Game industry - my goal

Veezen

Hi! I will try to explain a little my situation. I feel strange writing this here, but ... whatever ...

When I was young I was curious how games are made, so I started looking for some infromation about it in web - then I started learning graphic. Back then I had maybe 13 (I started with 3D when I had 16) now I have 21 and since year I working as 3D Artist but not in game industry. My current job is great, I learn a lot here, but tbh I always have a dream to get job in game industry. Almost everyday ALSO after work I try spend my free time doing some personal projects in 3D graphic to improve even more my skills. I really like spend time on 3d graphic, I really like learning and doing new things, I don't like stand still doing nothing. I also think that time runs really fast and I'm worried.

So I writing to you because I would like to now how to improve my skills and raise with my abilities on a big level, so every one watching my works will say "wow, great job", "i like it" etc. Maybe that sounds stupid but this is my goal. Sometimes I share on this forum my latest projects but never got big respond and I think that means I need spent on this more time to get better c&c. I would like also to know is there chance with my current skills to get job in well-known game industry in near future (here is my portfolio www.veezen.pl ? IMO I think my works are pretty good, but it's not depends only from me. I really hope that this day will come someday ... I hope so ... maybe not now because I'm a little bussy in my current job and I don't want to leave now ... but someday I would.

Every comment will be valuable for me. Cheers.

Shrike

don't worry, you have a good headstart it seems and in a couple years you surely make top art

What I see from your site is that you understand complex modeling and proportions seem to be pretty good and you generally are good with the technical parts, so I would take less time in future thinking about modeling, and spend it more on the things that are less developed. (on a side note, the bakes do not consistenly look great,a bunch of parts could need softer edges, others more polys, make silhouettes flawless)

It looks like the 2D and more artistic aspects are not as far, texturing, rendering, presentation, colors, fonts, layout/composition, those things that will make your 3D models great and pop.

About texturing, you generally do not have a lot of large scale details on your textures (blue truck does this nicely on bunch of parts tho) and the general wear does not look too realistic.
There is not enough variation and contrast in small scale detail, and there is not a lot of edge definition, which is usually doing great things in texturing. If you want to make clean textures (which you shouldnt want, as learning non-clean ones are super important) the values for the materials need to be super spot on to look good, and have top small scale details + edges, thats hard to pull off in realtime rendering. A good texture looks good under any render engine,
marmoset etc makes it easy to look somewhat good nowadays, but if it would look good in Unreal 3 or mobile engine, then its a good texture, the rest is getting carried by IBL and only looks good because form is represented nicely by light. Its kinda rant-y but the truth

here are 2 nice examples of great variation in small and large scale detail and unique details: (very worn tho but just great textures)
https://hostr.co/file/oc4ALRv7sWR3/ak94_13.jpg (unreal 3)
https://hostr.co/file/kZuNz6YSXusP/rifle11.jpg (offline no ibl?)

I feel your material values seem often pretty off , or very noisy (AK, train etc) try looking at
more real life materials and try working more with phototextures , but the wear and tear is the most important there

Then presentation, your lighting look like you never try doing anything with lights, try playing around with them a bit, its great fun , try different HDRIs and such things , get more contrast and have some darker and some very bright areas. Try 3 point setups, rimlights, low key (look those up, it will be worth it) and play with different backgrounds. The current gray with some drop shadow is not appealing nor does it pop. If youre unsure, a circular gradient with a slightly lighter value in the middle is always safe and effective, but try some cool things with textures, gradients, flat color (color!) or even a ral background like a desk for the gun, or laying on the ground etc. A blurred version of the HDRI is fine too.

Theres so many things you can do with your 3d model. Always look at the best, never at
the usual ones. Look at this photograph per example, thats also just a nice way to present
an object with the use of lights and contrast.



Dont be afraid doing things just because most people dont. Try also using bright colors and highlights.

You can also do great things with type and graphic design ,but thats maybe not too interesting now. But things like your logo, which is per example way too big compared to your adjacent text should always be looked out for. Make sure things are visually in balance.

