portfolio critique

badger5

Hello I have been working on my portfolio more the past few months and wanted to try to get a opinion on my portfolio works/site. http://badgerarmored.net/ I was planning on modeling a small airship next or find a small group to join.

Thanks
Nick

JacobStone

Hey Nicholas,

After taking a look at your site there are some things that I would look at changing/ fixing up.

Layout:
I like the layout, it's pretty similar to mine but having your thumbnails on the left side and your info in the middle at the top makes it look like you have a html/css error in your code. Personally I would like to see it all centered.

Also make sure your best work is at the top, most people will only click on one maybe 2 links and if they don't like what they see then they move onto the next site.

Thumbnails:
I'm not a fan of the thumbnails you are using. With the exception of The Bathroom, none of them make me "want" to click on it to see what the actual asset is.

Tor Frik and Polygoo have some pretty good examples of enticing thumbnails.
http://www.torfrick.com/
http://polygoo.com/

Renders:
I think your renders are too busy and your artwork gets lost in it from all the competing elements. I think The Bathroom renders also do a good job of what they should be. When I look at a render I want to see the art first then the text; not constantly having my eyes pulled around from text to art to textures and so on.

All in all I think you are super close to having a nice website, just a bit of polish and it will look awesome

slosh

Your site is very basic which is good. The design is too basic however and looks like it was done by a highschool student...unless you are a highschool student. You should at least make it more professional looking. As for the art, all of your stuff needs at least another texture pass and then you should re render them in a proper game engine. Since everything is going PBR, I would definitely do some of your assets in that format. Also, all of your texturing just looks like noise. Don't just cover something with a noisy overlay and call it done...it just looks bad. You also have texture stretching in places which is very obvious. Your scenes need A LOT of work before they are folio ready. Focus on making your smaller assets much higher quality before working on the scenes. I wouldn't use any of this stuff quite yet for applying cuz they are not up to par. Good luck!

tulkas09

Hey. You should try to use more actual techniques as PBR or meshes with more polys. Like more actual "next gen". Also, I'm not sure what software are you using for the renders but you should try things like Marmoset, UE4/CE3( Not 3dmax(never))

badger5

I have UE4 I can bring that into engine and go from there after editing my art, slosh for my textures do you think the props are fixable? What would you suggest me to try to do to get away from the textures from looking like noise if I tried to fix what I already have. For my website it has been me over last many years making changes, I will take a look at the links given to me. Maybe I could try to pay people through the powweb that I use.

slosh

I would suggest putting wear where it makes sense...scratches along edges. Use a lot of reference to see where items tend to get scratched or worn. It's also good to look at Tor and Polygoo's stuff since they are hard surface pros. It would also help to redo your UVs since they seem to be pretty wasteful...cram them tighter.

badger5

I can try to make my textures cleaner like I see in your art Slosh and like you said to try to apply scratches more along the edges not so much in the centers.I hope I can fix all of this, I felt like I was close to my goal and I really do want this and have been trying to push myself harder. Would it be a good idea to possibly start with the viking helmet as a example and WIP page it on here and show progress and texture layout? I think I can save the work that I have.

slosh

Yea getting feedback on here is a good idea.

JacobStone

Here are some good things to look at for texturing stuff to get you started.

PBR:
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn

General Hardsurface:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/42-tutorial-hard-surface-texture-painting.html

Hand Painted metal:
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-hand-paint-convincing-metal-textures--cg-1765

badger5

I thought about it and looked at the batman textures, I was thinking I should make my textures simpler in the sense that the material that is on the object is clearer or you can tell this is a smooth matte helmet or this is a rough metal.would that be what I should be doing in clearing this up so its not so noisy? It makes sense to give even more of the vibe of a rubber or metal material.

slosh

Do what makes sense. If a metal is supposed to be very old and rusted, than more noise makes sense. If it's supposed to be new but battle damaged, noise doesn't make sense...but nick, cuts, scratches do. Really think about what sort of surface you are trying to achieve and mimic that as realistically as possible. Again, use lots of reference as well. And if you're redoing the helmet, do it with PBR this time around. You can use UE4 like you said or try marmoset which is a fantastic PBR engine and very easy to use.

badger5

Would it be easier to try to fix the textures and put the models I have into UDK rathern than start from scratch, I like what I made and do want to make them portfolio ready if they are not there yet. It might not look like it but I had fun with what I was making and spent a good deal of time modeling ect like anyone else.