Shot: I was a little terse sure, but he already knows he can model shapes fast, as do I. He's got nothing to prove as far as ability to model so, reproving that is redundant and I spent a lot of words on a long explanation(previous to this thread) as to why modelling something we dont just dream up is the best learning experience.
The tendency when modelling is to get addicted to certain shapes that feel satisfying to us and end up repeating them through lack of reference gathering and reliance on mental masturbation instead (we all fall into this to some extent).
Lots of real world items, engines, cars, doors, arches etc are very boring to look at in terms of their components but they work as a whole, as a oohesive collection of forms only is it that many forms come to life. We tend not to learn this until we focus on replicating a few real world objects without stylizing them in a satisfying way where each object yells 'coolness'.
So that was my point, I think David will realize that, or I hope he does at least.
Yeah I agree Mr. Johnston. I'm workin my way up to it. I'm tryin to. Each one will get closer and closer to the shot. I'm trying to still have a little fun with it too. But I do agree I did fail to match the engine verbatim. I took your feedback to heart and I'm pushing forward on the study. With now a more refined focus on function. Thanks again for all the great feedback.
Thanks I guess. Again the intent was never to follow it verbatim if that was the case it would of looked like it. I'm trying to have fun with my personal work and enhance my skills, Thanks again for the feedback again however it was not to fully replicate the concept just pull some pieces from it. Thanks again and stay metal
saying it could'a, should'a, would'a been is a cop out. There's no reason you can not have fun, enhance you're skills, and follow you're reference at the same time. Looking at the engine pic, I would expect that kind of modeling from someone that was not even working from a reference.
It looks made up, no footing in reality.
To me mechanical modeling follows the same rules as anatomy. You have to know the foundation before you can break it or stylize it. Every single piece of AWSOME mechanical artwork is fucking AWSOME because we the viewer believe what we see, and can imagine it coming to life in our minds.
Model it as the ref or at least within 70%, learn from what you have yet to do, have fun, and then break off into your own style/vision.
But I would wager that copy and pasting boxes and cylinders is not going to enhance you're skills unless you mod your keyboard to use 2x C's and 2x P's.
I do like you're work, but in polycount fashion I have to kick you in the nuts to get you running faster
Gentlemen here's my ass again ripe for a tearing. Mr. J the first one is another of the images we talked about, I'm going to remake your engine soon but I want to hit the others as well. The second is a Zbrush Study to try to get a quick brick study. Same time frame as always not rushing just crunched for time.
Again the feedback is great and thanks for being honest about the work. Thats why I come here. Stay metal
good stuff, machine definitely looks more 'embedded in realism'. now make one that retains the coolness of the first and the functionality of the second.
for the column i love the feel of the bricks vs the swirly stuff. the loops that go around don't work, they look like complex objects scaled down way too much to where they lose their shape. the loops at the top read better, but i feel both top and bottom could use clearer 'functional' shapes
Just out of curiosity what was the kind of res of the stuff you took into Zbrush? Surely you didn't bring that back into max to render? That pillar is the bomb, did you concept it first? Or wing it? I love the amount of instanced detail combined with the unique brick damage.
Also, when creating this kind of stuff, do you worry about making a low-poly version? Zbrush to me is an albatross I don't understand. I always think the low needs some sort of an unwrap before you bring it to the brush (so the low can be textured after baking). I want to jump into the program and create stuff like you do, even though I can't compare, but I'm intimidated by the whole taking this high poly doodle to the low-texture-stage. hope that makes some sort of sense. It's all amazing stuff man, I wish I had half the realization you do!
well i guess I gotta be a bit of a debbie downer but I think the new engine is kinda boring. I think the parts are cool, but the main body that it's attached to is.. well, looks like a smoothed box. Not sure if your ref is like that too,but that struck me as odd.
the pillar, I like the bottom part, looks nice like it's one solid beat up stone. but I really don't like the use of the slash brush on the stone blocks. that is very weird, like someone had an exacto knife but it was a laser exacto knife and made incisions into it
sooo yah, sorry, but hey its my opinion i think you're still cool though
A better attempt from the reference this time but I think you must see by now, how your style breaks down when you are not free to just make stuff up. You skipped all the toughest forms because you couldnt just throw elements into each other and instance it enough times to crowd and obsure the the base forms.
