[PBR Texture Critique] Weller Station Prop

trowco

So I'm working toward being an environment artist and I wanted some pointers for how I can better this at the moment, here are the references I used along with some screenshots of the textured model in marmoset. My textures compared to the concepts are worn down a bit so critique in that favor. Thank you - Taylor B

JaySmitt

Firstly I find the background image quite distracting and it's difficult to focus on the prop itself. So try and do a bit of work on presentation to help draw attention to the details in your work. It's also not a bad idea to show wire frames, texture sheets and HP wires to show potential employers how well you can do that sort of stuff. But as far as the prop itself you did a great job, keep it up! 

You could also add some fumes/burns to the soldering iron tip, like in this reference.
 

Hope this helps, keep it up man!

Bartalon

Looking good!  There are a some discrepancies compared to the reference but with some fine tuning you should make quick work of them.

1. The color of your plastic casing is off.  Yours is more cyan while the reference is more teal.
2. The front plate has a little bit too much roughness contrast between the material and the dirt.
3. The top side of the power button is missing the red paint to indicate the unit is off.
4. The temperature knob doesn't stick out quite as far as the reference, but I imagine it's too late to fix this.  You could try moving the polygons out slightly anyway, the resulting texture stretching shouldn't be too bad.
5. Some of your other damages are a little too soft and broad; something to consider for your next piece.
6. You may want to remove some of the rust on the metal end of the soldering iron and replace it with the heat discoloration that @JaySmitt mentioned.
7. The background of your environment can be blurred or even faded out completely to bring more focus to your piece.  You can also play with depth of field / bokeh to give specific attention to areas of your choosing.
8. Add some additional lights in your Marmoset scene to really make the most of your surface definition.  Look into adding secondary and rim lighting to bring out a lot of details that are currently not showing a lot of detail due to lack of light hits.  You can create multiple cameras and lock their positions to save your best angles / focal settings.
   

Looking forward to your next series of shots.

trowco

added some heat discoloration, suggestions? 

Dan Powell

The heat discolouration looks good, nice job.

I don't know if it's just me, but the metal on the censor thing looks slightly too dull. I understand that the burn marks on it will dull the whole thing down a bit, but perhaps push a bit more sheen on the areas that haven't been burned as badly? 

The background is looking better too. Personally, I like to use a solid colour background with a slight gradient or subtle texture as it stops it getting too distracting.  When I use a colour/ambient background in I use Photoshop to add a small drop shadow to the object, just to help lift it off of the background a bit more

The wear and tear is certainly on its way to awesome, try to think about where people touch the object - there's maybe be slight grease/wear, or maybe subtle fingerprints on the switch where lots of people have been turning the device on/off. You can also think about what parts of the object would collect dirt and be harder to clean, such as crevices

trowco

thanks for the feedback, i do agree there was really no difference in the metal when it came to the discoloration and the overall metal looking dull, so it increased the roughness a bit, also added some finger prints, not sure how to approach them though, i would everyone's finger prints would be dirty when using this, but wouldn't the roughness value of there fingerprints be matte like or would it be more glossy? also i added some plastic wear on the power button to symbolize that obviously it has been used quite a bit and the grease from the finger prints tore through the original hard plastic coating. Again feedback and suggestions

Dan Powell

I don't know the PBR roughness value for fingerprints, however I think it's the grease from your skin that creates them therefore the roughness value would be derived from grease/sweat maybe?

Fingerprints will be slightly matte on glossy objects. Play with the values until you get something convincing. If you need to gather reference/experiment just grab your smartphone, then leave a fingerprint on the screen - that will show you how fingerprints behave with light on glossy objects =P

Metal is certainly looking better with a bit more sheen!