Environment job - Seek and rejection
Hello everyone. I was completely exahusted of looking for a job at any experience entry. I'd really want to understand if it is because my portfolio or the industry is full for now.
I'd like to have any feedback about my portfolio, if anyone here have the time to check it, I'll really appreciate it !
https://www.artstation.com/tomvaldieri
I'd like to have any feedback about my portfolio, if anyone here have the time to check it, I'll really appreciate it !
https://www.artstation.com/tomvaldieri
Replies
As for some first impressions I had:
The Untold house looks atmospheric and seems mostly realistic, but many edges have very wide bevels and are lighter like you might do for more stylized stuff. Edge wear is real, but usually not as extreme and even as that.
The big round arches over some of the doors have too few polygons and noticable wavyness. (https://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map)
That's especially true when comparing them to the desk or set of drawers, assuming they were made for the same project from the start. For the drawers, I don't see a reason for most of the horizontal loops when the texture seems to be repeating exactly. The upper part of the set of drawers seems a bit random and formless. Did you do a highres for that part?
The desk looks great.
For the Knight Lands houses, the main wall texture makes no sense to me. You seem to have combined a half-timbered structure with boards (they don't seem to be beams since they have broken easily, but even for boards, the very narrow holes and their placement make little sense), but instead of nailing the boards to the structure, they seem to have been painstakingly and perfectly fitted between the beams like wattle and daub. There is not enough shadow or AO to suggest the boards are behind the structural beams, either, if you are limited polygon-wise. They, too, have very wide and soft bevels (in the texture), although the style is bit more fitting for that in this case.
The radio and weapon look good to me at first sight, but the polygon distribution for the latter once more looks quite uneconomic and the mesh normals might shine through in a couple of places hinting at some technical problems.
For the Anime Food, the main dish looks good, but the edge treatment is a bit inconsistent and the salad, gyoza and especially the wood look blurry. The wood in particular seems a bit lazy and brings down the scene, in my opinion. Probably just added quickly for the presentation, but still.
The backpack looks like an older piece with quite a few flaws. The scratches in the mug are way to deep, some of the UVs for the straps aren't properly aligned and the zipper texture looks strange. Might warrant removal or a rework.
All of that is of course not to say that this is why you didn't have any luck, those are just things that stood out to me personally, and changing them doesn't mean you'll have more luck. But there's also room for improvement.
Edit: Best piece to me is the radio, but the images are fairly small and there is some blurriness going on without the exact cause being clear. Seems to be a combination of low texture resolution, depth of field / post effects and image resolution?
Some great stuff in there for sure. Keep creating stuff and work a bit more on lighting. What you have is a great start, but mix it up a bit more. From room to room or scene to scene. It's kinda like you play the same note at every point. Give your environments more punch, draw the eye. Less is more, we know you spent all the time and love laboring over every detail of this entire kit/scene...but when it's all put together...you can just show a portion of it and have it have a stronger impact. Think of it this way. A stage is built for a theatrical play...it might be an AMAZING set to look at, but what happens is there is a spotlight and the actors take center stage, start to think about approaching your environments in those terms. Give the viewer a focal point or if you you're playing a note in this room, make sure you have a different note playing in the next (or even an absence of a note), give the viewer a plate with different flavors and textures, keep them guessing and wanting to discover what is around the next corner. Asymmetry and disruption of a predictable pattern is always going to be more interesting. I think your lighting/models/materials are great. Just don't focus on such an even rhythmic predictable flat visual melody. More range!!!!
Good luck.
As far as the industry goes...yes, correct. It's a bit of a dumpster fire atm, but some places are hiring and you just gotta keep throwing up those shots, and have the mindset that only 1 of them has to go in at some point. Keep the faith, work on your game, be ready when you're called mindset. You've got the chops, just keep pressing forward and don't give up. Show up.
- Pixel