This is what you need to work at correcting because in the workplace you'll follow concepts or others input , often aided by a piece of reference they have found.
When I look at the reference, I get excited about those 4 big pipe clamps that lead into the main block. They are squashed cylinder's with twin regular molded cylinders welded into the form that leads into a 90 degree curved slope into the main pipe.
Its a totally cool, challenging shape and once it was built properly in one piece like the moulding is, it could have been a great kitbash file for later, but you were really half hearted about that shape, like you were with most of them.
Look at the big sprocket wheel piece on the left.. you may, again have ignored the dimensions and scale balance of the source, but its still a cool shape and a completly new form for your repertoire now, didnt that part feel good?
So really, the same feedback as I originally gave you about slowing down and focusing more on the fundamental forms and functions, theres a real world reason each thing is built the way it is.
As for your redo of my Cog_Hospital_Decopillar .... well, it suffers from the same problems, you got obsessed with the overall flow of the original and overdid the wavy instanced vertical spans, dropped the thought originally put into how everything works and fits together and went noise overload on the little leaves instancing and bolt instancing and in combination just noised the whole piece up to unreadable levels again.
So again, take your time, study the interesting set pieces, dont just instance the same one repeatedly and call it a design style.
You have some great work and its getting better every time you post.
What I find really distracting and annoying is the boarder art you put on everything. When an artist makes a great piece, no one cares about the frame. Why does everything need a noisy crapified boarder that partially obscures the image?
Kevin has some great advice I'm glad you're starting to listen to him. He has been down this road already. A lot of what he is pointing out are lessons he and his coworkers have learned and are continuing to learn. I wouldn't say what you where doing is bad, but its good to learn more then one style of doing things.
I really thank Valve for doing TF2 the way they did, they may have stumbled into it after fishing around for a style, but some massive lessons can be applied to just about every facet of our industry to some degree or another. The whole idea of doing more with less couldn't have come at a better time. Right when poly budgets and texture sheets are becoming less and less limiting people are starting to see that just because we can pack 20 million tris on a screen doesn't mean we need to give any less thought to how they are arranged. Pushing big numbers and vomiting out repeating details is fun, but you have to ask who is fun for? Are you doing it for your own need to make what you're working on easy and quick, or are you doing it with the player in mind. Its a lot more fun when they are thoughtfully arranged and smartly placed.
[/rant]
Okay so this was done as a way for me to destress, just ended it with my old lady and to be honest, Mr. J the stuff we're workin on is a mind F so I wanted to do something relaxing over the weekend. Any feedback is cool. Dont worry I am still workin on the mechine stuff as well. Stay metal
MetalMan123: Just wanted to say, that I love watching your progress here. The advice on this thread is some of the best I have ever seen. I keep trying to make mental notes of what people are saying.
Anyways, nice work. And keep at it dude!
Can you breakdown the process for creating that pillar for example? Are all the pieces of it separate, or is the main pillar one big piece you took into zbrush and then layered the others onto it. About how long did this take you, etc. Are the brick pieces geometry or are you using a normal map for speed. HP speed modeling do you give yourself allotted time?
