How do I take this from 'Eh, it's alright' to 'Portfolio material'?

NeonGold

Hey guys! 

Recent grad here struggling away to make some decent portfolio pieces (prop/environment art, specifically), and I just 'finished' a piece that I feel could use a bit more love, but I'm not quite sure where to go with it so I was hoping to get some feedback from the talented people on this forum. 

To me it feels like the lighting is my biggest problem here (definitely no lighting pro), but let me know what you guys think. 

These are screens from UE4.

Natland

Hey! I don't intend to sound mean or anything, but make something new! This idea for a portfolio piece doesn't really show off much. I would redo the idea with more of an environment to it or pick another concept completely and take what you learned to the next piece. Try to pick things that show off your skills, like organic/hard-surface modeling, maybe show off well made props in an environment.
This image is also very dark and overly saturated, too much black and it is hard to look at for those reasons.

Try to make stuff with an intention on showing off your skills, more solid designs help too.

Like I can believe that his robot works:
http://67.media.tumblr.com/8e324fd5f61ad8efb5207439c0582015/tumblr_mrppmaX27A1sf1pjxo3_1280.jpg

And it looks nice too

Good luck!

NeonGold

Natland said:

Hey! I don't intend to sound mean or anything, but make something new! This idea for a portfolio piece doesn't really show off much. I would redo the idea with more of an environment to it or pick another concept completely and take what you learned to the next piece. Try to pick things that show off your skills, like organic/hard-surface modeling, maybe show off well made props in an environment.
This image is also very dark and overly saturated, too much black and it is hard to look at for those reasons.

Try to make stuff with an intention on showing off your skills, more solid designs help too.

Like I can believe that his robot works:
http://67.media.tumblr.com/8e324fd5f61ad8efb5207439c0582015/tumblr_mrppmaX27A1sf1pjxo3_1280.jpg

And it looks nice too

Good luck!

Thanks for the honest opinion, and no, not meant at all! I intend to to more and do it better every time.

I realized that for some reason it was looking goon on my one monitor but on the other it is horribly dark and saturated so I'm updating the images. If you can, let me know if it looks any better? (image quality, anyway)

Tits

Hi!
Can't really help you with lighting, especially not inside UE but it definitly could help a little bit of love.
I had trouble actually being able to tell what the 3d model was because the lighting doesn't really help making it very readable.

Brian "Panda" Choi

This needs a much more focused, powerful lighting set up.

Everything's hazy looking and not really guiding my eye.  Took me 1 second too long to realize that was a robot hand.

Focus your composition onto a single focal point with light.  

Ideas:
God rays coming out the hole above.
Heavy rim lighting to silhouette the robot arm

jose.fuentes

I agree with what @Brian said, the lighting is really off.  What stood out to me right away is the lack of contrast.  Check this out 

I took your image and desaturated it and checked the levels, see how there is no range of dark to light?  Everything in your image is mainly dark.  Play with the lighting really push it to get a good range where there black all the way to white.  IF you're image works in grayscale it will work in color!

Good Luck!

JuiJitsu_Chicken

As above lighting could use some lovings.

Something else to think of would maybe be adding some human scaled props into the scene, something to really help drive the point that robot's hand is massive.

Considering that there was a collapse in the roof, I would imagine there would be a lot more debris and dust around.  Right now you have just a few large "chunks" of the roof around the hand.  Some more debris pieces that vary in size would be nice.  

Did the robot just crash through this roof?  Has it been there forever?  Is there a war going on above etc?  These little "story" points can really help to push the art more.  If it just fell through the roof, using Brian "Panda" Choi's idea of the God Rays(which is great idea regardless) through the hole could really make some dust particles "pop".  

Edit:  Adding some more color variance in your concrete mats would help.  They all look the exact same. Some grime decals maybe for oil stains etc from the cars that would park there on the floor?

NeonGold

Thanks guys, these are all super helpful!
I think I'll definitely put in more work, because even if it doesn't turn out amazing, there's a lot to be learned. Everyone loves god rays, and I would like to tell more of a story with it too. It does feel quite bare right now as i is, I agree, and I'll push the lighting more as well. 

EliasWick

Greetings Neon, It's me, the Spline Fixing Guy! Incredible work here! I fell in love with this piece in no time! I knew exactly how I would have made it better, your name Neon gave me some inspiration!
I added an image below on how I envisioned it - 30 min Photoshop and Tada.
IMPORTANT: I have two monitors and this image looks horrible one one and awesome on the other. If you have high brightness on your monitor, this image should look good. You should be able to see the rocks in the back well.
I would love for you to make another version yourself!

NeonGold

EliasWick said:

Greetings Neon, It's me, the Spline Fixing Guy! Incredible work here! I fell in love with this piece in no time! I knew exactly how I would have made it better, your name Neon gave me some inspiration!
I added an image below on how I envisioned it - 30 min Photoshop and Tada.
IMPORTANT: I have two monitors and this image looks horrible one one and awesome on the other. If you have high brightness on your monitor, this image should look good. You should be able to see the rocks in the back well.
I would love for you to make another version yourself!

