Sketchbook: Cristian Villalobos

flowpoly

Hello everyone!

I have been doing 3D modeling for a year now and I decided that I want to focus on 3D Environment Art.
This thread will be used to keep record of my portfolio development.
Critiques would be greatly appreciated!

Nice to meet you all!

flowpoly

Started working on a coffee shop yesterday! So much to do

flowpoly

Some progress! Been quite busy lately  

flowpoly

Even more progress! Feedback would be appreciated! 

flowpoly

Still changing stuff

Stuart Campbell

Hi Cristian,

Looks interesting. What are your goals with this? Its quite a large piece. 

When we start work on projects we will first do a visual target. This is normally a small, isolated scene where we can develop the style without taking on too much and costing a load of time.

Something of this scale with all of these camera shots will take quite a while to fill out to a high standard. Also, do you want this to be an interior or exterior piece? You currently have both, but they have different demands and this adds even more work.

If this is intended to be a finished folio piece, I would recommend locking your camera shot to a single view and working on that first. You can always build from there to fill out the rest of the scene later if you want but this may not be necessary.

It can feel like you are making progress filling in little details on something like this, but its very easy to find yourself bouncing from here to there and eventually feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed with the scope of the project.

So, I would lock it down and then really think about the scene...

• Where is set? It says Cafe on the wall. What type of cafe?
• What sort of design style would the interior have? What time period is it set in? Gather some reference based on what you are thinking.
• What sort of assets would help communicate this best?
  
• Should it clean and new or a bit beaten up and worn? 
• What is the plan for lighting? Will it be day or night? How best can you take advantage of lighting in the scene and what assets will this require? 

Also, do you need characters in this? Its fine to use them for scale reference, but adding characters will demand a lot of time to be spent on the character models themselves.

Hope this helps for now. Feel free to ask me any other questions though.

Cheers,
Stuart

flowpoly

Stuart Campbell said:

Hi Cristian,

Looks interesting. What are your goals with this? Its quite a large piece. 

When we start work on projects we will first do a visual target. This is normally a small, isolated scene where we can develop the style without taking on too much and costing a load of time.

Something of this scale with all of these camera shots will take quite a while to fill out to a high standard. Also, do you want this to be an interior or exterior piece? You currently have both, but they have different demands and this adds even more work.

If this is intended to be a finished folio piece, I would recommend locking your camera shot to a single view and working on that first. You can always build from there to fill out the rest of the scene later if you want but this may not be necessary.

It can feel like you are making progress filling in little details on something like this, but its very easy to find yourself bouncing from here to there and eventually feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed with the scope of the project.

So, I would lock it down and then really think about the scene...

• Where is set? It says Cafe on the wall. What type of cafe?
• What sort of design style would the interior have? What time period is it set in? Gather some reference based on what you are thinking.
• What sort of assets would help communicate this best?
  
• Should it clean and new or a bit beaten up and worn? 
• What is the plan for lighting? Will it be day or night? How best can you take advantage of lighting in the scene and what assets will this require? 

Also, do you need characters in this? Its fine to use them for scale reference, but adding characters will demand a lot of time to be spent on the character models themselves.

Hope this helps for now. Feel free to ask me any other questions though.

Cheers,
Stuart

Hey Stuart! Thanks for all the feedback, I highly appreciate it! You definitely gave me A LOT to think about! I am still trying to figure out where I am taking the piece as I go which perhaps is not the best way to approach these sort of projects, but so far it is working!

flowpoly

Quick update: Been learning Unreal. Still figuring out a couple of things here and there! Using Unreal preset wood material...probably not a good idea, but it does help for testing purposes.
(Trying to figure out a little of lightning right now before I move on)

flowpoly

Still placing objects on Unreal! (Still using Unreal's preset materials)
Trying to figure out the main composition of the scene before moving on to creating high-poly models, baking normals, and texturing!
Looks really bland right now, but it should be better once I add the rest of the scene!