Pyr3D.com - How's my portfolio ?
polycounter lvl 12
Guys, I could really use some awesome feedback on how to improve my folio. I also am looking for usability on the site itself as well. At least so that the site navigating doesn't annoys my potential employers. And the Resume too. I know it's kinda empty and bare-boned. But what can I do 
If you could put on a hiring manager hat, and tell me what you think ?
http://pyr3d.com
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The site is now made in Carbonmade.
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Thank you !!
PyrZ
If you could put on a hiring manager hat, and tell me what you think ?
http://pyr3d.com
***********
The site is now made in Carbonmade.
***********
Thank you !!
PyrZ
Replies
About the presentation:
- For each character show a posed beauty shot, a wire shot and flat textures.
- Never show unfinished work on your portfolio.
Now about the quality of your work:
- you really need to work on your anatomy
- the texturing is very flat
- the lighting on the beauty shot isn't good either, it make the character look very flat. A 3 point lighting should help.
Hope it helps
Your website and presentation makes me heavily question your artistic vision and taste however. I do not understand how you can be as advanced in character art and then have such bad taste in 2d.
Have a look at the image you posted here. Does it look good to you if youre honest with yourself ? No flame, honest question
I see the good will behind it all, but thats not enough to impress.
First off, half of your page is grey. What does grey represent ?
It is neutral. Neutral dosnt hold any emotion. Grey is mediocrity. And its not looking good. Very light grey is ok, as is very dark grey, but stay away from midtones. That also applies for render backgrounds.
Just go with a plain white, it is inviting and friendly. Keep it simple. Dont show all programs you use with every pic, thats not needed. You gotta check some layouting tutorials, you need to find out how to place text and content (images etc) very badly.
Dont use different fonts. Stay with 1 font and take 2 at most. Take a bolder and thinner weight of the same font to make stuff interesting
That "PI" thing is also not really working nor is the logo nice to look at. If you d be a math professor or such, alright, but in this case, no. "Pyr3D" is pretty strong, that is fine. go with that. Dont need to write it super big on your page again its your URL already.
also making your own site is nothing anyone will give you credit for. Nobody will say "oh nice he made his own site" nobody will appreciate it
If you want a simple site that always looks good, carbonmade is the easiest way. else i can recommend weebly
here is another frontpage, you can take that if you want, but its an example
I now kept the grey background of your character because i didnt want to cut out stuff, but it works in this particular composition, still could be something nicer (Well all in all could be nicer anyways)
For the resume, just copy from someone else. Its just formatting. I cant really stay as its
hope that helps, good luck
Thanks so much guys !! Really nailed down what I need.
I didn't put up some textured models (even though I finished them) because I felt the texture wasn't as good and it brought down the quality of the work. However I should have rework the texture instead of showing only the sculpt.
The Girl needs some pieces re-baked, her skin painted properly, and spec map created.
For the dude, I gotta work more on his face, eyes and beard.
@slosh & deohboeh: I thought I'd save some clicking and do scrolling instead. Guess it doesn't work out. I will mainstream it. Thanks !
@ScottMichaelH Mostly I work on my site when I take a break from 3D stuff. I have 2 more pieces coming up in 1-2 months. To replace those unfinished pieces. (unless I rework them too!)
@Popol I kind of liked the fast scrolling
@Shrike I think you're not the first one to say that about my twisted artistic taste... especially of 2d or design. It looked good, but now not anymore. QQ. Thank you for the mockup as well. I will refer back to your post when I take the next break to work on the site.
And for this one, that picture of here face she kinda has a dead look in her eyes it's an awkward pose.
\
This character is looking pretty good but i would tone down the wrinkles in the back of the clothing and make it more draping instead of like a tight shirt. The texture again could use some better work and I'd try working with different color schemes.
Try putting renders on a darker background and minimizing effects and shit, make it about the character, if the character is competing with the brightness of the background it muddys the whole thing.
This
Is pretty good, the hair is very uniform and looks somwhat unfinished and un=detailed. I would work on making the antlers have more texture and good definition instead of just some lines and feeling lumpy without much overall form.
I think your "the girl" is one of the best pieces and should be near the top.
To summarize:
I think texturing is your biggest weakness and there is almost none done, really work on defining these things a LOT more. There is almost no specularity (or roughness maps) at play it seems, it's all flat.
