recently submitted art tests

hikagesan

So I just finished with two art tests. Each one was a week. The first set of pics is 10600 polys or about 22K tris. the buildings in the background were just filler and were not required. The area of focus was the bus stop. all textures were 256 or smaller with dif+spc+nml most of the time.

The second is 5762 tris and based on a concept provided by the company. 2 512x256 maps for the ground and building, 256 and smaller for the rest of the scene. had some trouble settling on a lighting feel that i wanted ended up going with red behind the camera and dark purple in a few spots in the alley in front of the camera. for ambient i went with dark blue for teh skylight. any suggestions on better lighting would be appreciated.

So pics are below, comments and critiques are welcome, especially lighting techniques as i feel im lacking finesse in that area. i'm looking forward to seeing what has to be said as i will certainly take everything and apply it to my next tests and future works.

municipal services building

http://nfergusonart.com/images/TestRender_2.jpg
http://nfergusonart.com/images/TestRender_3.jpg
http://nfergusonart.com/images/TestRender_4.jpg
http://nfergusonart.com/images/Ferguson_NS_ArtTest_Cam1.JPG
http://nfergusonart.com/images/ferguson_ns_arttest_cam5.jpg
http://nfergusonart.com/images/ferguson_ns_arttest_cam9.jpg
http://nfergusonart.com/images/ferguson_ns_arttest_cam10.jpg

alley scene

http://lh6.google.com/nate.ferguson/Ry82....jpg?imgmax=576
http://lh4.google.com/nate.ferguson/Ry82....jpg?imgmax=576
http://lh4.google.com/nate.ferguson/Ry82....jpg?imgmax=576
http://lh4.google.com/nate.ferguson/Ry82....jpg?imgmax=576
http://lh5.google.com/nate.ferguson/RzIz....jpg?imgmax=576

thanks for looking and again, comments are welcome as well as pointers for the next time.

low odor

all your image tags fugged up

hikagesan

kk changed them to links not sure why they werent displaying it was the default UBB tag [image][/image] thing in the post window

super_villain

Looks pretty to me. Some of the ground textures on the bus stop seem a little bland, but that's coming from someone who's not an environmental artist.

Mark Dygert

The alley scene links prompt to download instead of displaying an image.

Looks pretty good.

Crits:
- Couldn't tell if that was a statue at the top of the stairs or just someone who was poorly textured. I settled on statue, but the addition of a pedestal would signify "statue" from a distance.
- There are some funky blue lights in places, not sure why they are there, they are kind of breaking the scene.
- The building has a weirdly placed omni light by it. You might be able to get along better using a sky light or a light dome.
- The shadows are all pretty sharp, and it looks like hardly any Ambient Occlusion is happening.
- The lighting and shadows in your scene doesn't match the lighting in your background image(s).

pliang

Adding on...the municipal building scene:

You seem to have a real sharp bump detail on the pavement.
I dunno if you should even keep the guy on there.
All textures seem procedural, I'd highly suggest look the concept plus additional references and fix that up.
The blue lights look extreme...I'm not sure why are they even they're in the first place.
Sky looks pasted on and a bit too saturated.
Show some wires

The alley:
Even if it is based on a ref...you should look up like seedy alleyways say in Chicago and use that for the details and texture.
Texturing seems remarkably different in details compared to the first one which is good.
I think the brick textures are out of scale, its almost as big as a head.


Postng:
Also, you should just get an account on photobucket or flickr and just hyperlink it on the image tab when posting next time.

hikagesan

thanks for the comments, i'll be adding links to a web gallery instead of the url link to the pic. for whatever reason the image tags dont work at all on this post. in the galleries ill add wires and updated shots in the next few days.

gallery for municipal building art test
http://picasaweb.google.com/nate.ferguson/ArtTestOne
gallery for alley scene
http://picasaweb.google.com/nate.ferguson/Render_Files



the bright blue lights are some kind of render artifact that im still trying to track down the cause, something to do with the combination of lights used in the scene. im simplifying the lighting in the municipal scene per vigs comments and trying to develop some softer lighting. ive made a sky dome as well to address the background and scene matching for both scenes.

per pliangs comments ill take another look at the textures relative sizes, but none of them were procedurally generated although they have low contrast in values to try to avoid a greatly noticeable tile. i did a highpass on some of the concrete textures to soften the range of values. i'll probably go back and paint in some detail and color and see how that turns out. i'll also adjust the normal bump amounts in a couple of areas, becomes real apparent when someone points it out.

i think thats everything and ill post an update soon. thanks. [edit] added gallery urls

Em.

On your alley scene:
I think higher contrast lighting would help it out a lot. I actually just did an alley scene a while back and got some excellent crits on lighting. In cities, there are a lot of orange hued lights and fluorescent lights that give off a white-green hue.

You could use some orange lights off camera, and white-greenish ones for the bulbs in the lamps over the doors. Probably will want to mess with the attenuation on those lamps as well, seems like they're illuminating things oddly. If you reduce the amount of light the building in the distance is receiving, it will put more focus on the alley itself. Right now my eye is instantly going to that large building and the bright purple sky and there's not very much interesting going on back there.

I would also play with a more dynamic camera angle, and then position your props accordingly. Don't be afraid of contrast in your lighting, look up some ref and find an alley with lighting you like and try to duplicate it.

I think the bricks are slightly too large, look for some images that show a person or dumpster like you have next to a brick wall. Your ground texture is a little muddy and confusing right now, I would try either working in more patchy asphalt, or making more defined brick in places. It would be nice to see some litter on the ground too.

It's a good start, it just needs some refinement in the textures and lighting to make it pop. Not the best crit, but I hope it helps. Looking forward to seeing your updates.

Here's a couple of ref's I found with interesting lighting

Alley 1

Alley 2

Alley 3

Mark Dygert

psst.... try using <font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>[img][/img]</pre><hr />
instead of <font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>[image][/image]</pre><hr />
it should work. Weird I know...

Em.

Who....me? I was purposely postin' links because some of the images are large. Heh, but thanks for stayin' on top of things, you're all over the place, seriously are there like 5 of you?!
If it's not for me, please ignore previous post and continue with awesomeness.