An M1941 82mm mortar in need of critique!

benmckinney98

Working on this little project in my final weeks of my schooling to get my portfolio ready. I'd love to hear some feedback from whoever has the time. I'm new here on Polycount and I've heard good things so, I hope you guys can help.

Thanks!

benmckinney98

Quick update: I made an adjustment on the normal map so that there would be a surface difference where the paint is scratched or worn off to where the rust begins.

JfourArt

Hey Ben! Thanks for posting. You've got a solid start here. Congrats on finishing school, welcome to Polycount, and best of luck to you in the future ahead. As for some critique, I'd say the things that would most benefit this right now, in my opinion, are:

1. Presentation

2. Lighting

3. Materials

So I'll talk a bit about each of those.

1. It seems like you've made presentation an afterthought. As I understand it, this can be a fatal error for a portfolio piece. Some photography concepts and guidelines would go a long way to improving that. First, I'd say you need to find a way to pull the focus back onto your subject (I'll discuss this more in the Lighting section). It's blending into the background, due to the colors being so similar. The background blur is only going so far in separating them. On top of that, I'd recommend recomposing the photos just slightly, assuming these are the shots you intend on using. Rule of thirds will help you establish your subject, and avoid cutting off objects in awkward ways, as it adds visual "noise" and can distract the viewer. Some examples of what I'm talking about are present in the first shot, where you've cut off the ground in a way that makes the photo appear very "unbalanced," and the second shot, where you've cut off some of the mortar shells, but only a tiny piece of the "fins" (not sure about the technical term). Either cut off a good chunk of it, or don't cut off anything at all. It's a lot like taking a photo of someone, and cutting off half of their foot. It just looks sorta distracting.

2. Three point lighting! As it is right now, your lighting is far too flat, and this is part of what's pushing your subject into the background. You have metals here! Make them pop with some nice highlights, throw a back light over that thing and pull them out of the background, and fill in some of those shadows. Establish a hierarchy where the brightness guides your eye through the scene. Really show off those materials, instead of hiding them with flat lighting. Which leads to my last point...

3. Materials! You've done a good job getting a lot of variation in there, but I get the feeling that your normal maps may be just a tad bit too strong on the mortar cannon itself, and maybe a smidge too weak on the wooden material. It also seems you might have a noticeable resolution difference between some parts of the mortar cannon, so if you can, try to either correct that with higher resolution textures, or don't move close enough to the cannon to make it noticeable.

All told, I'm having a hard time figuring out where to look, and most of those points are built to address that. Guide your viewer through the scene, and show them where you want them to go.

Again, good work so far. Apologies if there's a bit too much here. I wanted to really give ya something to really bounce off of and take this to the next level.

benmckinney98

JfourArt said:

Hey Ben! Thanks for posting. You've got a solid start here. Congrats on finishing school, welcome to Polycount, and best of luck to you in the future ahead. As for some critique, I'd say the things that would most benefit this right now, in my opinion, are:

1. Presentation

2. Lighting

3. Materials

So I'll talk a bit about each of those.

1. It seems like you've made presentation an afterthought. As I understand it, this can be a fatal error for a portfolio piece. Some photography concepts and guidelines would go a long way to improving that. First, I'd say you need to find a way to pull the focus back onto your subject (I'll discuss this more in the Lighting section). It's blending into the background, due to the colors being so similar. The background blur is only going so far in separating them. On top of that, I'd recommend recomposing the photos just slightly, assuming these are the shots you intend on using. Rule of thirds will help you establish your subject, and avoid cutting off objects in awkward ways, as it adds visual "noise" and can distract the viewer. Some examples of what I'm talking about are present in the first shot, where you've cut off the ground in a way that makes the photo appear very "unbalanced," and the second shot, where you've cut off some of the mortar shells, but only a tiny piece of the "fins" (not sure about the technical term). Either cut off a good chunk of it, or don't cut off anything at all. It's a lot like taking a photo of someone, and cutting off half of their foot. It just looks sorta distracting.

2. Three point lighting! As it is right now, your lighting is far too flat, and this is part of what's pushing your subject into the background. You have metals here! Make them pop with some nice highlights, throw a back light over that thing and pull them out of the background, and fill in some of those shadows. Establish a hierarchy where the brightness guides your eye through the scene. Really show off those materials, instead of hiding them with flat lighting. Which leads to my last point...

3. Materials! You've done a good job getting a lot of variation in there, but I get the feeling that your normal maps may be just a tad bit too strong on the mortar cannon itself, and maybe a smidge too weak on the wooden material. It also seems you might have a noticeable resolution difference between some parts of the mortar cannon, so if you can, try to either correct that with higher resolution textures, or don't move close enough to the cannon to make it noticeable.

All told, I'm having a hard time figuring out where to look, and most of those points are built to address that. Guide your viewer through the scene, and show them where you want them to go.

Again, good work so far. Apologies if there's a bit too much here. I wanted to really give ya something to really bounce off of and take this to the next level.

Thank you for your feedback!

Those photos were not actually what I was going to use for final renders they were simply a poor use of the snipping tool. I have not put too much thought into the presentation yet lighting and camera-wise as I have been mostly busy with the materials. For the lighting I was just using the HDRI Images lighting as a placeholder and I will definitely be playing around with lighting soon.

I appreciate your time!, Thanks

benmckinney98

New update:
- Changed ground texture
- Added transparency map to ground
- Added more dirt buildup around bottom of mortar and ammo crate
- Added additional lighting other than HDRI Image
- Tweaked normal maps
- Edited size of scratches on Mortar cannon barrel