Tesselation Cybertruck (Substance Designer)

joaokalva

I would like to propose a different kind of topic. I'd be glad if you could help me to figure out why my recent art was a failure.

It's a Tesla Cybertruck made entirely with Substance Designer, where the car shape is given out of a rectangular by tesselation.
To give some context, two weeks ago I've also made this hydrant, which was my first study to exploit this feature of giving shapes to simple meshes by cranking the tesselation all the way up.
And for my surprise, the engagement on the Hydrant in both Facebook groups and Artstation was about 4-5x higher than the Tesla Cybertruck.

The stats: 
Hydrant - 24 likes, 591 views on Artstation
Cybertruck - 2 likes (without counting my friend), 65 views on Artstation
Both were shared absolutely the same way, hydrant ofc having much more reactions and comments on facebook.

I am aware that the numbers might be too low to take a definite conclusion, but that is still the highest I've gone so far in my journey.

In my head it doesn't make much sense why this would be true, the fact a hydrant would grab way more attention than the Cybertruck. Could you guys help me figure out why?
Thank you

Eric Chadwick

Why does the number of Likes matter to you?

Ashervisalis

Honestly if I saw a thumbnail on ArtStation of the Tesla truck I'd just ignore it. Nothing against how cool your workflow is. Maybe with the hydrant people noticed more that it was made with a cool workflow.

Obscura

To be honest, both of these are kinda ridiculous from a realistic viewpoint, but I'm also interested to hear what other people would say about how to attract attention and make people express their liking. The number of likes indeed matters at least in the case of artstation, where gaining a certain amount of likes in x times makes your stuff more accessible and visible to other people because it appears on the top of the trending page.

joaokalva

Eric Chadwick said:

Why does the number of Likes matter to you?

For visibility in Artstation. As for facebook, I don't really bother with the number of likes, but I do bother with the comments because that gives me a solid idea if people actually enjoy my art and in what way it does.

Ashervisalis said:

Honestly if I saw a thumbnail on ArtStation of the Tesla truck I'd just ignore it. Nothing against how cool your workflow is. Maybe with the hydrant people noticed more that it was made with a cool workflow.

I agree. That's one thought I also stumbled upon. Maybe Cybertruck's simplicity has made it oversaturated in Artstation, and honestly, I don't think it is a cool thing to reproduce alone. Maybe if you make it satire and pass a message, other than that I assume people are going to have the same reaction as seeying a painting of a mountain. It simply exists and you won't notice it. 

Obscura said:

To be honest, both of these are kinda ridiculous from a realistic viewpoint

Could you elaborate more on this?

Obscura

Sure. What I mean is that you would never use displacement on this level on a hero or even secondary assets in production for multiple reasons. I understand that these kind of exercises in Designer can lead to some neat results. I made some too. What I mean overall is that displacement on this scope is not practical usually. Also, I don't understand why you didnt model the top edge of the truck You would have better resolution, and less displacement artifacts on the top side.

JamesBrisnehan

The workflow is interesting, the render and presentation are pretty good, the problem might just be the subject matter. I don't know about other people, but I personally don't find the Tesla truck all that appealing. You've done a great job at recreating one, but even when I see a post about the real life truck on Facebook or or something, I usually keep on scrolling. Some people like the Tesla Truck, but it's more of an acquired taste. Your fire hydrant on the other hand I really like. 
In an effort to remove a variable while you're experimenting on how to get the most likes, you could try making a vehicle with the a similar aesthetic to the fire hydrant. Bright, shinny, red, round, etc. . . Like a Ferrari.

icegodofhungary

I can't speak from any professional standpoint but I can say something as an Artstation user. Wacky substances are very common on Art Station. There are a few people there who are really good at it but they have no allusions about its practicality in creating  in-game assets. There was a period where a lot of the trending page was people trying to create the most complex/unusual substances. And we just came off of Node-vember as well. People are probably fatigued with substances. Pros know that these kinds of things are impractical and probably avoid them in portfolios because they're not a good indication of the ability to create game-ready assets. Though it is good to be skilled with substance, you should focus on making things that look great with just a normal map.

The next issue is there's these little trends that break out on Artstation with subject matter. When Joker came out, there were tons of Joker portraits making it to the trending page. When Avengers Endgame came out, there was a lot of Marvel stuff. Of course, when Elon unveiled the Cybertruck, there were tons of stuff immediately hitting trending about it. It's like when a new meme hits social media and people try to capitalize on it. "ok boomer" lasted about a week and now most roll their eyes at it. If you're gonna chase memes you have to be early, be good, and work quickly. It's different from being genuinely inspired by something, and taking your time with it. If you take your time, you miss out on the trend. Or people just get bored of seeing the same thing.

I'm not sure how to catch a lot of likes on Artstation. From what I understand the algorithm definitely takes into account how much you're liking others' works and commenting. It also helps to buy their premium subscription, which puts you at the top of searches and stuff. It also favors people who post regularly. You also need to network rather than relying on an algorithm to connect you with others. Pass your portfolio to people who might pass it on to others. Put your portfolio in your signature here on polycount.