PM M1910 MAXIM feedback - WIP
Hi everybody,
everything I made over the past year or so fantasy/medieval so I wanted to pick up an older project, more on the realistic side and finally finish it.
I'm kinda at a dead end now, I'm not 100% happy with the look but at the same time don't really know how to continue from here. I really want to push the whole thing towards realism but I feel like theres just something missing. I just can't really put my finger on it. Or is it maybe because it's not in a realistic environment?
I would really appreciate some feedback and opinions on that. Realism is hard and usually I settle with "good enough" at some point after working for X amount of hours on something. But I really don't want to do that this time since I want this to be as polished as possible as a portfolio piece.
Replies
It looks great. I would change the background to white or a dark grey. I think white would work best though.
Thanks for your input :)
Is this what you imagined? This is white background + simple white studio light skydome.
And this is white background but with the more "emotional" lights from the original version (blue and orange) with a slight vignette.
From what I can tell, your materials are what's dragging this down. The paint is all slightly too glossy and looks like model paint that's been mixed incorrectly. There's a number of scratches that seem nonsensical and look visibly projected, laying flat across crevices and angles.
Overall there's a uniformity to the materials that makes it not very interesting to look at. This model is a bit tricky as the Maxim is a mass-produced piece of kit, so every component likely came from the same factory which would lend itself to some uniformity, but from an artistic standpoint there needs to be more primary detail in the materials for the eye to read (note that this does not mean more noise).
Another minor thing is that the wheel have visible polygon edges to them, and would benefit from some more circumference vertices.
All that said, I think this is a very competent model. Well done.
The model is really nice, but the texturing and lighting could use some refinemend. Especially edge wear and dirt. For example painted metal edge wear is usually fairly hard edged, without gradients or semi transparent parts, since the paint flakes off.
and i would look into the wear distribution, it looks very even right now. give some point of interests and dont rely on smart masks.
for the lighting i would try to emulate on of the studio shots you see at auctions. something along the lines of this that highlights all the interesting surface details
You can take some more advice but honestly it looks good enough imo. There's countless ways something can become worn and scratched. Try doing the auction type light that pyxelbit suggested.
Thank you for your feedback everybody :) I absolutely do agree with all of it. I tried to mix procedural wear and tear with hand painted but apparently didn't do a great job. And regarding the glossiness of the paint, i tried to get close to the reference I used. It's a bunch of pictures from what I guess is a russian military museum of some sort? The pictures are all pretty high quality, I'm gonna put a pureref overview screenshot here. The problem might be that the photos were all taken with flash turned on and that's maybe why it looks glossier than it should?
This also ties in with the "point of interest" critique since I just tried to straight up copy what I saw in those reference pictures. The only things that stand out for me looking at this would be the number 805 on the shield that I didn't include and maybe the mix of rusted metal and peeled off paint on the wheels but I guess I didn't capture that all that well.
@rexo12 Could you go a bit more into detail with your remark of the materials needing more primary detail? I generally know what primary detail is of course, I'm just not too sure in this context. Do you mean theat for example the paint have some more lumps and bubbles? Or is it just the base color looking too uniform?
One big thing I already learned from this is that it would definitely highly beneficial to be able to look at and touch this in person. Well I knew that before but now it's much clearer to me why it is so important.
Hey,
What I meant is actually the opposite of lumps and bubbles - I would call this tertiary detail. I was looking for more tone in the overall materials at the largest scale, differences in shading and colour that draw the eye where you want it to go. I am hesitant to say that the base colour is 'too uniform' as that's not necessarily a problem, but the essence of that is right. It could help to think of it as what you would discern in the materials with your eyes crossed/blurred.
Maybe some kind of subtle dust gradient, or subtle differences in the paint colour between the shield and the barrel.
Hopefully that's clear?
Yep, that's clear, thank you very much!
I'm going to spend more hours on this and then return.