PPSH-41

JHK_ArtAlchemist

Had a blast working on this piece! All feedbacks are welcome!


FULL presentation here at artstation!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bKdwgE?commentId=4332771

rexo12

Solid work. You've done a good job on the technical aspects like your low poly topo and unwrap. It would be nice for us to know the polygon count and texture resolution/texel density, as optimisation seems to be a focus for your presentation. The ID mask image does not tell us a lot of information (besides maybe bake groups? This could be clearer), and would perhaps be better replaced by an image of your High Poly mesh or texel density.

It looks like a lot of your mesh and texel density is weighted towards the front of the weapon, when it would probably be better served at the back side of the weapon - particularly for the First Person shot you have, which looks too low res for the size it appears on screen.

Beyond that, I think your lighting needs attention. It does a good job of presenting the entire model clearly (again, from a technical standpoint), but it's also very flat. This is just an example I pulled from stuff i've liked on artstation which I feel matches the tone you're trying to set: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1nKyEo . I expect this is just using a standard 3 point setup, but it's still quite effective. You can see how they've got a backlight to accentuate the silhouette of the weapon and bring it into the foreground, and another key light that brings out the specular highlights on the model and showcases the detail they've put into their roughness map. Right now your lighting is basically all fill and ambient light.

I also feel that the wood material is too intense, and likely at the wrong scale, as it looks almost stylised. Quickly looking at PPSh references the stock has a much finer grain and also seems to be lacquered or polished, which isn't being reflected in your material. I would also be careful how you use those chunky negative-height damages, particularly on metal, as it's not something that occurs a lot on that material. It looks appropriate on areas that bump into stuff a lot, and at a direct angle, like the back of the receiver or the front of the barrel, but not really along the sides or the drum. Those sorts of glancing blows are not likely to tear out crumbly chunks of metal and are more likely to scratch, dent or wear.  

Good work! Very solid technical skill and I think it's quite impressive that you've squeezed everything into a single texture-sheet. Keep pressing at it.

(PS I'd probably put your name in your watermarks )

JHK_ArtAlchemist

Thanks for the thorough evaluation! Definitely more than what I could ask for  

Zi0

I agree that the wood is too intense, metal feels wrong as well it does not feel like stamped steel.

JHK_ArtAlchemist

Thanks for the feedback Zio! But concerning the steel, when you say stamped steel do you mean that it does not look bumpy enough at the front portion of the steel?

Zi0

what I mean is that the damage that you have on the height map does not feel like stamped steel. Take a look at the picture below, you see some indents here and there and scratches but not chunks of metal that are missing like on your current texture,

JHK_ArtAlchemist

Thank you so much to both of you for so much feedback, here are the results after putting through critique and putting them to test. The top ones are older ones and the bottom ones are new ones. Render is different as well, but if I had to be honest, for the FPS pov, I kinda like how the first one turned out to look. Could be my immature eyes judging things but would love to hear what you think!

rexo12

Marked improvement I feel. The first person view still looks quite low res, and there's metal-dielectric transition artifacts (when a non metallic pixel meets a full metallic pixel at a low texel density it causes a sort of halo of white pixels around it) that don't look great. Maybe it's worth just not including that view?

I'm not sure if you've changed the proportions or if it's just a different focal length/result of the finer wood grain, but that also looks nicer to me.

Your lighting also does a better job of creating visual interest in the images, and brings the details out nicely. The metal reads a fair bit better I feel, although I am unsure about the blue tint your IBL casts, looks almost phong-y. I'm not sure how to express it.

Good work!

JHK_ArtAlchemist

Thanks for the further critique on this! I will then be making a final pass on this piece before updating it for the portfolio. I am applying/applied to internships with the updated presentation so fingers crossed Truly appreciate both of your help, learned a lot too! I'll probably have it updated within this week.