Demo reel.

Nate

Hey folks, been outta school for a bit. I got a site with my reel on it. It's my first, and I'm looking for work. Take a looksee.

www.nlhcreative.com Click "Demo Reel"

Nate

Oh, and appologies if this is in the wrong section.

Geezus

Firefox crashes on me everytime I click on demo reel.
Also your main page just says "untitled document".
<title>FTW</title>

noritsune

Hey, nice job finishing a reel and getting it up there. Dont know how much of the work is still tweakable, but if it is... I'd say that the exterior lighting in "the villa" is killing alot of the atmosphere. The exterior of the building itself is pretty nice looking (did you have a source image? very Estruscan/Japanese hybrid) but the lighting looks rushed and is killing it. Try starting fresh with a strong slightly-blue ambient and a white directional and work from there. also - the blue and green in your water and grass are way too saturated. lastly, some fog, image planes, or foliage alpha planes in the background could visually smooth the area behind the trees a bit more.

cholden

Doesn't work, all I get is sound. You have to make your demo reel availible for download so employers can review it, pass it around, etc.

Also, that image of the building on your main page is so dark, it's pretty much black until I cut off the lights in my room.

hawken

I get the mov playing just fine in safari.

One thing I noticed is that all your textures are rather saturated and contrasty. While this can be seen as a style, it is also reminicant of playing an n64 game on a dodgy telly.

I would change the scroll opeing animation to move the parchment, not expand it. Stretching it just looks plain ugly.

The alien spaceship models are a decent polycount but the ones for the villa are insanely high. 1472 for a vase and 11372(!!!) for a simple stool(!!) are just outrageously high. I don't think any developer would be interested in potential staff who can lathe a few legs and stick them to a cylinder.

It's a good attempt. Very fluid and informative. Only, the information you give isn't terribly apealing as an employer, becuase you still need to work on your models and textures. Why not pimp them here for critique?

flow3d

My guess is that we who can't watch the reel are too lazy to upgrade to Quick Time 7. I know I am, and I have problems with this one and other reels, where I dont get any picture just maybe sound.
What I've noticed is that some people tend to have a Quick Time 7 version of their work, aswell as a Quick Time 6 and below version, maybe you could do the same and maybe even put a .avi file up there as a panic button

I like the six first images, I like the fact that you've got everything custom made. As far as I can tell it looks like you're taking the screenshots from out of a game engine, or is it straight out of your 3d app?
If you're familiar with any engines (or if you're not), I'd say you should explore the possibilities, and it would probably make a possitive inpact on future employers to see that you're familiar with different engines and their leveleditors!
If what's on your website is screengrabed from out of your 3d app, then try considering Unreal Engine since it works kinda good with 3d app > leveleditor kinda pipeline. As where Quake3 (yeah old, but hey - I'm old school..hehe) wouldn't. Doom3 does have a few custom meshes (more or less large parts of the level allready) which are not made in the editor, so I'm guessing that's a way to go aswell!

Keep kicking ass dude

D4NN0

[ QUOTE ]


The alien spaceship models are a decent polycount but the ones for the villa are insanely high. 1472 for a vase and 11372(!!!) for a simple stool(!!) are just outrageously high.

[/ QUOTE ]
Have to agree with Hawken here Yes the vase looks good but there is no reason for it to have a polycount like that.And you could of done a room full of furniture for the polycount on that stool. I'd go back and rework your models take a look at them from every angle and remember if it isn't helping the silhouette then get rid of it. Good job and keep it up

Nate

Hey folks, thanks for the input. It's much appreciated. Sorry for the firefox/quicktime errors. I think quicktime 7 or 7.1 is needed to view. I don't know how to label the browser window, I'm quite poor with Dreamweaver. My site will be redesigned in the future as well. Having different quicktime or windows media versions is a good idea too.

The exterior lighting for the villa was supposed to be a sunset type setting, thought you're right it is rushed. The building was designed from concepts taken from several norwegian and greek samples.