Dudes i would love to do a tutorial but the fact of the matter is I know jack about this stuff, I'm learning aton here and when I understand my workflow better I will be more the willing to share it. All I can say really is to look at people like Kevin J, Mikey Spano, Meats Mier, or work with people like Jesse Moody, John Devon, Dan Laduca, or Kurt Willams, and get your ass chewed and keep doing it. I gotta aways to go, but thanks for the feedback and as always
Stay Metal
It depends on how much the ex is complaining lol, pretty quick but the speed isn't the goal its more about the learning process. lol. Thanks for the killer feedback
Hey all here are some updates its been forever it feels like, I just graduated so stay metal. I'll hopefully be able to post my newest stuff soon \m/ My reel is posted too, this doesn't have any of my commercial stuff though. NDA's kind of got in the way. Hope all is well. My next study is going to be on pushing assets all the way through with same level of quality in the HP stuff with an attempt, to try to get some film like stuff up. Maybe one day lol. Stay metal dudes
the way you present your work with those rusty metal sheets is really crapy to be honost
its better to keep it clean and make people focus on the art, we've said it before i guess,
its not doing your work any good, it only confuses the viewer
I think you need to take a serious step back and focus on design, forms, simple shapes etc. You're just overloading every asset with so much random detail that it loses all form and function. You have some talent but you really need to learn to "edit" your work.
Hey man, great work as usual. The first two images didn't turn out all that hot IMO. Its just that you have too much damage sculpted and it begins to looks noisy/sloppy. I'm noticing that this noisy feel has become more prominent with sculpted stuff that you do, when your regular HP work is really clean and looks nicer IMO.
I'm sort of giving you a tough crit, because I know how talented you truly are and what you are capable of, from seeing this thread develop.
The way you pulled everything together and rendered in the sci-fi scene and aliens like scene turned out really cool though.
I have to agree with Rens on the presentation as well. It looks like you are not using the pink effects as much, but honestly it looks better without it completely. I did like it at first, but when I kept seeing the same thing on all your images it got old tbh.
Hey, but your work is great, and congrats on graduating!
Agreed with the above. To much noise to appreciate anything. You also repeat a lot of patterns. Not that this is a bad thing, it just feels boring for the overall design. Its like pimping out a box with all of these designs and shapes and do-dads, but when you step back, its still a square box. Earthquake hit it, work on design, forms, and shapes.
Your work is nice, I think, but for the love good art please post these on regular backgrounds and knock the 'keeping it metal' shit off. It's distracting and making it irritating to look at you art work. I feel like I am staring at a bear in a forest through a bunch of leaves when all I want to see is the bear.
Hey all its been a while, since I graduated I've been workin alot. Here is some of my work as of late. I have alot to learn, funny how much u realize how much u dont know the more you work lol Thanks again. And thanks again to Kevin J, still a huge insperation. http://davidlesperance.blogspot.com/
I think you need to take a serious step back and focus on design, forms, simple shapes etc. You're just overloading every asset with so much random detail that it loses all form and function. You have some talent but you really need to learn to "edit" your work.
Just wanted to bring this up again because I still see it in some of your work, the decorative Urn/Pillar type thing for instance, it has absolutely no rest areas, no place for your eyes to settle and rest, it is ALL detail, which can be very distracting, and have much less effect than say, a nicely polished and edited asset with bits of great form, and bits of striking detail. With detail everywhere, it just turns to noise, and detail uniformly over an asset turns into no detail, or un-noticable detail.
Lets look at a Corinthian pillar, this is very classic in terms of design, and has a lot it can teach. It contains areas of stricking detail, but plenty of simpler areas, these help to *highlight* your areas of detail, without them it simply doesn't stick out. There is no contrast of detail there and you loose that impact of having really stricking detail.
Your work seems to be getting better in this regard, your composition and presentation in particular has gotten a lot better, and there is no question your work is eye catching, however i think if you work on your editing and detail level you can really push your work to the next level. Spending more time, and adding more detail to an asset, doesn't always make it a better asset, try to remember that.
Overall my favorite work is your environment pieces, where you see the finished product and get a really good sense of vision and composition, this to me is your biggest strength here.
Take it or leave it for me is the individual zbrushed items, most of them fall into the "too much detail" catagory here, and while impressive on a technical level do not really highlight your best skills.
