Portfolio Review and Advice
polycounter lvl 12
Hey Polycount,
I've just come back from travelling the past 7 months and I just got back home. Looking at my portfolio now I am unsure whether or not what I have made a couple years back is even relevant or hire worthy anymore and was hoping to get some advice. I only have one new piece I added prior to leaving and that was my corvette model. It was only a high poly render and not a low poly textured car so I still have to add that to my site. If I need to remove work then so be it, I'm eager for a job and I want to make sure that what I present will be good enough for a studio. Also any suggestions that anyone may have on what types of work I should be creating to make a more appealing portfolio would be great to know.
I'm currently using carbonmade for my portfolio and it has treated me well so far but if there are any recommendations for better sites to display my portfolio I'll make the switch, if not I'll just stick with carbonmade. I have made an account with artstation a while back so is that a viable substitute?
I'm also going to change my linkedin profile and resume so if you want to look at those and talk about that as well I will gladly listen. Any advice that I can get that gets me closer to a job would be a great help. Thanks for your time.
https://mattcsenar.carbonmade.com/
I've just come back from travelling the past 7 months and I just got back home. Looking at my portfolio now I am unsure whether or not what I have made a couple years back is even relevant or hire worthy anymore and was hoping to get some advice. I only have one new piece I added prior to leaving and that was my corvette model. It was only a high poly render and not a low poly textured car so I still have to add that to my site. If I need to remove work then so be it, I'm eager for a job and I want to make sure that what I present will be good enough for a studio. Also any suggestions that anyone may have on what types of work I should be creating to make a more appealing portfolio would be great to know.
I'm currently using carbonmade for my portfolio and it has treated me well so far but if there are any recommendations for better sites to display my portfolio I'll make the switch, if not I'll just stick with carbonmade. I have made an account with artstation a while back so is that a viable substitute?
I'm also going to change my linkedin profile and resume so if you want to look at those and talk about that as well I will gladly listen. Any advice that I can get that gets me closer to a job would be a great help. Thanks for your time.
https://mattcsenar.carbonmade.com/
Replies
Your work is decent enough, but at this point it's pretty outdated as none of it seems to be using any kind of PBR or any other newer technique.
PBR is not the defining aspect, since its not something that will make the scene look much better just by its mere presence. Foundation of shape, color, proportion and composition will however.
UDK has some good lighting tools which can provide nice looking image no problem. but it would require a bit more work.
But that subject may need more deep look into it. If you'd like to go into that discussion, no problem, but I thought of skipping it for now to avoid too much text in my message
For now 2 main things which i would like to point out in your works are:
1) there is a serious issues with proportions in the train station. Train cars seem tiny due to other large-scale objects being used in a way, that makes them look like other more commonly seen smaller objects, which in turn makes train cars look too small.
Your "ad boards" placed along the edges of a platform look like a fence at first glance, so the eye tends to use them as a size reference, which feels like they are 1 meter high... Same goes for the "huge" gate which seems like a bit higher than human size. So again - train cars look like toys. Also the grass is quite tall which doesn't help either. Concrete platform tiles are huge too. Usually commonly used tiles are 50 or 100 cm. The eye being used to that tends to see them as those type of sizes.
The balance of proportion is one of the most important aspects in the scene, so you should help viewer to understand it with every means possible, and try not create a conflict between different elements. I understand that you may have seen some of those objects on real reference and probably made real sizes, but the viewer usually judges the size of the objects in the scene based on commonly known clues, like in the examples mentioned above.
2) the sci-fi scene seems like its all textured with one unique texture. That type of environment would normally be using bunch of tiling and semi-tiling textures and/or uniquely textured re-usable modular meshes.
@Matroskin I never looked at the proportions like that, you are right I did research the size of the objects and kept them to scale but I didn't realise how much they affected each other when placed within the same scene. Especially with the tiled floor and ad boards, just imagining the changes I can see a beneficial change to the scene. For the sci-fi scene I definitely didn't tackle it in the right manner and making things more modular/tileable is certainly my main objective for future projects. I think the next project I do will be a sci-fi scene so I can replace the one I have on my site since this current scene isn't modelled or textured in the most efficient way.
I would really like to hear what you have to say about lighting techniques so whenever you have the time I'm all ears. Anything that can enhance the scene is great information. Thanks so much for your response and time!
