Environment Art - Check it out

CowmasterStudios

Some artwork of mine... critiques please?

http://www.cowmasterstudios.com/portfolio.html

Environments (rendered in Maya) and Props (made for an Unreal3 CTF level)

-Deric

JasonLavoie

Alritghy, first off... your normal or bump is WAY to intense and noisy, and you're most likely using maya's default crap settings, and I really don't know how to turn down the intensity cause it always seems like its lock once you get a file loaded

Also man, you really can't rely on normals without having solid textures. Right now it just seems like you found a photo on the net and just placed it on your texture map, and probably stretched it to fit in place, you gotta show some love to those textures man... Try making high poly versions of your models and rendering out an Ambient Occlusion map so at least you have a place to start, this always helps me anyways.

Next time, instead of relying on maya to render out game props / environment, do it in-engine such as ut3. I find that you get much more control (specially the normals) as well as lighting, and it will most likely give it a more professional feel.

Keep it up man.

SHEPEIRO

theres some ok work there but its hidden under some ghastly normal maps.
dont just make normal maps from diffuse maps, and dont turn them up too strong.

id be curious to see some of your env work without the normals.

plus dont use fancy render tech like volumetric lights in game art, make realtime alpha'd planes

i think the environments hold up better than your props, you seam to have an eye for lighting and composition, but your props dont have the work or polish to stand-up on their own.
i would spend more time on the props in your scene, and get your texture densitys more consistent befor you tackle normal mapping. a scene like this can look ace with no normal maps atall just well painted higher res diffuse maps. you would be amazed how much next-gen games get away without normal mapping stuff.

Ghostscape

Everything everyone else has said is good advice and I don't want to repeat what they're saying.

Also, people do not write on whiteboards/chalkboards with computer fonts, and when you're doing windows like in the bedroom scene, don't just paste a photo onto the plane of the window - build a dome outside and put the photo on that, so there is some depth

whats_true

For a banged up room, those white boards are awfully white. Dirty them up more so that they match the motif of the banged up room.

CowmasterStudios

alrighty, thanks for the critiques thus far. I'm retouching up some of the things you guys suggested.

:]

If you can think of anything else or any tips on how to achieve what youre all talking about let me know!

-deric