I would try and not use so many simple shapes that seem random on your scifi things and work on function and the form at the same time, like the scifi helmet has parts that are literally sticking just straight out but dont intersect with the rest of it.
I feel like you should learn about 3 point lighting but that will only help a good amount and make things feel so much less flat.
Tone down the watermarks, simplify the site, and do the think for each character like they were saying. Really darken your site to bring more attention to your work. Things feel so uniform and then these characters blend right in and don't draw my attention so much.
Keep it simple.
Agree. Admittedly this can get subjective. I used to use white backgrounds back in school a lot because my instructor recommended them. Since then I've learn to really dislike them because they scream at me like the white light from the door in the movie Poltergeist. The antler pic Alex posted is ironically a good demonstration of the issue. The backgrounds to those Marmoset images you just posted are my favorites. The background needs to sit comfortably behind the character. In fact, listen to everything Alex said.
LOL. I'm thinking the same thing. That wire frame of the girl is much better than most of what you have in there ... not sure why it wasn't there in the first place other than I suppose you just felt you were still working on it? People will often judge you more by your worst work than your best.
Squarespace is another site with pre-made layouts in which you simply drag and drop in content. Also I second that the fast scroll is definitely not good.
Saying all that, I like that Illusionist a lot ... and the Girl.
when i went through the site, i ended up thinking. okay. heres the art. but wheres the rest? o.O
after searching i found you had some clickable text here and there.
so, it might be smart to bring that more to light.
Honestly I'd just use Art station, it's simple and pretty. Another thing that's random, when I am lighting things I try and make sure the lighting pushed and makes the forms of my model very strong and emphasizes edges well (rim lighting. Something to think about.
I don't think I can trust myself to design a site anymore. Just gonna simplify it now. And make nice renders for thumbnails as links.
@AlexCatMasterSupreme Some color schemes are based off of the concept arts. So usually I don't make drastic changes. Errr, what do you mean by 'dead look in the eyes'. I heard people say that to some of my pieces. Is it about the texture of the eyes or about the focus of the eyes ? Should, say, the scifi pilot girl look at the viewer instead of into far away place ?
@allknighter Thanks. Big buttons coming in!
@ScottMichaelH I will probably go with darker tones then.
.... Funny. The girl piece was made back in January, while others were made more recently <_<" I like the girl piece, but the texture is rly bad. Gotta fix it then !
I just jumped over to Carbonmade now, still same domain name, of course. http://pyr3d.com
Doesn't make sense to pay Adobe for Muse/Dreamweaver, when I can pay Carbonmade instead for lesser price. And save me a lot of time. Though I lose some ability to change stuff like text/thumbnail size and such.
Most of the pieces are temporary as is for now. I will remake the Girl lowpoly for sure, though. As for the others, if it's not game engine ready, don't include it at all ?
I find artstation's basic website super plain looking. TBH, I like the Community Profile page much more. But having very low 'View', 'Like' or 'Follower' might not look well with the employers...
A lot of people used CG hub, they really don't care, and the quality of images on art station vs carbonmade is a big deal, the simplicity is what makes it look nice as well, it's clean.
Although the image quality on yours is fine.
Also did a suoper fast paintover. You really should try and push your materials so they are not so flat, everything reads as the exact same material. The visor could be see--through too with lots of nice reflections and roughness stuffs.
The layout is good now, but its super uninviting looking still
Everything is grey. Even the pictures are greyed out when you do not mouseover them. And its not consistent.
Take the white carbonmade preset, and you desperately need different backgrounds for your characters. I know its super annoying to rerender them on a cut out background, but its something you cannot avoid (unless you dont care how it looks)
Take the opportunity to render all in the same engine with the same cubemap
and you have a massively better impression there
@Shrike I will get my hands dirty for that!
I can show you some of the things you can do the make shit pop.
Some really awesome tools are in the camera raw settings if you have CC. Use the clarity setting (sparingly) and you can adjust contract based on each color and even tweak the hue of each color, add grain to the background that's soft and subtle to add some texture (subtle). Then you can open the lens correction settings and add chromatic abberation (subtly) and other things. Also sharpen filter you images.
One thing I like to do is render stuff out much higher res than the target res, sharpen, then re-size. This will give you a nice and crisp result.
Camera raw and lens correction are in the filters settings. I don't normally use the sharpen in camera raw, use the one in the filters setting once, works best imo, less noisy and one click.
Try and avoid straight white and straight black backgrounds at all times. Very very dark grey ftw