My portfolio site is finally up!

TorQue[MoD]

Hey all!

So I finally decided to quit putting it off till later and I registered a domain and created a website for my portfolio!
http://www.torquemod.com/

Here's a preview of some of my work:







I'd love some feedback on what I'm showing so please, let me know what you think, good or bad!

HolyMonkey

Hello, I took a quick look through your portfolio and how can I say this.. your enviroments need a lot more work. The meshes are all squareish, a very good example is the tower of pain. You have to give them more "life" :P , use bevel more, add normalmaps if you know how to make NM. Also alot of your textures are very monotome in the color. I suggest you find some ref on stuff you are trying to make and take a good hard look and figure out what makes metal look like metal or what is it that makes stone look like stone etc. Some overall grime woulnd't hurt your texturing either.

Ben Apuna

Website:

You should consider changing the "Main" page to "About" and make sure the "Portfolio" page is the first one that loads up, that way prospective employers will see your work first rather than the wall of text you've currently got when your site first loads.

Normally I discourage people from using flash in their portfolios but it seems to do the job here quite well, all without the usual problems flash has.

Artwork:

Looks like a pretty solid batch of work you've got up there. My main critique is that visually a lot of it looks unfinished or not polished. I'm not sure what the reason for this is but I would suggest revisiting some of those levels/props and finishing them off.

Once you do that you should probably remove all the the unfinished work as it doesn't make a good impression on prospective employers.

Level Design:

This is just a thought but maybe have some streaming flash video on your portfolio of these levels being played. Sorry I can't really make an critques on the game play design aspects of your work as that's not my area of expertise.

Good luck with your job hunt.

TorQue[MoD]

Thanks for the critiques guys....

@Monkey - Yeah things are a bit blocky but keep in mind that these are Source engine maps and there are certain limitations. Breakdown features normal maps for every texture so I'm covered there. I know these aren't Unreal Engine 3 quality maps, but I'm still working on things. I do know that my weakest point is in the details. I have a hard time thinking of all the details I could add to a level so thanks for pointing that out again. Actually these are all (save for breakdown) maps that I was making for a now defunct project and I've since lost the source files so I'll simply be working on new stuff from here on out.
I removed the maps in the portfolio that looked too unfinished to bother showing and I've since made the portfolio page the first one to come up and added an about page.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll post more work as it comes.

HolyMonkey

Hey Torque

If you get these limitations by using the source engine why would you want to use it? Why not get ahold of unreal or crysis lite version of the engine? If im not totally mistaken you get the lite(light?) version of the engine by just buying one of the games.

Goodluck!

killingpeople

cool site man, it's super easy to navigate and ran great for me. i love this pic http://www.torquemod.com/images/folio/temple_concept01.jpg
nice work

TorQue[MoD]

Monkey - Yes I actually plan to start learning the Unreal Engine soon. I own both Gears of War and Unreal 3 so no worries there... I'm just a little intimidated about learning a completely different editor especially considering that Unreal uses subtraction whereas Source uses BSP. I'm working on a new mp project with source now, but I'll be playing with UED too since its definitely an industry standard.

Killing - I love that piece of art too, unfortunately as I say in the description, its not my art. It was the concept art for the level drawn by a friend of mine.

RobStites

TorQue[MoD] wrote: »

...especially considering that Unreal uses subtraction whereas Source uses BSP...

They both use BSP, Source uses additive BSP, Unreal3 currently support both additive and subtractive BSP. Unreal2004 was subtractive only. From what I remember most of the Unreal3 documentation suggests using additive. Although, as far as I know, most people don't use BSP much anymore for anything other than the initial level blocking.