Renders From My Demo Reel. (warning: 16 images)
polycounter lvl 14
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Scene 2:
Scene 3:
Graduating tomorrow in Media Arts and Animation from The Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale.
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Scene 3:
Graduating tomorrow in Media Arts and Animation from The Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale.
Replies
Okay so I'll start with the pros. It seems like most of these pieces display a basic skill in model making and you have an understanding of some material and effects. Those points aside, most of this is substandard.
Zeph's comment (while funny and a bit harsh) is pretty relevant, I'm not sure what field you're shooting for (games, gen 3d, whatevs) but your stuff is pretty far below current gen.
My advice, pick one of these, redo it. Find some of the best work on these boards, from games, whatever. See how they do their work, try and follow their steps and bring your work up to the industries current (above current) level.
I'm pulling for you man, I hope this helps, good luck.
As for Zephs comment, if you are interested in time travel, meet me back here 3 days ago.
First scene lacks purpose and design. What is it that I am looking at? The texturing is pretty poor and they aren't really working together. Also the scene is way too busy.. so much glowy stuff. As a player I'd be pretty confused cause I don't know where I should be looking.
The corridor of the first scene has the same problem as the.. uhm.. I believe it is an elevator shaft (that I commented above). Poor texturing and random details. It is relying too much on small details to look good rather than having a genuine design.
For the medical room I like the effort you put into images for the monitors but other than that it looks more like an AO pass to show WIP. Also it seems like you are relying too much on expensive and fancy effects (full reflections and what not). While you could do that the content displayed here isn't close to what it should be at to be using such a game engine imo.
Now second scene. Too many fancy effects. It does look wet like I think it is supposed to be BUT it looks more like ice and a normal map gone wrong rather than wet. This scene is way too busy too.
Last scene has exactly the same issues as the other two. Nice monitor images but that's about it. Ooh.. and I just noticed that there are lots of UV space issues.. some areas get like a bajillion resolution while others get zero.
For a closing comment I'd say. You really put in a lot of time into the details and effects but that's where you got lost. For future work you should focus on the design and purpose more as well as trying to get everything to look coherent! Re-using textures isn't always a bad thing. And ya... too many details can be bad... really bad. Can't be relying on small details and shiny stuff cause 90% of the players won't stop to admire the effort you put in. Instead design and coherency is king. Did you have any concepts to work off from or did you just do these things on a whim?
uhm... and lighting is pretty mediocre in all of these scenes.
Man.. so many things to say so I'm getting lost.
Oh, try to not bother with special materials for your stuff. Try to stick with diff, spec and normal maps for everything and only in special cases add other things like glow and transparency. Cause you really won't get to play with much other things in a computer game.
Like I said.. too much to say so I hope I made any sense. lol.
I would have to say it dosnt sound like he is shooting for games. But IDK, I think I will need a few more clues first.
Here are some more crits.
You have a few objects that dont have smoothing groups and are still faceted from when you extruded it and just never bothered to put some simple smoothing on it. Example being the gold part of the knife handle and the cord/base of the gold light near the knife.
You need to think about not just the items in the sceen but if they fit and should belong there. Example in your extreamly barren textured medical office you have a bloody knife in the bottom right hand corner but no blood/stains on the chair, floor or table anywhere? How could such an anal neat freak doctor keep everything so clean and just leave a bloody knife lying around?
For your sea seen its hard to tell what is really going on since all the colors other then the sea blend in together. Looks like someone just spit up a thing of tuna in some water.
Now im not Media Arts expert but composition, completion (IE dont make scenes that look like WIP AO renders) are important concepts to understand.
I see a lot stuff that show promise, but can't really tell you exactly what you're doing wrong until you show how you've built it.
My advice though, would be to not let your bruised ego get you down too much...and just get back and focus on small stuff. Start with a small scene, something that has different materials (metal, leather, wood, plastic...whatever)...and then just focus on making those small things look good and separate (and not glossy). Also, don't use any architectural materials in max or anything that can't be done real time easily (displacement, reflections, etc). Then post progress and listen to people's advice as you go along.
Good luck.
You shouldn't throw all your work into one scene. At the moment it looks like a random composition of things you created an put it all on that desk.
Take the things which relate to each other like the gun, handgrenade, Knife and get some other items like magazines, or Bullets. With those you can create a simple scene showing your work on modern weapons and stuff.
Show some renderings with wireframes.
If you aim for Game-biz leave out those fancy Raytracing-Render-Effects.
If you are aiming for a Job in High-poly-Rendering you should take more effort in th materials. A scene is not getting better by just activating the raytracing and glow effects.
Instead use some specular-maps to get some more realistic materials. If you aim for high-Poly-rendering you can do some Post-Processing work aswell: like do an Occlusion-Render-Path and combine it with the color-image.
Anyways, still waiting to hear what you are looking for job wise, assuming that is the goal (to get a job).