Oh wow, this is wicked! Definitely gave me some inspiration, and I never thought about doing anything like this with it but I think I'm definitely going to look into doing some post work on it now.

Thanks for sharing!!

Anchang-Style

Also: is it supposed to be realistic or cartoon style? It looks very HL2 / Portal. But that goes mainly for the textures. They are a bit flat and lacking the possibilities current tech gives you. Like a nice PBR metal on the hand. Personally i would like a bigger hole in the roof that could give way for some moonlight shining down. A lot more rubbel and destruction around it. A cool thing, but i don't know how well you know the software that could do that, would be having this hand be there for some time (after some war or whatever) have it overgrown to a degree with vines and moss and worn down materials around it and... i don't know...something growing on the palm of the hand. The wear and tear of the material on the hand atleast makes it look like it has been there for a while. Add some cool kinda shining down from the top with atmospheric dust in the air (maybe glowing a bit). Could be something there.

RustySpannerz

That's actually a really good idea what the guy above me said, a tree would be the perfect thing to have growing out of the palm of his hand, maybe with some roots wrapped around his fingers. Kind of reminds me of Wall-E, if everything else looks dry, dusty, and desolate. Maybe bring it to daylight and have a beam of light shining down on a single tree. 

AdvisableRobin

I would start looking more into learning lighting, that is the difference between an eh piece and a great piece and right now the quality of the lighting is what is dragging this piece down, which otherwise could be a lot more interesting. Here are a few resources that could help you a bit with the lighting. A few of my thoughts on the lighting, right now you only have one practical light source, which is the moon. So you need to add in some artificial light sources. How is the parking garage lit? Are there light sources above the ground like street lights, head lights on a car, flood lights? Start by identifying your light sources, natural and artificial.


CGSociety Live Session w/ Boon Cotter
Let's Make Lightmapp EPIC(and understandable)
Area Lights in Unreal 4
Texture Values for Environments part 1
Texture Values for Environments part 2

Overall, you need to start thinking about variation and dynamics in all aspects of the art pipeline. That helps convey depth, creates contrast and that all feeds right into visual interest. So a great example is that your roughness values seem very uniform, which makes everything seem way more flat then it actually is. So you've got metals and even the painted metals are opportunities for some really juicy bits of roughness variation. But if you want the hand to feel more worn down and rough, then maybe make the concrete more damp and have pooling water. 

Lets talk about the storytelling and where you might've missed some opportunities. You have the view directly in front of you of some giant robot or mechs arm that has crashed through the ground into a parking garage. What is the micro story? What is special about this arm and why do we care about it being severed? Did someone pilot the mech and perhaps they detailed it? What is happening on the surface above and how can you convey that without being able to see much or any of it? What is happening/happened around the parking lot?

You've got a good start and I think you can make some small changes that would really help push this scene beyond. Keep it up!

NeonGold

So it's been a while since I've posted, but despite mostly moving on to other projects, I decided to tinker with this one again. Still don't feel like I'm quite where I want to be with it, but I have definitely gained a newfound respect for lighting artists in my struggles. Some more nudges in the right direction would be super welcome at this point as I'm finding that I am learning a lot from all of your advice whether it turns out to be a portfolio piece or not. Thanks again!!

*Note: I'm aware of the weird seam in the upper left. Still trying to figure that one out

Di$array

Not sold on the tree perosnally. The hanging ivy around the damaged hole does enough. If you want some foilage as a focal point maybe have a pile of soil on the hand with a small flower growing from it. On the nose I know.

You could however have a damaged/rusted car to add some background interest to the left hand side or damage ground under the hand. Where is dug in as it collapsed through the roof. Keep at it.

EliasWick

I agree with Di$array on the tree, you don't need it. I love this so much better! I didn't see how much work you put into the arm before you reworked all the lighting... Sooo huge props to you for the remake!

samnwck

The scene feels claustrophobic to me. Though I do really enjoy the new lighting adjustments and the foliage. It'd almost be neat if the ivy went down the arm as well. The street textures down below the hand could probably use some love as well. If you wanted to use the tree, you need to find a better way to blend it into the scene. Like have a tiny one growing out of the dirt on the hand or something because right now it just seems like it was placed down and tries to pull focus from the center of the hand.

Also, not a huge deal or anything but, the height of the parking garage says 1.96 m. That's literally my height and in all the parking garages I've been in the roof has never been anywhere near that close to my head (nor the things that hang down to tell you the max height of a vehicle). I usually have 2 ft of clearance if not more. Maybe I just haven't been in enough parking garages to know though.

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Thierryart

If you want to push this piece to the next level (and you should because its a great start) Add more meshes, more rubbles and more details. 
The hand look really good but i think you could upgrade the concrete meshes. Add more polys (don`t be scare to put a lot of polys), more details and use at minimum 2k maps. Even 4k. It's going to look way better.

I also prefed the first iteration of your image, i don`t think the tree and the grass make sense there. The lighting is better but maybe you could try to switch the sun light to a moon light.


Good luck!