far. Your textures, modelings and environnements breath fresh air and are exquisit to look at.

You show great talent and great expertise.

As for improvement, it would be interesting to see some very detailed highpoly models. it would permit to show to future employers that you're able to make next-gen assets.

Thanks. And yes, detailed high poly pieces would probably be a subject to focus on rather than more full environments when I get time to work on more portfolio stuff. A lot of the work in my portfolio now is definitely of a background model quality rather than super-detailed beauty shot stuff.

DarkStar

eedobaba7726 wrote: »

Thanks. And yes, detailed high poly pieces would probably be a subject to focus on rather than more full environments when I get time to work on more portfolio stuff. A lot of the work in my portfolio now is definitely of a background model quality rather than super-detailed beauty shot stuff.

i didnt meant to say that you needed highpoly models for beauty shots but more to show that you're able to respect the level of detail needed to tranfer real world assets to 3d and so on.

Anyway great work.

eedobaba7726

Updated my portfolio with two new small projects:

Rurouni Strife

So first, you're awesome. You kids coming out of school seriously give someone like me major runs for their money. An old coworker was talking to me about it at GDC. I think if I was deciding to go to school now I'd be going a different route than going to a public university.

I actually have a different critique than everyone else! Looking at the abandoned city, your tree really bothers me. It's too boring, straight, and low poly. In a scene like that where everything else is of such high quality, why not spend time adding some geometry to that tree and giving it some character. Have it split out into more directions with more branches.

The second critique about that tree are the branches and leaves. It reminds me a bit of some of my work (which btw I'm not ashamed to say you have a significantly better portfolio than I do overall). http://rose3d.com/personal_work.html If you scroll to the bottom and look at my trees, you'll see they have a lot of clumped leaves, sort of like a fist. It's pretty similar to what you have. You need that to spread out more and feel more like a canopy than it does now. I also think the leaves themselves are a bit too large and should be sunk some. Smart construction of the tree will go a long way into making that scene be even more amazing that it is.

Naturally, if you're finished and have no intention of going back to that scene I understand completely. Sometimes when you're done you're done. But for the future you'll want to keep it in mind. Keep up the good work, you're crazy talented.

eedobaba7726

Rurouni Strife wrote: »

So first, you're awesome. You kids coming out of school seriously give someone like me major runs for their money. An old coworker was talking to me about it at GDC. I think if I was deciding to go to school now I'd be going a different route than going to a public university.

I actually have a different critique than everyone else! Looking at the abandoned city, your tree really bothers me. It's too boring, straight, and low poly. In a scene like that where everything else is of such high quality, why not spend time adding some geometry to that tree and giving it some character. Have it split out into more directions with more branches.

The second critique about that tree are the branches and leaves. It reminds me a bit of some of my work (which btw I'm not ashamed to say you have a significantly better portfolio than I do overall). http://rose3d.com/personal_work.html If you scroll to the bottom and look at my trees, you'll see they have a lot of clumped leaves, sort of like a fist. It's pretty similar to what you have. You need that to spread out more and feel more like a canopy than it does now. I also think the leaves themselves are a bit too large and should be sunk some. Smart construction of the tree will go a long way into making that scene be even more amazing that it is.

Naturally, if you're finished and have no intention of going back to that scene I understand completely. Sometimes when you're done you're done. But for the future you'll want to keep it in mind. Keep up the good work, you're crazy talented.

Thanks. And yeah, that tree is still the sorest spot in that scene. I don't intend to go back to it, because as you said, sometimes when you're done your done. That tree was pretty much the first tree I tried to make for game art, so it's definitely pretty rough, and I was just kind of improvising my process on it when I should have done more research on established methods. Thanks for the kind words about my portfolio, though!