Portfolio Pimp
polycounter lvl 13
This is my last week of school....and as the onslaught of looking for a better job continues, I figured it was time for a bit of a rework on the ol' website.
I'll probably change up a couple of the props...some of them aren't that strong and I'll have more time after graduation to work on some new stuff.
I work as a 3d artist now, but it's a small studio doing 2-gens-ago-stuff and I haven't really been able to get caught up with all the latest high-fangled shit that's out there.
At any rate, any suggestions are welcome...but I probably won't be able to really implement any big changes for another couple weeks as per graduation nonsense....but anything you don't like about it I'm all ears. I wanted to simplist and easiest website in the world...think I got fairly close
I'll probably change up a couple of the props...some of them aren't that strong and I'll have more time after graduation to work on some new stuff.
I work as a 3d artist now, but it's a small studio doing 2-gens-ago-stuff and I haven't really been able to get caught up with all the latest high-fangled shit that's out there.
At any rate, any suggestions are welcome...but I probably won't be able to really implement any big changes for another couple weeks as per graduation nonsense....but anything you don't like about it I'm all ears. I wanted to simplist and easiest website in the world...think I got fairly close
Replies
-More closeups on the ship
-Wires
-maybe for the props put them on their own sheet that shows the wires, texture maps and the full model
-Maybe show some views on the boat from a players perspective.
I'll probably have some more later for ya but anyways. Congrats man and this is solid work.
Where are you applying?
Noice work there Ott!
few points as Jesse has said please post wires,polycount and texture flats .
The initial page is good and welllayed out ,but I don't like single images popping up into new windows.
id make a single page for each model with the wires and a couple of finished shots on each of them.
good stuff and good hunting!
John
ugh...AIM...slowing people down for 15 years strong.
The worst part about those chat programs is when Im doing something the constant "Ok, gotta stop and type some shit" over and over and over...I'm amazed anyone gets anything done >< Sorta like...forums....;P
I've actually got more work to do on the ship...there's about 1,000 ropes that are missing right now, and my final plan is to do a bigass page showing off all those goodies that you talked about with wires, better lighting, polycounts, etc...I put like 9 months into the bastard so far...and you can bet that when I'm done Im gonna show it off right. I'm gonna get a few of them rendered and framed too for some of my ship enthusiast friends ;P
As for the popup window thing...I'm very torn about that. I've always felt like that was the easiest and least confusing navigation methods for portfolios. Clicking back and forth can get you lost, java scripts never seem to work right, rollovers take longer to load...until I see a flawless / simple method (That isn't shared by everyone else!) and I get a larger / better body of work....the simpleton method of java popups has always worked for me.
I guess I've always been unsure about the "right balance" of how much is too much when it comes to your 3d portfolio. I know that people look at it and don't have all day to sit and stare at all your numbers and stats and 10 renders of the same prop...but I do agree that I am missing some key stats on some of those props. Some of them are missing wires / textures period.
Do you guys think you should show the UVW layout overlay in your texture sheet?
I've always felt that showing the flat texture doesn't say much for your UVW skill, but at the same time, showing wires over the top of a texture detract from the overall quality of your texture itself.
Thoughts?
I was also picked to be 1/3 students at our school to give a 15 min presentation at the PAC meeting this week, and there's supposed to be a bunch of dudes from various SoCal studios...hence me wanting to make sure my shit was tip-top before my presentations just in case they wanna come back and check me out ;P
We are supposed to have face time with these guys too, other than the standard "Hey look at how great our students are - now get the F' outta here while we drink" PAC meetings in the past...but we will see.
Here's hopin!
portfolio content looks solid and most importantly, there are no distractions and everything is clearly presented. nice work
Jk, you know what I really think
I'll have my site up soon, too. You just watch...
john
GOOD THINGS:
I love the ship, the tower and the house.