The first part of the reel is a custom level I did in the Unreal 2k3/2k4 builder. I'm fairly familiar with the Unreal 2 engine, but that's getting outdated. Sorry, I didn't give information on that earlier. All the textures and models are done by me. The images are from screen grabs from in game (Unreal Tournament 2003) I used 3dsmax for the models and Photoshop for textures. That's why the polycounts for the futuristic models are reasonable, and the villa models are obsurdly high. The villa was done straight in 3dsmax with a gratuitous use of polies. That scroll was a bit of a pest for me. I couldn't figure out how to get it to actually 'unroll' So, it stretched.

Thank you for the advice. I will probably not tweak this, but make something entirely new. In the future I'll post (pimp?) here. On a side note, the first part of the reel is from a fully playable game level for Unreal Tournament 2k3/2k4. If anyone's interested in a copy of the level, lemme know.

Ninjas

If you are using After Effects for the scroll effect, you should put a mask on the top where the rolled portion is, and then you should be able to pull it down okay.

My thoughts are that it is solid presentation, and you obviously have some cool designs, but a lot of the stuff in there doesn't seems up to the level of current games. The UT level especially looks dated (it may be because of the saturated glowy green and very clean textures).

Geezus

I have QUicktime 7, still no go. Perhaps, as cholden said, making the .mov available for direct download would be a wise choice.

Luxury

Your textures are very Eni Oken. Did you by any chance take one of her courses?

swampbug

Hey nate.. nice demo reel. If you were to change anything about it, I would put "entering the log cabin door sequence" at the beginning. Followed by the vase and chair. I thought it was the most next gen looking stuff. You want that stuff at the beginning IMO.

Nate

I did the scroll effect in max as an animation that I took into after effects. Never thought of using a mask..... I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

No, sorry not familiar with Eni Oken, though if you have a link I'd like to take a looksee for meself. All those textures I painted from my own concepts (the game level.) The others are photo manips.

danr

woah there, too much movement, too much going on at once in the scene ... the whole opening sequence i'm going "just let me get a look at something!". Flythroughs are okay, as are rotating wires of your props ... but not at the same time ...

one of the best reels i've ever seen - that led to the bloke landing lead artist at a major studio - had a fantastic pace to the environment flythroughs that allowed room to fade up descriptive wires and texture close-ups all in one smooth shot, while not slow enough to bore the viewer, and not too fast as to confuse

noritsune

gotta disagree with danr here, I say the viewer can pause and examine a given frame anytime he wants. better to err on overloading so that you're not boring!

fogmann

Nice reel, but here's a crit mainly related to the way you present your work. I think the presentation is a bit busy at the moment, especially in the first part, where you simultaneously show the individual models on the right side, while in the background you show camera moving around, as well as various pieces of a level flashing and rotating. It's a bit distracting and a viewer doesn't have a clear focus - should he look at the level, or the model wireframes and texture sheets? I think you handled it better in the Villa part, where you actually pause and gray out the background footage, and then show the construction turntable and model stats. Don't be afraid to make your reel a little longer, it's right now less than minute and a half, and you should be fine with extra 30 seconds to show level walkthrough and model turntables separately, at different times.
[edit] OK I'm late, but I will agree with reel being busy, and would add that for close examination you better make a 2D/3D gallery in which you can show higher resolution images.

danr

noritsume - the point is that the intended viewer (potential employers) aren't going to want to pause ANYTHING. The phrase "dissapointing showreel, but lets go back and try and make the most of it" doesn't ever come into it when you're looking at 20 of these a day. You just skip onto the next one.

thinsoldier

nothings more reliable that flash video in my opinion. Yes you can force it to maintain visual quality...some.

Joseph Silverman

I agree with Hawken. I liked the presentation, but there are a few with the work.

Especially the polycounts on the villa interior, which looked nice otherwise.