Looking for feedback on a portfolio piece

wright.tom85

I'm doing a few new pieces of work for my portfolio before applying for a job. I'd love some feedback on the work before I finalize this piece.
Designed for use in an MMO, so reasonably low poly and texture targets.

slosh

Your stuff isn't bad but it's super drab and boring subject material-wise. Also, I understand you are going for realistic stuff but none of your assets or environments look real enough. Even if you're going for MMO gigs and they may make lower poly stuff, they are still going to look for artists that do realistic stuff for their folios. You need to hit a higher bar in the realism department. Otherwise, do stylized stuff with more color and personality. Right now, this stuff isn't going to jump out at anyone looking to hire.

luthyn

I agree, I am a bit confused about the style that you are going for. What are you using to texture this? Try looking at Quixel or Allegorithmic tools for help with your texture definition. Even if you are leaning more towards stylized those tools will help. Also fro me right now the metal on the blade is too noisy. Keep it up though, I would like to see how you progress.

wright.tom85

Ignore the link (that was) in my signature, that's ancient and I actually forgot it was there. None of that will be included in the new portfolio.
Focusing on the weapon attached, any suggestions on raising the realism bar? Texture for this was done largely with photo-textures from CGTextures, normals through CrazyBump, and hand-built embossing patterns.

http://puu.sh/aDOA5/8f40ac1ae6.jpg
This is another project that was completed recently. All details baked flat, the game engine will only handle a single 1024 texture per object. The PSD was set up to allow for easy modding, with the lighting baked and layered independently of any texture or color added later. The client was very happy with it, but I'd like feedback from people who are more artistically inclined.

Tobbo

I agree with the others. If I were you, I would look into PBR and try and learn all I can about it.

This is a good start. http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn

wright.tom85

So my college training mostly consisted of the core concept training, and hand-painting textures. I don't know anything about PBR, Marmoset, etc. Where exactly do these programs fit into the workflow? Are they strictly designed to create materials from scratch and bake out appropriate spec/nrm/etc files? Or are they strictly for rendering beauty passes for display?

(Yeah, the easy answer is "Go to the websites and read," but I've got work today. So until I have the chance to do in-depth research, some cliff's notes would be appreciated. )

slosh

PBR is physically based rendering and is just a more realistic capability to next gen engines. Instead of just color, normal, spec, you use color, roughness, metallicity, normals to define your materials. Marmoset Toolbag 2 is a PBR based engine that people use to do their shaderwork and it has an excellent lighting system for rendering assets. As for your normals, at least for personal work, ditch crazybump and start creating highres meshes for everything...the bakes will look better and more convincing. If you aren't doing realistic stuff and just want to do stylized, push your shapes and colors more to be more stylized and cartoony. That weapon you did is just in no mans land...neither realistic nor stylized...that's where you don't want to be.

wright.tom85

Thanks. I guess I'm just going to have to sit down with this weapon and compare its texture quality to other MMOs and figure out what's lacking.

I guess the pressing question on my mind is how many of these PBRs are commonly accepted in a professional setting? I've heard studios snub Z-Brush as playing with clay in spite of how useful it can be, and I'd rather not spend the time to learn a program if most studios are going to treat it as a novelty toy.

BagelHero

Zbrush is an integral part of the workflow for many people in a professional environment. I do not know of many studios these days that use normal maps but at the same time refuse to use Zbrush for the high poly; I don't know where you got the idea that studios snub it.

You are also misunderstanding what PBR is.
It is a theory for texture creation and a basis for rendering algorithms, not a type of program.
Read this.

Marmoset Toolbag is a super simple realtime engine for creating beauty renders. Great for previewing work and for rendering portfolio pieces.
It's not a thing most studios currently have a need for in their workflow, but it's great for quick and accurate portfolio presentation or for previewing what something will look like in-engine (if you need to do some hard shader setup or some such on the final product, and don't have the time to go through that hassle JUST to see what your textures are doing).

Get yourself up to date on modern asset creation pipelines.

billymcguffin

Will PBR be a "novelty toy"? No.

Unreal Engine 4 exclusively uses a PBR workflow, Cryengine uses PBR these days (not sure if it's required), Marmoset Toolbag 2 uses PBR, Marmoset Skyshop for Unity uses PBR, IIRC Unity 5 will use PBR, I'm sure high end proprietary engines like Fox Engine use PBR as well. Offline animation studios like Pixar have been using PBR workflows for years before the trend swept into real-time.

Popular texture authoring software like Substance Designer and Painter and Quixel Suite are designed for PBR. Quixel's Megascans service is devoted entirely to making PBR materials in ridiculous fidelity. GameTextures.com is adding more and more PBR materials to their library.

Probably 90% of art posted here on Polycount in the past several months is PBR.

If a studio is going for a realistic style (or even a stylized style) on an upcoming game for PC/Next Gen, they're using PBR, almost guaranteed. PBR has taken the game art "scene" by storm and if you're not using it in non-stylized works, you're gonna get left behind.

wright.tom85

Okay, that's a fair assessment of PBR, thank you. I have a friend who works with Square up in Canada, his art director has repeatedly dismissed zbrush as a toy. I don't know how widely held that view is, but it's a variable that I have to consider when choosing what software to familiarize myself with. I admit to being out of the loop. I hit my stride doing commissioned 3d assets, and I've let myself become insulated. It's about time I remedy that, I suppose.

billymcguffin

An art director at square enix said zbrush is a toy!? *facepalm*
I don't even know what to say about that.

Anyway, along with the marmoset tutorials that Tobbo posted above, here's a good video overview of PBR by our very own d1ver (I think that's how he spells it?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNwMJeWFr0U

I think it actually uses some of the same illustrations that the marmoset tool uses, but sometimes it's good to hear/see a video along with reading.

wright.tom85

Don't quote me on it, I can only repeat what I've heard from my friends in the industry. Maybe I shouldn't be concerned, I've been told I'm not godlike enough to make full and proper use of zbrush anyway, and I don't doubt that.

Thank you for the resources. PBR may not be relevant to the job I'm aiming for right now, but I'm sure it'll be very useful to know when I'm on to larger projects.

ysalex

Honestly it sounds like your friends are feeding you bad information. Zbrush is an integral part almost all pipelines now, even in many low poly workflows, I am guessing there are few studios out there where at least a couple of the artists aren't using it.

You also don't have to be "god like" to be using it. It's a skill like any other, and you'll never be good with it until you get in and start learning it.

luthyn

Please go use Zbrush. Like ysalex said, you don't have to be 'god like'. But, from my experience, you do at least need to know how to get around in order to be helpful for most studios. Go practice. The first few things are going to be bad, but that's fine. There is no downside to learning Zbrush at all.

As for PBR, follow what everyone has already said. Take the time to watch the presentations and tutorials that are out there and become more familiar with what it is about. There is no downside to investing the time into learning it. I would recommend with where you are in skill set right now, go give Quixels DDO a try. There are a plethora of videos, examples, and resources out there to help you out.

Here is the official website: http://quixel.se/
The Wiki: http://quixel.se/usermanual/quixelsuite/doku.php
The youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/quixelteddy
And the relevant polycount threads: http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

If you find that you don't like DDO, give Substance a try. I personally much prefer Substance but I feel that the learning curve for Quixel is less steep. Both tools are amazing and neither is the wrong choice.

Keep going! Practice, learn new programs, it's all worth it.