If I were you: I would take all your skills and knowledge you have gained in school and attempt to recreate a normal building or something that you might see in real life. Preferably something with a little grunge that has character. Go someplace where you live, and take a picture of one of these kinds of buildings, and try to recreate it as realistic as possible. Check out this guys site for reference, he graduated from the same school as me and currently works in the game industry. http://www.tgz3d.com/
So, if you take my advice, start working on it asap, and make your own work in progress thread. The people here at polycount will help you work out any of the kinks mentioned with any of your current works. This way, you will have a great portfolio piece, and the grounds to make more content.
Good Luck.
Also you may want to point out what you did and what you didn't do on the images. It's always good to create your own textures. It looks like you may have not done that with all the textures I think I see a few there that are in my inspiration folder too...
Get the pillar tutorial from http://eat3d.com/ and start building a scene in UT3
Anyways..... my feedback to you.
it seems you know the basics of 3D and your aim is more visual 3 media... but you still gots lot to learn on how to set up a scene and make it work together and not just assets thrown together to make something for school. It would be nice to see your process, how you plan your scene. Wireframes... textures....
You lack detail... your first two renders of the elevator shaft looking thing looks kinda cool, but i have no idea what it is. And things just look off once you look closely at it. The rest of your scenes either look generic or unfinished. Even when things are the same color like they still have different textures and feel to them, that's what make things look different. Maybe on the normals, their silhouette, you tend to grunge some of your textures and then u blend them with the cleanest assets around. Like that han solo gun... it just looks like you threw a shader from maya on to it to save time. I take it that you are more of media where the final result is what matters, but there has to be knowledge on what you intend to do from the beginning or your work will look sloppy and there won't be something that catches peoples attention.
USE REFERENCE! even when you create something there is still reference to how things are built! Not using reference and just creating something from scratch makes your assets look fake... they lack weight, just not believable. Most of the assets inside the bunker just don't look right.... but that is something that we can look at more closely if you decide to show some wireframes and textures.
you use colors and lights in a different way i guess... and i want to say that you nail some of the concepts you don't look past what lights and colors do to bring your scene together. If you use shaders without unwrapping your assets then you better have some detailed nice models so that it shines out. If not it just looks messy. Lights give contour to your scene, makes it dramatic and make it look real. So far your lights are working lights in my opinion. They light the scene and thats about it, they don't add anything to the scene. The closest one i see to something starting to give mood and atmosphere are the sci fi renders of the tunnels... and yet it looks generic. Seriously, just look around you and see how light makes the difference.
Man... i could go on, but i think that it enough for you to think about and take what you think might be of use for you. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but i think that there are standards in the game industry now a days, and if we don't push it then we'll get mediocre 3D.
Cheers!
Here are some more crits.
Sadly, I just learned about smoothing groups about 2 weeks ago. The scene was already rendered by then.
I was aiming for a security checkpoint kind of booth, a place to dropoff and make deliveries and such as well. Maybe too pretentious.
That scene was a collab with me and another guy. I spec mapped everything I did. Thing that weren't spec mapped (monitors, chairs, cans) were done by him.
I did the first and second scenes %100 (elevator, hallway, lab areana).
In the last scene, I modeled and lit the environment. As for the props, everything spec and bump mapped was done by me (modeled and textured) anything not was done by someone else.
Put a smile on my face. But I can tell when people have nothing better to do, and I know better than to "retaliate" which is what people are just waiting for.
Cancer, but still kicking.
Thanks for the crits guys.
use lighting to highlight areas of interest and let other areas fall into shadow with vague forms in them so it helps the viewer mentally fill in the gaps. dont be afraid if an unlit scene looks kinda boring and flat, lighting will add another level of depth, this is something beginners usually forget about.
If you study a lot of good environment work you will begin to see some patterns and hopefully recognize what makes it look believable. then apply these "lessons" to your own work and I guarantee you will see rapid improvement. study, interpret and apply, that's what usually works best for me.
4 years of formal training + lurking on polycount (& game-artisan, conceptart.org, cgsociety, & 3dtotal) = the sky's the limit for you
Now get your ass on a plane, come the fuck home, and teach me some 3d shit!
Years of formal training + lurking on sites like polycount (& 3dtotal, cgsociety, conceptart, etc) = the sky's the limit for you.
Now get your ass on a plane, come home, and teach me some proper 3d!!! Now!
As I said on deviantart about the water-world scenes, I feel they desperately need shadows to get some controst going on. Also if you zoom out until those images are about 25% of their original size it becomes really obvious which ones have the most potential. If something in your shot does not contribute at 25% then it isn't going to help much at 100%.
This is the best one (zoomed out) in my opinion. In fact it reminds me of a thumbnail speed-paint I saw on conceptart.org a while back.
And the doctors office probably would have been better as just an ambient occlusion render so the only thing to focus on was your modeling skills instead of the lack of good lighting and overly reflective/bright surfaces.
Alternative to zooming would be to stand 6 feet from the screen and squint so your visions blurry. The dark tunnel looks really cool when I do that.