Thoughts on using Megascans / Substance Share materials in your environment art portfolio?

Dreyzie

Recently I've been seeing some differing views from people in the AAA industry about using pre-made materials in your environment art portfolio. Some say it's okay because most AAA studios these days outsource materials and smaller assets anyway. But others say it's a deal breaker because it doesn't show you can make every asset yourself. Does it depend on the studio? I looked over some environments of people who were recently hired in AAA and a couple of them were using Megascans and and other free assets from Epic demos. I was wondering what Polycount's thoughts on this were, because I personally enjoy using Megascans so I can focus more on composition and creating modular kits. I still make the hero props and trim sheets myself, but I'm afraid it's hurting my portfolio. https://www.artstation.com/dreyzie

Alex_J

Pic from your artstation project ^

JMO, but I wouldn't mention it first thing. Change to, "The goal of this project was to create an outdoor scene that could fit into a next-gen AAA game."

The scene is really impressive, you've got 80lvl articles on them... mention the shortcut/helpers you used but save it for the end. Not because it's bad at all, just trying to manipulate the viewers perception to see your creativity and artistic eye before they start judging your pragmatism.

Dreyzie

Alex Javor said:

Pic from your artstation project ^

JMO, but I wouldn't mention it first thing. Change to, "The goal of this project was to create an outdoor scene that could fit into a next-gen AAA game."

The scene is really impressive, you've got 80lvl articles on them... mention the shortcut/helpers you used but save it for the end. Not because it's bad at all, just trying to manipulate the viewers perception to see your creativity and artistic eye before they start judging your pragmatism.

Thanks for the tip. I changed it to your suggestion. My recent environment gained more attention than I thought it would, so I started sending out applications again. I read a tweet from a senior environment artist saying Megascans were a red flag on applications and that has me concerned.  I've been having a hard time getting the hang of Substance Designer, but I do want to be more independent when it comes to materials.

poopipe

Depends on the focus of the portfolio piece.  If it's an environmental piece where you're trying to demonstrate compositional skill then I don't see a problem - the challenge is where you put the stuff, not where the stuff came from.
On the other hand, If you're trying to demonstrate texturing ability then slapping a load of megascan data all over the shop isnt really telling anyone what they need to know.