Honey Badger by Q // Texturework & Renders Feedback

DuckLord

Hey everyone! Here's my summer project, first weapon I ever modeled and let's just say that it was quite the challenge. What I'd like to get feedback on would be the texturing and presentation, I know the geo has some segmenting here and there but it's supposed to be a game ready model (50k tris) so I don't mind those small errors. The factory new/minimal wear look is 100% on purpose, many of the refs I found look really clean and I didn't wanna stray far away from that look. Rendered in Marmoset, camera fov is 45°, another artist suggested I drop it down to 20-25° and it looks nice but somewhat chonkier. I followed FlippedNormals' Weapon masterclass for the texturing and rendering (to a certain extent, given the difference in materials). This was made with the intent to become my first portfolio piece and I'm not shooting for realism or perfection since my goal is just to showcase what I've learnt in my first year of studying 3d. What could be improved or changed? Or can I publish it the way it is and close the project? Thank you in advance! Here's all the ref: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aH6uKb94IMI3ahWFti0rvcJRhG9BX056?usp=drive_link

rexo12

I know the geo has some segmenting here and there but it's supposed to be a game ready model (50k tris) so I don't mind those small errors.

I'm not sure what you mean by segmenting - is it the normal/shading errors? These are absolutely solvable within your poly budget and you should be solving them. Shading is one of those foundational things that all artists should be on top of. Stating that you don't care to fix them in a portfolio piece is maybe not the best look either

My opinion is that your materials lack tertiary (and occasionally secondary) definition. I get the look you're going for, but I'd argue that you still need to be doing some detail work to tell a narrative - or at least set dress the scene if you're really fixed on the factory-new look. Something like COD: MW2k19's 'armory' room or similar. The texturing is in a technical sense competent but it lacks a sense of artistic vision or style, and I ultimately don't care to look at it for very long.

This lack of vision is evident in your composition and lighting as well. I'm not a huge fan of the 'giant gun in a void' pattern of presentation, and in particular those forced perspective shots down the length of the barrel communicate very little about the model and don't reflect a 'realistic' perspective. In some way I feel that the only thing these shots do is tell me that this is a CG model.

Ultimately I think more thought needs to go into why you're making certain artistic choices. You seem to have a solid grasp of the technical bits of 3D Art, which is great work, so just developing that narrative in your future pieces will really help to make them shine.

DuckLord

Hey @rexo12, first of all thank you for the valuable feedback. In regard to the textures: would you advise on giving the gun a bit more character, like spreading some small scratches here and there, more oilyness and so on?

By segmenting I meant that some low poly geo is visible on some of the small parts of the gun, not really sure it that is a problem or not (I might not have understood the meaning of the word fully though lol). Here's some of those problems

I thought a lot about the armoury scene and I personally love those presentations, I'm just afraid that it would take a lot of time to build something decent even though it would be reusable a lot of times. I'll start by trying to add some more to the materials and rethinking some of the shots

rexo12

In regard to the textures: would you advise on giving the gun a bit more character, like spreading some small scratches here and there, more oilyness and so on?

Yep. To me there's 2 aspects to this 'narrative' thing I keep going on about. There's the detailing you do to ground and give weight to the asset, things like those smudges and scratches, oiliness etc. that imply this is a real object that has been touched and handled by real people. It doesn't have to be damage/wear per se, and I think getting this right for that brand-new, straight-from-factory kind of look is a challenging task.

The second part of this is higher level, concerning the characterisation and story-telling you do on the asset. This is things like the serial numbers or branding you attach to it, the set dressing you give it, etc. This is a narrative in a more 'literary' sense, where you're trying to communicate some kind of statement to your viewer. It doesn't have to be particularly complex.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DvWkqO

This is just something I pulled off the front page of Artstation. They've got the oiling and smudges etc that form the first component I mentioned, but they've also incorporated those test cards and the gun case, which implies some kind of history to the asset, giving it a story. One can imagine a buyer has just tested and purchased the weapon recently, and you (as a viewer) start thinking about why - you become interested in learning more about the story.

I thought a lot about the armoury scene and I personally love those presentations, I'm just afraid that it would take a lot of time to build something decent even though it would be reusable a lot of times.

It's rarely going to be wasted time. When I've done weapons in the past this sort of set dressing is usually only an extra 25% of the time spent on the weapon, while going a long way in the final renders. Feel free to reuse past assets and kitbash stuff, as it's not the central focus of the piece. Again, in the example above I don't think the set dressing took an enormous amount of time.

Those low poly sections are probably okay, you should just make sure that they're not visibly low detail in your renders.

These are some of the shading issues I was referring to. They're small, but the people looking at your portfolio to hire you will pick up on them.

DuckLord

Okay I'm probably going to study the XRK M4 from MW2019 a bit since this is pretty much spot on to what I am now trying to achieve (https://bcog.artstation.com/projects/YaAEgw). I also just bought a texturing tutorial by Dan Kenton so that should also help with the process.

These are some of the shading issues I was referring to.

About this, those are not shading issues but annoying little soft shadows caused by multiple lights overlapping (?) and that's another aspect of presenting a model that I still need to fully grasp, ty for pointing those out cause I completely overlooked them. I reckon I probably have too many lights and I lazily kept the ones from the first lateral shot instead of making a setup just for this one

Is there a specific kind of shadow to be used or is it a matter of how it specifically looks on that part of the model? I see many artists going either no shadows or hard edged shadows.