The worst work here is the 3rd to last and last image, the mechanical sub-d work, it suffers from some of the "too much detail" stuff as above, but also simply isn't executed to a high level, lots of geometry errors and things of that nature, and a lack of clear scale in your detail makes these too abstract. I personally would not show these peices, as I feel they detract from the overall quality of your work. Try to do some simpler, but better executed sub-d models and replace them with that for your folio.
Thanks so much for the feedback mate, yeah I agree with you in many reguards. I still believe that have the detail is good, beacause of fidelity loss in transfering of maps ect. Besides in my personal stuff I put all the detail into the sculpt because I'm taking it any further then that. Generally for alot of my personal work I like alot of Rococo style its a personal thing. Thanks so much for your feedback
Wow! I had seen that jungle piece of yours somewhere before (Wondercon), and I love that piece (love those trees and the lighting). I also really like that new mech spine thing with the turbines. I have no idea what is going on there, but I like it nonetheless. I agree with Earthquake, I think some of your work is a bit busy for my taste, but regardless, you are obviously a super talented artist, and I really enjoy looking at your work. I look forward to seeing more.
Really cool stuff, but I'm going to have to agree with Earthquake's and others' comments about excessive detail.
Detail for detail's sake is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, extraneous detail can distract the viewer from the elements that are actually important. It just ends up looking like white noise, and none of the details get appreciated.
Breaking things up with a smooth surface (or bland/generic rough surface) will really make your detailed/ornamented areas pop more (and not be overlooked).
Particularly when it comes to manmade structures, there's almost always an alternation of bland functionality (flat wall, cylindrical column, etc.) broken up by ornamentationin in choice areas. (Trim/crowning of columns, insets, etc.) Ornamentation is usually focused in the areas where the architect/designer wants your attention drawn. (Doors, windows, Roof Line, etc).
There are some excessive patterning which makes boring most of your images. Uniqueness makes richer something, such as you see 500 grey dressed people and then single black dressed passes and instantly you see it... the black one would be the point of attention, that means a lot for design processes. Anyway, I like your work, but the thing is you have 50% white and 50% black and uniformly distributed making the image plain grey, so bores.
I love analogies and figurative meanings, so I hope you take it
I agree with EQ, you exaggerate on the low frequency detail, skipping the med / high frequency detail pass making some of the stuff noisy on the surface! But it has been said already.
The mountains and the jugle scene's are really sharp and strong, their organic style really suits your modelling style. The large mechanical scene underneath the mountains shot is a great contrast to the detail frequency that you put into your concrete / stucco / plaster work, keeping pushing on with that stuff, you might end up getting addicted to the clean stuff!
Replies
The tendency when modelling is to get addicted to certain shapes that feel satisfying to us and end up repeating them through lack of reference gathering and reliance on mental masturbation instead (we all fall into this to some extent).
Lots of real world items, engines, cars, doors, arches etc are very boring to look at in terms of their components but they work as a whole, as a oohesive collection of forms only is it that many forms come to life. We tend not to learn this until we focus on replicating a few real world objects without stylizing them in a satisfying way where each object yells 'coolness'.
So that was my point, I think David will realize that, or I hope he does at least.
It looks made up, no footing in reality.
To me mechanical modeling follows the same rules as anatomy. You have to know the foundation before you can break it or stylize it. Every single piece of AWSOME mechanical artwork is fucking AWSOME because we the viewer believe what we see, and can imagine it coming to life in our minds.
Model it as the ref or at least within 70%, learn from what you have yet to do, have fun, and then break off into your own style/vision.
But I would wager that copy and pasting boxes and cylinders is not going to enhance you're skills unless you mod your keyboard to use 2x C's and 2x P's.
I do like you're work, but in polycount fashion I have to kick you in the nuts to get you running faster
Again the feedback is great and thanks for being honest about the work. Thats why I come here. Stay metal
for the column i love the feel of the bricks vs the swirly stuff. the loops that go around don't work, they look like complex objects scaled down way too much to where they lose their shape. the loops at the top read better, but i feel both top and bottom could use clearer 'functional' shapes
Just out of curiosity what was the kind of res of the stuff you took into Zbrush? Surely you didn't bring that back into max to render? That pillar is the bomb, did you concept it first? Or wing it? I love the amount of instanced detail combined with the unique brick damage.