The ship has some great wood textures and the extra props are great. Nice detailing on the ship model too. It needs some local weathering on stuff on the outside of the hull that are constantly exposed to the water, extra peeling pathces of paint, some spots of green algue and a few branecles would look sweet. AO!
Nice texture on the tower, looks varied yet believable. Some more weathering on the roof would make it look even better. Fix that mirror seem on the upperfloor outer wall.
I don't have a whole lot to say about the house except that I think that you can polish a couple of the tiny flat metal and wood props, they looks a little too simple. Great dirt and nice use of angle to hide the tiling rust spot on the roof
You have some solid work here, and I think that it can stand a little pruning to give an even better impression of your ability to create stuff at a high and even standard.
I would start by spending some time on the trailer, cannon and the living room.
BAD THINGS:
The trailer has some huge rust stains that looks really out of place. Try to scale them down to a more sensible size. A suble AO bake wouldn't be out of place either.
The cannon has some really terrible metal texture, there is no way that you can have that much noise in your metal when you give it that small of a share of the uv space. Some weird choices in how you have spent your tris, the metal hold in the back of the cannon look like it has more tris than all the wheels and small details put together.
And finally the living room. Was there some kind of course requirement that you couldn't use multiple lights? The single weak light coming from the back of the room isn't doing your scene any favors, there is no mood in the picture. Get some more lightning in there and/or bake some AO.
What I would remove completly or rework heavily:
The guns, they are no way near the quality of the some of your other work that you have produced in the same amout of time (the tower). Flat, boring metal, not enough details or color variation. The texture doesn't have several of the concepts smaller details, making the weapons look empty.
The mixer is quite boring, scratches look weird, seems to be way many of them and they are too evenly distributed, no shadows.
The Gps. Poly-wastage on the cylinder on the top, flat buttons, everything looks like the same materials, with the same overlays.
The broom has a really, really weird normal map on the bristles of the broom, they look a piece of solid wood or a cracker...
General things:
Bigger images! 800x600 is small! Compress them a little more and up the resolution of your renders. I especially want the see bigger picture of the house and the tower.
AO bakes! Spend the extra 15-30 min it takes, it is worth it.
Wires, poly- and texturebudgets for everything! A few render with just spec and normal applied could be nice.
Get some better lightning setups in your renders, much of your stuff looks unappealing due to the shoddy lightning
AO! AO! AO! AO!
Good points here, especially what Cubik is saying about bigger images, and also he's correct about the mixer, the scratches don't make much sense - if it's meant to be brushed aluminium then your approach could be improved, if it's just meant to be scratched metal then you should refine the scratches just to those areas which would get worn in that way.
In general I think you could afford to show more stuff with specular and normal maps, while most of the modelling and texturing on the site is very competent, I'm noticing a lack of obvious material variation in shininess... everything is presented as a very matte material. Play around more with contrasts of shiny against matte, it's much more interesting especially when seen in motion
Good work though.
As for the lighting/spec/normals...
The classwork is mostly designed to see what we can do within a specific amount of time with a specific budget. Obviously that is no excuse for why I couldn't go back and do more, but for the sake of showing speed and competence I posted the timeframes.
I do agree that some of them could use some more touchups and revisits. The rusty trailer and the living room were both things I wanted to go back and touchup again. I find the lighting and most of the textures to be lacking and I really want to revisit that. Some of the props I will just get rid of altogether once I have some new things to replace them.
There is no excuse for simple texture mistakes or unappealing finals, but that's what learning is all about
Oh...and as far as AO and AO overlays...I did that on a bunch of the stuff in my portfolio, but definitely not all of it. I'm still not seeing the sort of AO results I want on everything I do and definitely can see how much better it can make things look. If anyone has a tutorial on awesome AO I'm all ears. The one I have mostly been following is
http://everflow.com/support/tutorials/AO/Everflow_AmbientOcclusion1.html
Thanks for all the ideas guys...every crit is a learning tip for the next best thing!