Looking for critique on my plane

SerenefoxGames

Hi, 

I am trying to work my way up from my college days in Game Art. I really want to get a job in the industry but I feel my 3d isn’t where is should be. That be said I am hoping I can get a critique on my Corsair I modeled in maya textured in substance and rendered in Unity.

Here is a YouTube link to a 360 degree turn and wireframe:
https://youtu.be/_910T9LqXUs

Thank you for looking!

Brian "Panda" Choi

Regarding image posting,

try uploading to an IMGUR account that you will remember to use, and get the direct link code and input into the URL line of the image input of the forum poster to DIRECTLY add the image to the post instead of attaching it.  It makes looking at the images faster for us.

JamesBrisnehan

Isn't uploading images from your desktop directly to your comment with the 'attach image' button still the easiest? Maybe I'm old school.

Anyway your model seems pretty good, though a bit too low-poly for a hero prop (unless it's for a mobile game). The textures, lighting, and presentation are bringing it down unfortunately. The roughness and metal values seem pretty even across the entire plane giving it that metallic-paint look, which could be cool if it was more reflective. This high roughness and medium metalness value combo is giving a strangely flat look, not picking up any interesting highlights or reflections, getting the least out of your normal map. This flat look might be caused by the lighting though. Your materials might totally come to life in different lighting. I'd have to see your texture maps to be sure. If you wouldn't mind posting your maps it might help.
The damage and wear should be based on the model's shape and structure more. Right now the damage looks like random blotches, or spilled paint. Higher exposure areas are more vulnerable to damage and ware (Edges of panels, tops of bolts etc.) whereas the creases and cavities are more prone to collecting rust, dirt, and other sediments. The key is finding and studying really good reference so you don't accidentally over do it.
I'm having trouble understanding your lighting. Some places have contact shadows while others don't like the shelves. There appear to be multiple phantom spotlights lighting up your plane from multiple angles, but none of them line up with the actual spotlight models hanging from the ceiling. And bounce light and ambient occlusion seem to be missing. Somehow it's giving me a late PS2 era vibe. I think matching your lighting set up to fit the scene would be better, or ditching the hanger and just have the plane by it self. Either way, I think more dramatic lighting would look better. With Bounce light and ambient occlusion turned on. Again, find good reference, and study it. Even searching "airplane" on Artstation could get you some good ideas of how to light and present a plane in interesting ways
Finally presentation. The low detail models and low-res textures of the hanger and background props are distracting. Bringing them up closer to the level of detail of the airplane would help.

Sorry if that's a lot all at once. You have a good start. Keep working and learning and you could have something great.

JamesBrisnehan

These are a couple of examples I found that get some pretty interesting lighting from their hanger scenes. I think if you use the the spot lights hanging from the ceiling in your hanger scene to your advantage, you could get something pretty cool. especially with a bit of fog mimicking dust.

SerenefoxGames

James,

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a detailed critique! I have been posting this a few different places looking for feedback but nothing. I will work on this after work if I can (lots of overtime) and see if I can get it to a better place based on your critique. I will post it here after I do. Again thank you so much!

Joseph_Bramlett

Hey Serene, James covered pretty much everything that really needs to be said but Ill throw in some extra advice. If this is for a portfolio piece separate it out into the different assets your working on. Instead of doing the plane a hanger and props maybe just focus on the plane for now. Throw the plane into an HDRI lightbox and just focus on rendering it. I find that working on multiple assets at once for a single project can make all of them suffer unless you really dedicate the right amount of time you need to each piece. Also if you have the choice maybe think about what engine your rendering in. I love unity and us it for my personal projects all the time but something like Unreal can make models pop a bit easier and is typically more in demand than unity. YOu might also consider purchasing a tool like Marmoset Toolbag as its  a pretty excellent real-time renderer and baker. 

SerenefoxGames

JamesBrisnehan said:

Isn't uploading images from your desktop directly to your comment with the 'attach image' button still the easiest? Maybe I'm old school.

Anyway your model seems pretty good, though a bit too low-poly for a hero prop (unless it's for a mobile game). The textures, lighting, and presentation are bringing it down unfortunately. The roughness and metal values seem pretty even across the entire plane giving it that metallic-paint look, which could be cool if it was more reflective. This high roughness and medium metalness value combo is giving a strangely flat look, not picking up any interesting highlights or reflections, getting the least out of your normal map. This flat look might be caused by the lighting though. Your materials might totally come to life in different lighting. I'd have to see your texture maps to be sure. If you wouldn't mind posting your maps it might help.
The damage and wear should be based on the model's shape and structure more. Right now the damage looks like random blotches, or spilled paint. Higher exposure areas are more vulnerable to damage and ware (Edges of panels, tops of bolts etc.) whereas the creases and cavities are more prone to collecting rust, dirt, and other sediments. The key is finding and studying really good reference so you don't accidentally over do it.
I'm having trouble understanding your lighting. Some places have contact shadows while others don't like the shelves. There appear to be multiple phantom spotlights lighting up your plane from multiple angles, but none of them line up with the actual spotlight models hanging from the ceiling. And bounce light and ambient occlusion seem to be missing. Somehow it's giving me a late PS2 era vibe. I think matching your lighting set up to fit the scene would be better, or ditching the hanger and just have the plane by it self. Either way, I think more dramatic lighting would look better. With Bounce light and ambient occlusion turned on. Again, find good reference, and study it. Even searching "airplane" on Artstation could get you some good ideas of how to light and present a plane in interesting ways
Finally presentation. The low detail models and low-res textures of the hanger and background props are distracting. Bringing them up closer to the level of detail of the airplane would help.

