Low Poly presentation

oobersli

Ok, I've had a long discussion over the past few months with some fellow alumni about student presentations. I say that if you can present your work within game engine *unreal,quake,source etc..* or a realtime setting thats best, but theres a debate that others say its better to spend more time learning vray/mental ray and making spiffy fancy renders using mr daylight and whatnot.

My complaint with that, is when i see someone with a super realistic lighting/render setup I start to think that their hiding badwork because a skylight can make a crappy model look a tad better in some instances. Technically as well, i don't see why a game artist needs to present their work in a way thats not possible to display in current games.

I'm really curious to what everyone else thinks about the whole, realtime vs. elaborate fancy renders for presenting your low poly work or how you setup your presentation.

aesir

I like having a 3 light setup and rendering cause I can add a nice edgelight or have them be sidelit by a blueish tone and stuff like that.

I guess I could do that in UE3 though....


I think its mostly preference. Just show it off as best as you can. Stay away from radiosity though.

Jay Evans

Yea, I think you should present your work as amazingly as possible. First impressions count for a lot. I'd rather go "wow" than, being impressed with technical details. Even “in engine” there are plenty of tricks that can be done that aren't necessarily the way you would set it up if were in production. That’s my preference anyway.

If good ligting makes a model look better than I'd say use it. Imagine if they shot real "Models" like that. Umm that studio lighting is making her look way hotter than she is. Turn it off. :P

That being said I'm sure lots of people think the opposite.

Pseudo

Also keep in mind that a lot of times your art will be passing the desks of people who aren't as familiar with the tech aspect, and they are more interested in a pretty picture and a nice presentation.

Mark Dygert

Whatever gets across your strongest skill set and lets them know you have talent.

I don't see any harm is making beauty renders, as long as that isn't the only thing you have. Construction shots, texture sheets and viewport grabs can be just as important. They let the employer know;
- You aren't throwing 1 million polys into a sign post.
- You aren't just using a pretty lighting set up from a tutorial.
- You aren't abusing texture sheets or butchering flickr for textures.

For most renders I would suggest sticking to a 3 point lighting set up. Key, Fill and Back lights along with some nice AO are very important and worth reading up on. Especially since you can and might be asked to bake that into a character, OR might use it as a starting point for your textures. Using one constant lighting setup will help unify your look. It also gives each piece a level play field to be judged on.

While technical know how is somewhat important. hiring managers will tell you every place does things differently even if they all use a big name engine. Also most places hire people with talent first and people with mild talent but an army of technical know how, when forced to. You can train talent to get a model in game in a few hours. But you can't poor artistic knowledge into someone in the same amount of time.

Talent translates and adapts. Technical know how just goes out of date. If you can marry the two then you're in a good spot. Just know if one is going to trump the other its talent. I think you can get your talent across much easier in a few simple eye catching renders instead of a bunch of cluttered poorly composed in game screen grabs with iffy lighting. You can at least show you can comprise a nice shot, light it, and demonstrate some basic art theories then wow em with your technical know how in your construction shots.

Yes you can over-do the beauty renders and end up hurting yourself but as long as you have talent it almost doesn't matter what road you take.

hawken

I go "wow" over viewport grabs with the likes of RobG, Pior, poop and b1ll

I also go "wow" over tasteful renders, from the likes of Ruz and Pior.

some people can pull it off. Others cannot. It's mainly down to your individual style.

Emil Mujanovic

I love seeing viewport grabs with 100% self illumination to see how much work the diffuse map is actually doing. If a model looks great like that, it will look great with a nice light setup. Whereas, it doesn't always work the other way around.
But there's nothing wrong with pimping your models with pre-rendered shots. If it improves the look of your model, then I say do it!

-caseyjones

bounchfx

this is great info guys, keep it coming!

oobersli

ya, thx for the input guys. I usually like to roll with doing viewport grabs or a 3points light setup. I don't like running mr or long drawn out renders for my low poly work since its seems sorta like putting a donkey in a horse race.

I completely agree with vig about the putting it in engine, but I personally am impressed when someone can take their work and put it into a realtime setting and make it look nice. Of course for everyone one person that can setup nice lighting in game, there will be 10 or so people that can't light worth shit. Agree that it all depends on the person and their style.