[Portfolio] Russell Halvorson - Graduate March 2009

rjhalvorson

My Reel is just a mock demo reel as this quarter I will be finishing that aspect and adding my final projects and various other items to the website.

I'd like feedback on anything anyone would like to comment about. Thanks in advance.

http://www.rjhalvorson.com

EmAr

If you are going for games, some in-game shots from a new engine(Cryengine 2, Unreal Engine 3...) would be more appropriate than mental ray renders.

Good luck with your portfolio

rjhalvorson

EmAr wrote: »

If you are going for games, some in-game shots from a new engine(Cryengine 2, Unreal Engine 3...) would be more appropriate than mental ray renders.

Good luck with your portfolio

My final project for my senior year is hopefully going to be a finished unreal level. I totally agree but at the time that was all I knew. I will be adding some 2D and my final stuff before I graduate. Thanks for the feedback.

Ninjas

These normal maps look like bump maps passed through the nVidia plugin.

alexk

I guess it's a bit subjective, but I really don't like your font in your PDF resume. I can understand its to match your sites theme, but it's really distracting to read

rjhalvorson

Ninjas wrote: »

These normal maps look like bump maps passed through the nVidia plugin.

Really? Because I used xnormal. All jokes aside, I generate my normal maps by overlaying two different maps and normalizing them.

The first layer is generally a generic detail layer. This is either hand painted bolts, crevices, ect. Things that you can't accurately pick up with just a filter pass. I either hand paint it or capture it from a slightly higher detail model.

The 2nd layer I overlay is generally a filter pass of the detail. The settings are much lower so that when I normalize the maps, there aren't any issues with the scale of the detail.

Some of my older stuff isn't as correct as my more modern normal maps, but fortunately when you are learning something for the first time you can only get better.

Was there a specific map in general you felt this way about?

alexk wrote: »

I guess it's a bit subjective, but I really don't like your font in your PDF resume. I can understand its to match your sites theme, but it's really distracting to read

This was a concern of mine and I'll definitely appreciate the feedback.

bounchfx

good to see other people here from ILIS, not many seemed very motivated while I was there. The site is pretty solid (sorry but I am going to be comparing you to others I graduated with haha) and does it's job. you also have some pretty cool environments. however, I'd probably drop some of the props that you have there by themselves - most notably the safe, table, and chair. they're just not up to par of the rest, and on these it really doesn't look like you're using normal maps at all, so it's just wasted texture space.

I also agree with presenting the assets in a game engine. show employers you know how to use the game engine and show your work off in it as well, ya ha! I sure hope they're using Unreal 3 Engine there now.

you already have a headstart for graduation, don't let up!
and listen to the people here at polycount - they know lots!

Ninjas

They all kind of look like they have the same issues-- razor sharp edges (except for the safe, with the the beveled corners on the low), and the spec map doesn't seem to be rendering correctly to me. Looking at the tiny thumbs of the normal maps, they look flat except for high frequency detail

rjhalvorson

Thanks for the feedback. I see what you and ninja mean about the maps.

Ninjas wrote: »

They all kind of look like they have the same issues-- razor sharp edges (except for the safe, with the the beveled corners on the low), and the spec map doesn't seem to be rendering correctly to me. Looking at the tiny thumbs of the normal maps, they look flat except for high frequency detail

Thanks for elaborating ninja. I appreciate the feedback. I will look into replacing those pieces as suggested above and by you with pieces that put the normal maps to good use.

alexk

For the normal map issue that Ninjas is talking about, you need to push your high poly model more. Really get in there and model it out so it looks like it would in real life. Heck, you may even want to exaggerate certain things cause real life stuff can be boring when translated to game models. In your resume, you list sculpting programs, but I don't think I saw any sculpting in your models. You could make a highpoly of your safe, bring it into zbrush and add some sweet dents and scratches

Also, some of your textures seem like a texture fill. Like your table in the first scene, and your safe. It's one solid texture through the whole thing, with nothing to differentiate the corners, or the differences in the construction of the item.


edit: ohh and another thing, you can post one of your scenes or props here for critiques (include wires, textures, any hihpoly) and I'm sure you'll get lots of useful suggestions and help

BradMyers82

Nice work.

Some small things though:
"Reference by of David Herreman " written at the bottom of your first page. Fix that typo up.
And like others have kinda mentioned: its better to show no normals than flat looking normals. Maybe there is a bunch of detail I just can't see at that resolution, but it really looks like completely 2d generated normals to me. You really want to always do 3d baked normals if at all possible.
So good work, and yeah; it seems your are ahead of the game having this much completed already. Just don't go comparing yourself to other students because that doesn't really mean anything. It was the same at my school, hardly any of them showed signs of getting a job any time soon. And for the most part, its not the students you will be competing against for jobs, its other industry professionals that already have experience.

vj_box

some pretty good work there rj,ya as recommended by others,you can post some real time screen shots of the assets,if you really wanna showcase your game art skills,It need not necessarily in unreal-ed or cryengine,it could be in a the viewport with a dx shader applied to the asset in case of 3ds max.
i really like most of your works.
Keep rocking

Vj

rjhalvorson

You must have eyes like an eagle, thanks Brad, I would have missed that. And thanks to everyone who has posted, I appreciated the feedback and I'm definitely going to apply it over the next few months.

urgaffel

One thing I noticed is that your western scene has crazy amounts of triangles in the wooden floorboards and the barrels. You don't really need THAT many triangles for flat-ish surfaces, focus the detail to the silhouettes. Also, just to be really nitpicky, the top of your barrel ends in a sharp edge instead of plank-like square thickness You could take some of the segments form the middle of the barrel and use that to square the top/bottom off.

It's not a bad start and as people have said earlier, the normals do look very flat at the resolution you are showing them at. Keep at it.

Oh yeah, one last thing about your website. Try to avoid having one giant image with map coords. It will load faster if you use an actual page...page with thumbnails etc. You can still have the grungy background but as a background image without all the text etc which will save on size and increase quality. Small nitpicky thing but eh, you asked for crits