Sorry if that's a lot all at once. You have a good start. Keep working and learning and you could have something great.

@JamesBrisnehan, So I tried to change a few things like the textures and lighting, what do you think? 

https://imgur.com/a/zOTGHFd

Also here is a Youtube video as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR44k9h9dtE

@Joseph_Bramlett, I tried downloading Marmoset for the 30 day free trial but I couldn't get it to look right with the lighting.

BagelHero

This definitely looks a little better, but the render is really suffering from the lack of ambient lighting/skybox/reflections. Bringing up those darks just a little bit would help a lot I think.

JamesBrisnehan

The lighting is a little bit better. It looks like you've removed the wear and damage completely. Going for a new/clean look huh? I think you may have gone the wrong direction with the metalness value on the paint job though. If I'm not mistaken, it looks like you have turned the metal value to 100% with a mid range roughness value. It's making your plane dark and hard to see, and also makes it more un-realistic looking. 

So, semi-metallic paint is typically only used on cars. The paint mimics the way metal reflects light, giving the cars a colored specular highlight, but a clear coat is added on top to keep the sharp reflections. 
The the type of paint I saw when I googled your plane's model # does not reflect light like a metal. It's what super-technical tutorials about physically-based-rendering call a 'dielectric'. It reflects light more like a hard plastic.
Anyway, if you want your plane to have a similar reflectance to the planes on google images, I would recommend turning your metalness value down to zero/black for your paint, but keep it a 100/white for any unpainted metals like the bolts and the frame of the cockpit window. Things like dirt rust and stains on top of raw metal can have a grey metalness value though.
You can also turn down the roughness too if you want to have a glossy paint job like the planes on google images. It seems that model of plane is only used in air shows now, so they all seem to be kept very polished. If you decide to give Marmoset another shot in the future, that software does fantastic reflections for materials with high gloss values. It's designed project an HDRI image of an environment onto your model to give you quick, easy, yet realistic reflections. Perfect for vehicles wich is why Joseph recommended it.

SerenefoxGames

JamesBrisnehan said:

The lighting is a little bit better. It looks like you've removed the wear and damage completely. Going for a new/clean look huh? I think you may have gone the wrong direction with the metalness value on the paint job though. If I'm not mistaken, it looks like you have turned the metal value to 100% with a mid range roughness value. It's making your plane dark and hard to see, and also makes it more un-realistic looking. 

So, semi-metallic paint is typically only used on cars. The paint mimics the way metal reflects light, giving the cars a colored specular highlight, but a clear coat is added on top to keep the sharp reflections. 
The the type of paint I saw when I googled your plane's model # does not reflect light like a metal. It's what super-technical tutorials about physically-based-rendering call a 'dielectric'. It reflects light more like a hard plastic.
Anyway, if you want your plane to have a similar reflectance to the planes on google images, I would recommend turning your metalness value down to zero/black for your paint, but keep it a 100/white for any unpainted metals like the bolts and the frame of the cockpit window. Things like dirt rust and stains on top of raw metal can have a grey metalness value though.
You can also turn down the roughness too if you want to have a glossy paint job like the planes on google images. It seems that model of plane is only used in air shows now, so they all seem to be kept very polished. If you decide to give Marmoset another shot in the future, that software does fantastic reflections for materials with high gloss values. It's designed project an HDRI image of an environment onto your model to give you quick, easy, yet realistic reflections. Perfect for vehicles wich is why Joseph recommended it.

I wanted to have the paint/metal from the WWII/Korean War era when the plane was last used. I feel like these modern airshow planes may have been updated? I looked up what aircraft panels were made of back in wwii and I saw they were aluminum. Unless I misread it. I didn’t completely get rid of the ware and scratches because I don’t want it to be new, it’s just hard to see with that lighting. I will add some more ware back into it as well. Anyway I am going to work on it a bit more and I will post again soon. Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it.

JamesBrisnehan

No, you're right, planes are made of aluminum, I'm just saying that the paint on top of a plane doesn't count as a metal. At least not in a way that works well with game engines like Unity.

SerenefoxGames

@JamesBrisnehan Okay so I was able to get some more tweaks done here is the results:

https://imgur.com/a/M2BVpYs

Its weird because on my secondary monitor the images are way too dark, but on my primary one they look (I hope) how they should but I'm not sure. Maybe they aren't calibrated the same.

JamesBrisnehan

Yah the Material is looking better. But the lighting seems even darker than before. You said your monitors are giving you weird results? Have you tried opening your screen shots in a software where you can see the images 'Levels'? Like Photoshop or Substance Designer? This is what your screenshots look like to us. The image looks like it's clamped down to a pretty low range.

SerenefoxGames

I made the ambient light brighter and the spot lights slightly more intense.

F4U-4 Corsair Version3