What is important to get better with those non modeling things, is to look often at other artists work, but non-3d artists. Check out abduzeedos daily inspiration or behance stuff, so your brain memorizes the patterns of those other artists art fields and you automatically get better at those things. (colors, composition, fonts, contrast, presentation, etc etc) The best way to not learn is to look at your own surroundings all the time. (ie 3d game modeling )

If you want to push your modeling to next level, then go the extra mile and add unique detail (in which i dont neccesary mean put 100 attachments on guns etc) but try make your model unique. A custom carving, a sticker somewhere, a rope around something, a keychain attached to a ring, someone wrote stuff with a permanent marker ? You get the idea.

That sounds like a lot, but we are talking world class here. Ah + this:
Always go for world class.

Hope that helps

Veezen

Thank you very much for this long and valuable comment Maybe I will try to back to my older weapons and improve them somehow to not waste time on modeling them again - just to improve texturing (it's good to have external HDD with my all projects).

Tits

Hey there!
I don't do a lot of weapon-props kind of work (not at all actually) so I might not be the reference but I believe your work could be improved greatly by just improving the quality of your presentation.
Presentation is very important and can really improve the overall quality level of your folio.
I think reworking some of your screenshots to make more-dynamic- and interesting shot with better lighting could really make your work pop and distance you a bit from other artist.

Take a look at this and you'll understand better
http://joerivromman.com/

Shrike

while i agree with your message, showing a standard lighting with bare-bone hdri background and floating subject as prime example of good presentation is definitely not in the sense of learning from the best : P

Tits

I wasn't only sharing this for presentation purposes, the material definition of this guys's work is amazing and a great reference of good weapon work imo

That would be great if you could share some exemple of great presentation Shrike, that would be interesting to get a more than just my opinion on that

but I do believe the lighting is more interesting (more constasted) and showcasing the assets better than a kind of dull lighting, gray backgroung and static shot

Shrike

well your own jinx presentation is easily better than what you posted, but sure his textures and models are nice, the presentation is very bare bone however.

If looking for good presentation, we should look at media that exists longer than ours, such as
photography, graphic design or even the movie guys, as they consistently pull this better off but there are many great realtime examples too of course




Prime example of a beautiful composition in context of the subject, this is a lot more work but as you see the result is fantastic



An example of well executed studio lighting that even makes a simple black background look good. Nice color highlights, strong aesthetic and very tasteful lettering logo are the cherry on top



A nice composition of objects that share similar aesthetics , getting carried a bit by Real material definition but still a nice simple arrangement and nice lighting and contrast



A kinda futuristic approach with a little extra graphic design, whats great here is that it shows that you have thought about the subject and went the extra mile and put time and thought into it



Its a bold in your face approach, and not afraid of sticking out from the masses. No big fan of the model but its hard to forget this one



Well there are tons of great vehicle presentations, those are just some random ones, but great nevertheless , here a simple virtual showroom style with nice lighting and a sense of mystery



Its just a colored background but the colors fit so well together, the nice soft lighting and gradients make it just very pleasant to look at , just very time efficient and nice result



Random example of subject in its natural habitat i guess , background modeled custom for the shot and beautiful warm lighting and composition



the ground is a just tiling texture and the background a gradient and he makes it fantastic with very sharp lighting which he does with custom HDRIs where each soft box is custom and adjusted , just like in a real photo studio



This is probably the upper end if you were to present a weapon, it wasnt intended that way, and its not as visible, but it could as well be done. The color palette is insane and many things play together here. Sure a character and background and particles are insane amounts of work but example is example.

You can do anything in realtime, and their problem is that its static, we can make stuff moving , shaders, particles and objects that run in realtime and can easily be captured in a gif or video, and can leverage this strength.



Look at this, for a vehicle modeler, 1-2 textures for the ground, a background photograph , some particles, a little dust (maybe a little in post too) 10 minutes of tweaking depth of field, and 2 of your fitting cars simply floating, and how cool of a presentation would that be ? Show that and thats everything anybody would need to know about you.
Lets not be inspired by a blurred HDRI background ; )

Veezen

Thanks all I can't wait for weekend, so I will have time to improve my model presentation