New around here and would love some feedback on my work.
vertex
Hello All,
I am new here at polycount. I'm finishing up my degree in Game Art, and I wanted to share some of what I've done with everyone to get some feedback and improve the quality of my work. I'd love any advice or critiques on anything I have posted. Everything I have posted I've done myself. I follow a typical game pipeline: High poly mesh, game res mesh, UV, bake, texture and then present. I do my modeling and UV's in Maya, texture work is done with Substance Painter/Designer, I do a real time render displayed in Sketchfab usually. And then final look in Photoshop. My most recent asset I've finished was a modified pistol. I combined it with a rifle grenade I finished previously and added a mini scene aesthetic to it. I'm primarily a hard surface modeler but I also enjoy doing character work, modeling is modeling after all.
Here is a link to my artstation: http://jimistone.artstation.com/
I am new here at polycount. I'm finishing up my degree in Game Art, and I wanted to share some of what I've done with everyone to get some feedback and improve the quality of my work. I'd love any advice or critiques on anything I have posted. Everything I have posted I've done myself. I follow a typical game pipeline: High poly mesh, game res mesh, UV, bake, texture and then present. I do my modeling and UV's in Maya, texture work is done with Substance Painter/Designer, I do a real time render displayed in Sketchfab usually. And then final look in Photoshop. My most recent asset I've finished was a modified pistol. I combined it with a rifle grenade I finished previously and added a mini scene aesthetic to it. I'm primarily a hard surface modeler but I also enjoy doing character work, modeling is modeling after all.
Here is a link to my artstation: http://jimistone.artstation.com/
Replies
Personally I don't like the grenade thing very much, but I don't really know why. I Think the weathering feels inconsistent to me; fresh clean-looking metal&handle next to seriously worn paint.
Might just be this monitor, but the lighting's too dark to see much of anything on the Hospital piece. I'd probably go for one atmospheric shot, then some more 'showy' ones.
It's looking good to me overall though; I'm nitpicking flaws cos that what I think is useful
My least favorite is the grenade. The gold... plated? portion doesn't feel real. I think its got slightly too high a roughness value and doesn't quite feel like metal. It also just feels really yellow rather than a gold so maybe desaturating the albedo there would do it. Its also not warn to the same degree as the explosive portion. the explosive portion reads well and so does the wooden handle at the bottom. I think those are the strongest part of the piece.
The bust is pretty cool. I like it overall. I think the cloth on him and the button feel good and real. His glassy eyes i like. His skin material feels almost like plaster or something though. It doesn't look like it would move or stretch at all. I think it'd go a long way if you added some variation to it in the roughness. Also if you made it glossier to give certain portions an almost oily look(like people get in their Tzone on their face), i think it would really come to life.
Overall i like your work, I'm no expert at execution myself but I hope my 2 cents help. Good luck!
And I dig the points you've made on the alien bust, I haven't heard much feedback on him yet so I appreciate your comments.
Thank you again for everything you put in. I really appreciate it!
http://sandraheskaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/burn-barrel.jpg
http://www.railroad-line.com/forum/data/MikeC/2005531114153_RustyBarrel1w.jpg
Looking at the actual geometry via the viewer, you've got the same relative detail problem; the tiny pipe sticking out of the barrel has 20 sides, which is the same as the barrel. I think the barrel looks fine at 20, but you could definitely stand to dial the little pipe back to 8~12. There's a lot of bevels there too which probably aren't necessary for the most part (tiny) and could be baked into the normal where you do want them. The bevels on the hexagonal thing also seem pointless; I only noticed them when I turned wireframe on. Again; dial it back to just being hexagonal, and add any details through the normal. Same problem with the bit inside the hexagonal thing; I'm not sure that needs to be there at all. If it does, it could be drastically reduced in complexity; definitely no bevel, and the holes could just be marks on the texture. I probably wouldn't make it any more complex than this; http://i.imgur.com/l7oRWm4.jpg
Try to think in terms of how much screen space something's going to take up when you're doing topology. Back on textures; when you're in UE4 (you mentioned it for hospital), there's a lovely visualisation mode which shows you texture resolution; hit [Alt + 0]. Green's good, blue's low, red's high. As I mentioned briefly before, over-high density makes perfectly fine areas look worse than they are, and can look 'gritty'. Also while we're on textures you've got a UV seam here: http://i.imgur.com/Vj0kyOQ.png
Try to keep UV seams to hard edges, or the borders between smoothing groups if you're a max user. Might be that you already knew that, as I've not noticed it anywhere else.
For the grenade, if you've worked from a reference and it matches up pretty well, it would probably be a good idea to include a picture of the reference. Also it might help the shot of both items (gun/grenade) to have a surface for them to rest on, just to ground the image a little.
Including tri-counts and/or wireframes is also good practice; people like to see how your topology works for how well they'd work in an engine. Or at least to know how well informed about that you are. No faces with more than four sides. It looks like you might already know that bit, though some of your cylinder caps look like they might've been auto-triangulated. You can (and I did) get at the wireframes by using the sketchfab viewers, though it's good practice not to *force* a prospective employer to dig like that.
- You have a scene, props and a character bust. I know it's probably from school, but it doesn't give a clear idea of where you want to go. If possible focus on one thing to start with. You say you like hard surface modeling best, don't hesitate to do a very high detail high poly and post it on your portfolio. I would personally drop the bust and environment and focus on props first.
- Presentation is a bit too simple in most cases. A simple gradient bar, really generic basic font, gmail address with numbers, text not always aligned, ... I know it seems small, but it really looks cheap. Consider a professional email address (it's cheap and useful) and use a more interesting font. Also the hospital presentation is a no-go. Put different pictures in high def so people can see them clearly instead of group where you barely see anything as it's quite dark.
On the work itself, an overall point I see in most of your pieces are the transitions and weathering. In all your pieces you could improve them and and it would really boost the quality of your work.
The hospital ground is a good example. It's all the same and you have a hard edge with the walls. Outside of lighting consideration, you typically want to avoid that. Consider creating a blend first to bring variation, and then pay special attention to the transition of the wall and the ground. Dirt will get there, it might be more rough. Maybe some water spilled somewhere, ... Transition between materials are usually not perfect in real life.
You got some of it on your grenade, but it could be done better here too. Considering the amount of damage on the goldy thing, I would expect to have more dirt and weathering on the piece. Right now most transition between materials are really easy to spot, diminishing a bit the overall look. Try to find ways to blend things better with natural transitions. It's not always easy or clear, but it makes a huge difference and is expected on a portfolio showing props.
It's going in the right direction though, your latest piece is the most interesting one! Try to push it as far as you can on material definition (transitions and weathering is super important again ^^). Look for the best of the best similar work you can find online, and analyze them to see what you can add. There's tons of nice weapons online, don't be afraid to take some time of to list interesting things there. This one for instance has some really cool things going on:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Po4mr
It's not just metal worked separately from wood, it's a combination of both. The wood gets brighter and loses some of it's detail near the metal, metal gets rougher and has dirt accumulated where it makes sense. Scratches are different depending on the area to follow the logic of use. I think you got the basics of it right, you just need to push further and further on it!