My first 3D piece

Dinka

Heya, this is my first original 3D environment scene made in blender (used base image textures not made by me on most materials and adjusted them to my needs). Would really appreciate some constructive criticism, I'm really trying to improve and practising everyday
Any pointer to a good learning resource would be great as well!

What I'm struggling a lot with:
1. General light and composition
2. Keeping the amount of polys low
3. Materials. Is Substance the only way to go or?
4. Post-processing. Do I need to get photoshop as well?

Thank you for any responses!

DarkBladeNemo

This looks really good. 

For the general light and composition you are just going to have to practice, practice, practice. 

I actually enjoyed this video on the subject.  https://youtu.be/jsN0LBgrj14

It's from the recent feudal japan environment challenge on artstation.

The amount of poly's I would say push it a bit. If this is all your scene consists of then you have a lot more room to play around it. Unless your goal is to just keep it low in general. Personally I would say push the poly count especially if you can get more detail and form out of it.

To do your textures you can use pretty much anything. This I think is all about personal preference.

For the post-processing I would say you don't need Photoshop unless you maybe want to do some colour correction/grading. Unless you mean doing touch up work then I would advise against it. 

What are you using for your render? 

Other than that this looks really good. The stone material looks a little soft though

Dinka

Thanks for the great advice @DarkBladeNemo !

This is just rendered with the Cycles engine in Blender, going to play around with game engines soon once I've increased my knowledge of 3d art in general a bit more.

teodar23

hey man, good start!

Your overall image is too dark and it feels very much CG due to multiple things.

Avoid relying on randomness nodes or textures like noise to add grime and wear to your models (looking at the shield metal), it looks unnatural.

The spikes are clearly one single model spread all over. modularity is good but add some variation. also they look too "perfect".

I'm not 100% certain but it looks like you are using normal map on the stone. dont use extreme light angles with normalmaps, it breaks the illusion.

The foreground grass looks its being lit but from where!?

Dont worry about polycount if youre doing renders, even in a real time engine.

If you want to get a job in the game dev industry, then yes, practice substance, if not use whatever you want.

I suggest to keep the post process to a minimum, do some colorgrading, maybe some slight touchup, but dont rely on it.

Dinka

Thanks @teodar23 ! I will definitely keep in mind the things you pointed out, was super helpful. And yes, the goal is to someday work in the game industry