PART1
As I've mentioned, PBR is a new trend and while it is cool thing, the aesthetics foundation didn't go anywhere, and nice lighting may be done well no matter the generation of engines or hardware...
The lighting should help reveal shapes and points of interest.
Here I took few shots of your train station and made them gray-scale as well as reduced them to a "thumbnail" size, plus I blurred them. This exercise allows to get rid of all the small detail which are seen on a regular image and lets you look at you shot with "fresh eyes".
Its similar to what I saw concept artist do sometimes in order to get quick ideas:
As you can see its hard to feel the depth and shapes mainly because the fore- and background are of similar brightness, the light spots are all of similar intensity all over the place.
Here I took a shot from HL2 Train station:
even though we cannot tell exactly if its a train car or something similar to our right, the overall volume and composition of the scene remains clear - there is a "wall" to the right, we can clearly feel the "ground" (a platform), some complex structure to the left (a train car lit with sunlight) and a sloped roof with large windows. And its all with a very severe image size reduction and blur. In a "normal definition" you can also notice some props which are in the shadow become nicely visible against brighter background - also helps for depth perception.
Here is similar test with UT2004 level:
As you can see - even with small size and blur it is still possible to read key shapes. Of course, one may not be able to see the plants, or the crates in the "thumbnail mode", but its ok with such a reduced size. Viewer still can have a general idea of the environment.
Now, those 2 example also have a strong vantage point which helps great deal and gives a good advantage, but there might be scenes where you may not necessary have one. All depends of the shot.
One shot from one of my older scenes where I tried to follow similar exercise with thumbnails to test how scene reads:
Here I didn't have a strong vantage points because there was no "straight" architecture. But still I think that difference in brightness helps to add depth and to show to the viewer the overall "logic" of shapes and still guide the eye from foreground towards structures in the center and center-left of the image (in my case).
Here is a super simple shot from UT 1999 -
Difference and contrast in brightness helps to define major shapes and architecture directions.
Even though the scene in the above image is still in block-out stage i assume, the major spaces are clearly defined and easily recognizable thanks to the lighting and color.
Here is a good example from Uncharted concept art showing a good example of "underground" point of interest revealed by lighting:
Just wanted to add few words about the outdoor environments.
All the above still applies, but given that sometimes when dealing with "regular" sunlit environments you may not have that many options as you have with indoor environments you may want to play with light-shadow contrast as well as add more interesting shapes to the architecture so that together with sunlight it may provide good interest for the eye. Break the same direction of your city environment by adding bridges, terraces, street level variations etc.
In your city scene it also feels like the skybox is different from what the actual lighting is in the scene. It's hard to define where the sun is due to almost non-existent shadows too.
I've found this cool environment nearby on the forum:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94097
in this example the viewer doesn't have a feeling that he is inside a hollow box surrounded by other smaller boxes. There is a good variation of vertical and horizontal forms as well as angles that's to arches and sloped roofs.
Now I am getting away from the lighting into actual shapes, but in most cases both work together and both contribute equally to the interest of the scene.
Last thing that I wanted to add - watch out for the values in your textures.
Ideally most of them should be similar and close to neutral gray if turned to B&W. Of course, it doesn't mean that you cannot have some contrast, but only when it matters. For example a rusty pipe will definitely be darker than the stucco wall, but keep that under control. The lighting might not look as good when most of surfaces will be very different in brightness because that contrast could create chaos and start fighting with lighting.
To be fair I didn't find that being too much of an issue in your case, but still its a good thing to keep in mind.
Good mini article about this on UDK page :
https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Lightmass.html#Diffuse%20Textures
Also check out this article about Lightning of Resistance game:
http://www.cybergooch.com/tutorials/pages/lighting_rfom1.htm
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/185/Practical-Light-and-Color#.VVju0kaOu9E
http://www.hourences.com/product/the-hows-and-whys-of-level-design-2/
As for my street corner I wanted everything in the scene to be lit fairly evenly because I wanted my details to be clearly seen with an even light but it looks like that does more of a disservice than not so I'll go in and see if I can make things a bit more interesting.
At the moment I'm finishing up my low poly Corvette model on my site. I left the project because I went travelling so you'll probably see me reignite my old Corvette thread very soon. After that I'll fix up my old projects in between starting a new one. Is it worth it to transfer my old scenes into UE4?