Maverick Nerf Gun, advice and critique

Lord Striker

Hey guys, I just submitted a school project I've been working on for a while now, that I hope to use in my portfolio. I was hoping to get some advice and critique to help me improve it. I know it's not perfect, and I want to improve, so I just thought I'd post an update and see what you guys think.

Thanks for taking the time to look

Lord Striker

Here's the reference I was using, by the way. I happen to own a model at home as well, which has helped me a fair bit with the process.

Fwap

Hey Julian
Looking good dude, some crits for now;
Try push your material definition a bit more, try get some of that specularity that your reference has in. 
I think you can chuck it in your portfolio, but i would re-think the layout and the white background, white is too much contrast and it won't do your model any justice, maybe throw it in a game engine like Unity or Unreal, looks like a Maya render that also won't be doing you much justice.

Lord Striker

Fwap said:

Hey Julian
Looking good dude, some crits for now;
Try push your material definition a bit more, try get some of that specularity that your reference has in. 
I think you can chuck it in your portfolio, but i would re-think the layout and the white background, white is too much contrast and it won't do your model any justice, maybe throw it in a game engine like Unity or Unreal, looks like a Maya render that also won't be doing you much justice.

Thanks for the response. I'll be sure to make these adjustments as soon as I get the chance. I know that maya rendering isn't the best, but my only other alternative at the time was Toolbag, which while great I was having a lot of trouble getting the normal map to work properly for some reason (which, incidentally, is the most important part of the entire piece). I'll be sure to do a render in Unreal and give an update.

As for the background, you know you're probably right. For some reason I felt like white was a good choice because I felt it gave a nice clean look (and matches up with the nerf logo really well). I'll replace it with a tone of gray or something to that effect.

Again, thank you for your feedback.

St4lis

You are gonna need a very good lighting and rendering setup for this one to look good. And good normals and good material definition. In your reference picture, it's all about the bouncing yellow light and the subtle reflections.