Also, when creating this kind of stuff, do you worry about making a low-poly version? Zbrush to me is an albatross I don't understand. I always think the low needs some sort of an unwrap before you bring it to the brush (so the low can be textured after baking). I want to jump into the program and create stuff like you do, even though I can't compare, but I'm intimidated by the whole taking this high poly doodle to the low-texture-stage. hope that makes some sort of sense. It's all amazing stuff man, I wish I had half the realization you do!
but i really get distracted too often by it.
Its just too busy and too close on the models.
Try a lower opacity and give it some more space. or better, just get rid of it :P
Good work man
the pillar, I like the bottom part, looks nice like it's one solid beat up stone. but I really don't like the use of the slash brush on the stone blocks. that is very weird, like someone had an exacto knife but it was a laser exacto knife and made incisions into it
sooo yah, sorry, but hey its my opinion
A better attempt from the reference this time but I think you must see by now, how your style breaks down when you are not free to just make stuff up. You skipped all the toughest forms because you couldnt just throw elements into each other and instance it enough times to crowd and obsure the the base forms.
This is what you need to work at correcting because in the workplace you'll follow concepts or others input , often aided by a piece of reference they have found.
When I look at the reference, I get excited about those 4 big pipe clamps that lead into the main block. They are squashed cylinder's with twin regular molded cylinders welded into the form that leads into a 90 degree curved slope into the main pipe.
Its a totally cool, challenging shape and once it was built properly in one piece like the moulding is, it could have been a great kitbash file for later, but you were really half hearted about that shape, like you were with most of them.
Look at the big sprocket wheel piece on the left.. you may, again have ignored the dimensions and scale balance of the source, but its still a cool shape and a completly new form for your repertoire now, didnt that part feel good?
So really, the same feedback as I originally gave you about slowing down and focusing more on the fundamental forms and functions, theres a real world reason each thing is built the way it is.
As for your redo of my Cog_Hospital_Decopillar .... well, it suffers from the same problems, you got obsessed with the overall flow of the original and overdid the wavy instanced vertical spans, dropped the thought originally put into how everything works and fits together and went noise overload on the little leaves instancing and bolt instancing and in combination just noised the whole piece up to unreadable levels again.
So again, take your time, study the interesting set pieces, dont just instance the same one repeatedly and call it a design style.
What I find really distracting and annoying is the boarder art you put on everything. When an artist makes a great piece, no one cares about the frame. Why does everything need a noisy crapified boarder that partially obscures the image?
Kevin has some great advice I'm glad you're starting to listen to him. He has been down this road already. A lot of what he is pointing out are lessons he and his coworkers have learned and are continuing to learn. I wouldn't say what you where doing is bad, but its good to learn more then one style of doing things.
I really thank Valve for doing TF2 the way they did, they may have stumbled into it after fishing around for a style, but some massive lessons can be applied to just about every facet of our industry to some degree or another. The whole idea of doing more with less couldn't have come at a better time. Right when poly budgets and texture sheets are becoming less and less limiting people are starting to see that just because we can pack 20 million tris on a screen doesn't mean we need to give any less thought to how they are arranged. Pushing big numbers and vomiting out repeating details is fun, but you have to ask who is fun for? Are you doing it for your own need to make what you're working on easy and quick, or are you doing it with the player in mind. Its a lot more fun when they are thoughtfully arranged and smartly placed.
[/rant]
Anyways, nice work. And keep at it dude!
Can you breakdown the process for creating that pillar for example? Are all the pieces of it separate, or is the main pillar one big piece you took into zbrush and then layered the others onto it. About how long did this take you, etc. Are the brick pieces geometry or are you using a normal map for speed. HP speed modeling do you give yourself allotted time?
