First Environment from a newbie artist W.I.P.

amotaf

Hi, everyone

I am a newbie at 3d art only becoming famailar with Maya a few months ago, At the moment I am trying to push my skills..... so I grabbed a concept off the Internet and have begun trying to make it. At the moment I have only just finished the modelling process.

I have no fixed Polycount but I want to keep it within reason and the art brief seems to state that i need to create reusable assets, which I have tried to do.

I have heard that Polycount and it's artist's are renowed for their high quality art and really good critiques.

Now that I have hit my first milestone, I was hoping to get some critiques on the progress so far. So I can really push this piece and my skills

Anyway here is what I have done so far.

AshleyTayles

Bizzare art test by any chance?

Anyway, it is very good! Are you going to texture it too?

amotaf

Hi Ashley yes thanks for the comments... I grabbed it from their website.

I am intending to texture it can't wait for that part of the process actually, but I want to put a spin on it, I want to make it look stylized in a similar vein to TF2, that's an art style I really enjoyed. At the moment I am looking at Ben Mathis website as he has some decent tuts on his work flow on texturing that I reckon could help me alot.

Hopefully I will have an update in the next few hours then maybe more people can give me critiques etc

vj_box

Yeah,they have a couple of good environment tests in their website.

Vj

amotaf

Ok I have a small update.....

I am trying to texture my assets, at the moment I am working on my Crate and barrel. So far I have done a quick first pass on the barrel, though I am unable to create a normal map as my computer is really old and the graphics card can't handle normal maps, while I can't view my specular properly because my computer can't handle high quality rendering mode in Maya.:poly134:


At the moment I am only able to create a diffuse map, so my textures will look quite flat etc until I can find a decent computer to study on.

Any Critiques would be kindly welcome.

AshleyTayles

I like it. For some reason the top and bottom rims look plastic like, but that's probably just me.

amotaf

No Ashley your comments are valid and it's your opinion, which is fair enough and I accept that.
This is more of a learning process than anything else. Everything is still new to me and I am not precious with my work. I want to push my skills and artistic eye, if it comes out nice then good if it doesn't then I will just take what I learnt into my next project and hopefully not make the same mistakes.

The only thing I would ask is whether you can elaborate on your opinion of the rims looking plastic.

Mark Dygert

I think they have a dull shine to them kind of like rubber or plastic. Normally these types of containers have a shinier finish. Are you planning on doing a spec map? If so you'll want to take out or reduce the highlights you painted in. If not, then you probably want to work on a bit of a shinier spec shine to some places, or just take the highlights out since that can be problematic since specularity is light reflecting based on the angle of the lights and the camera, and you have no idea where the players or lights will be, so its probably a good idea to take out the shiney bits and use a spec map... that way those highlights are calculated at render/play time. Also if you paint in the spec for this object and it doesn't match the scene lighting or camera angle, then its going to look off. If you do that with everything the whole scene is going to be in conflict.

I also think you painted too much shadow around the rims/ribs. They aren't going to cause that much Ambient Occlusion.

As for the environment, I think you're off to a good start. You might be able to frame the shot better by pushing a few elements around. Like the dirt pile that is to the right of the stairs, might as well push that to the left and help frame the area instead of it being a hurdle to get around.

How do you plan on handling the textures on the buildings?

amotaf

Thanks for the critiques Vig I will get to work on it, yeah you are right I am planning on creating a specular map, but I can't view it accurately because my graphics card can't handle high quality rendering mode in Maya. I've had this computer for 6 years so most of the technology in it is outdated so I ordered a new computer hopefully that will loosen up my technology limits.

I think I will take your advice and paint out the highlights and tone down the shadows from the AO, so that the specular can do the lighting work, as you are right about the issues with lighting I may face further down the line.

I am glad someone else could spot something wrong with the composition of the environment. It was nagging at me but I just couldn't spot it. I will try and push the elements around to hopefully create a more engaging environment. I read somewhere I think it was on this website about creating a story to the environment I will try that.

As for the textures on the buildings I read on the art brief that they should be done via tileable textures, which I will try my hand at. There are some photo refs with the zip file that I got from their website so hopefully that should help.

AshleyTayles

I think it is the small bit of light on the rims that isn't on the rest, makes it look like a different material.