Which of these two projects would make a better portfolio piece?
Hello internet friends.
Over the past couple months I've been learning various 3D software for creating environment assets. I've already been creating props for a while now but am transitioning to creating environments and using UE5. While learning these software I've been creating a bunch of random vegetation props and foliage as a learning process. I've roughly had the idea that I could compile a quick scene with all of the elements together, but I was more just trying to figure out how to create each individual props rather than compose a well-made environmental project. So now I have a bunch of random foliage assets. Some I like more than others, most use Megascans textures, most are pretty generic and uninteresting, etc. Not very exciting. But it was very fun to make and a crucial learning process. I feel like I'm now experienced creating quick and simple foliage assets and also experienced enough with using the UE5 graph editor to create a basic shader to give myself some parameters for modifying my meshes textures, using packed texture maps, using detail textures, scaling UVs, etc.
I also created some rocks for my scene, which I am immensely proud of. I think they just look so good. Now I'm starting to think they look too good in comparison to the rest of my scene. The rocks have a unique model that I sculpted, a unique texture I made in Painter, a unique tiling texture I made in Designer, and a lot of really cool parameters for scaling and rotating my mesh including a simple moss generator that is masked to the Z vector. I implemented a simple ZBrush FiberMesh cover to add some moss cards on top of the mesh too which I think makes it look fantastic. I put a lot more attention to these assets compared to the rest of my scene.
I know a lot of this is basic stuff but I've only been at it for about 2 months. I want to move onto more exciting and higher quality foliage assets such as sculpting my owns vegetation high-polies instead of using Megascans, sculpting high-poly tree trunks and stitching them with SpeedTree, creating my own materials, hand painting assets, etc.
Should I post the whole scene as a portfolio piece which showcases a broader range of skills, or my individual rock elements which showcases a more interesting product, but basically chucks all the other work I did out the window? I guess I shouldn't show off something I'm not particularly proud of, but I don't want all that work to be for nothing if you think the quality isn't worth it. So what do you think?
I haven't composed the scene how I'd like yet, but this is roughly what it would be. Just absent mindedly throwing my models onto the scene for now. It looks nice, but I'm not super happy with the result.
I thinking about scrapping the old stuff and just showcasing this rock shader with some more models. Another large rock and some smaller stones that I'd compile in an atlas would be cool.
Same rock.
I could showoff the moss masking as a gif, too. I'd create an animation and a better render, though.
I do like these aspen trees though, even if they're using Megascans textures. I just think they look pretty.
Thanks for your input 😊