I'm looking for info into your the process
But what if I am in fact not remaining metal, but slowly keeping it gangster?
Stay Metal
http://metalman123456123.cgsociety.org/gallery/774638/
its better to keep it clean and make people focus on the art, we've said it before i guess,
its not doing your work any good, it only confuses the viewer
I'm sort of giving you a tough crit, because I know how talented you truly are and what you are capable of, from seeing this thread develop.
The way you pulled everything together and rendered in the sci-fi scene and aliens like scene turned out really cool though.
I have to agree with Rens on the presentation as well. It looks like you are not using the pink effects as much, but honestly it looks better without it completely. I did like it at first, but when I kept seeing the same thing on all your images it got old tbh.
Hey, but your work is great, and congrats on graduating!
don't forget that workflow you promised :P
noob listening.
Keep up metal!
http://davidlesperance.blogspot.com/
Just wanted to bring this up again because I still see it in some of your work, the decorative Urn/Pillar type thing for instance, it has absolutely no rest areas, no place for your eyes to settle and rest, it is ALL detail, which can be very distracting, and have much less effect than say, a nicely polished and edited asset with bits of great form, and bits of striking detail. With detail everywhere, it just turns to noise, and detail uniformly over an asset turns into no detail, or un-noticable detail.
Lets look at a Corinthian pillar, this is very classic in terms of design, and has a lot it can teach. It contains areas of stricking detail, but plenty of simpler areas, these help to *highlight* your areas of detail, without them it simply doesn't stick out. There is no contrast of detail there and you loose that impact of having really stricking detail.
this last one is needlessly huge, so i will link to it instead: http://columnsphoto.com/upload/AuthRep-pg20-294.jpg
Your work seems to be getting better in this regard, your composition and presentation in particular has gotten a lot better, and there is no question your work is eye catching, however i think if you work on your editing and detail level you can really push your work to the next level. Spending more time, and adding more detail to an asset, doesn't always make it a better asset, try to remember that.
Overall my favorite work is your environment pieces, where you see the finished product and get a really good sense of vision and composition, this to me is your biggest strength here.
Take it or leave it for me is the individual zbrushed items, most of them fall into the "too much detail" catagory here, and while impressive on a technical level do not really highlight your best skills.
The worst work here is the 3rd to last and last image, the mechanical sub-d work, it suffers from some of the "too much detail" stuff as above, but also simply isn't executed to a high level, lots of geometry errors and things of that nature, and a lack of clear scale in your detail makes these too abstract. I personally would not show these peices, as I feel they detract from the overall quality of your work. Try to do some simpler, but better executed sub-d models and replace them with that for your folio.
Detail for detail's sake is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, extraneous detail can distract the viewer from the elements that are actually important. It just ends up looking like white noise, and none of the details get appreciated.
Breaking things up with a smooth surface (or bland/generic rough surface) will really make your detailed/ornamented areas pop more (and not be overlooked).
Particularly when it comes to manmade structures, there's almost always an alternation of bland functionality (flat wall, cylindrical column, etc.) broken up by ornamentationin in choice areas. (Trim/crowning of columns, insets, etc.) Ornamentation is usually focused in the areas where the architect/designer wants your attention drawn. (Doors, windows, Roof Line, etc).
There are some excessive patterning which makes boring most of your images. Uniqueness makes richer something, such as you see 500 grey dressed people and then single black dressed passes and instantly you see it... the black one would be the point of attention, that means a lot for design processes. Anyway, I like your work, but the thing is you have 50% white and 50% black and uniformly distributed making the image plain grey, so bores.
I love analogies and figurative meanings, so I hope you take it
Keep Growing!
but thats a good thing, it inspires me
your stuff is amazing keep it up!!!!!!!
I agree with EQ, you exaggerate on the low frequency detail, skipping the med / high frequency detail pass making some of the stuff noisy on the surface!
Still, thanks for posting your work, keep up.