[Portfolio] Talbot

Talbot

Hey everyone

I will link my portfolio below but first I'm just going to give a little bio... :P

My name is Scott Talbot. I'm currently a senior in High School. I've been playing in 3d since 7th grade. For a while I was just fooling around. Every now and then I would post something on deviartart. In the summer of 2008 I found this forum. My first asset, that got finished, was a door. It took me over two months to finish that door. Throughout that process I received a lot of help off polycount from Vig, moose, Rens and ae. I can't thank you guys enough for all the time you spent helping me!

So anyway, I have been looking into colleges for years now. And today I applied Early Decision to a college in Burlington, VT. Before I applied I got what I could in my portfolio. It only ended up being 3 things but I'm very proud of those 3 assets. So I thought I would post my portfolio and see what you guys think.

Thanks!
Scott
www.scott-talbot.com

ae.

Hey Talbot,

Like i said over steam your stuff is great for a person that is just getting out of highschool and looking at colleges.I can honestly say with the assets you have, your going in the right direction and i cant wait to see what you produce once you refine and build upon the skills you already have in college!

Best of luck! btw that pillar is awesome!

Talbot

Thanks again man!

Seaseme

Very nice job man. I'd like it more if it went directly to the gallery and not the about page, but it's a pretty solid effort!

3DLee

I like your props! Those texture sizes seem a little excessive, but it's probably fine for portfolio stuff.

I agree with having the first page be the gallery, but other than that your web design is very clean and nice as well.

Mark Dygert

Yep that's coming along great nice work. I agree about the gallery as the first page. I think you've got a great start heading into college and the place you've picked out sounds great. It looks like schools are finally starting to get their heads out of their asses or you did some serious digging, probably a bit of both, heh.

Rens

Awesome,


Couple thoughts,

- the font is quite basic and doesnt look as clean or professional as some other might
- the background might have a bit too much going on and gets distracting so maybe soften that down
- it can be good to show the run up to the end product, like, instead of just posting the pillar, post a wireframe and some textures with it to show how you actualy did it. In many cases the show render contains just a part of the detail the maps actualy contain
- move the index to your work
- add something interesting to the about page, right now its a fluffy piece of text that does not really make me wiser after reading
- maybe the images in the gallery can be a bit bigger, or put a 1px line around the edges


btw the darkerbase on the pillar looks nice \o/

bmasterson

^agree with all of the above especially less busy background and your work on index page.

Shogun3d

Vig wrote: »

It looks like schools are finally starting to get their heads out of their asses or you did some serious digging, probably a bit of both, heh.

I'm still in school Vig. And i'd have to agree with you on that. It's definitely a bit of both.


Hey Talbot, you have some nice work coming along they just need to be pushed but don't worry about existing pieces you have..keep pushing for new projects and improving them. You're already leaps and bounds ahead of classmates if you do go to school. Good luck!

PixelMasher

for someone coming outta highschool it looks like you have a handle on this 3d stuff.

For the content of your portfolio here are some crits, I dunno if i would go back and touch the objects up but more stuff to keep in mind for the future.

1st thing that jumped out at me was the texture sizes, 2048 is rarely used for environment art, especially for such small objects. that door should be a 512 max. efficient texture usage is probably one of the most key things and none of those props would ever be big enough on screen to warrant such texture sizes.

if you are looking to get into environment art, I would start building small environment pieces that show off things like tileable textures, lighting and scene composition. Look at Jason Lavoie's portfolio for a good example of those kinda things.

good start on your path to future glory dude, I bet you will learn a ton in school!

Talbot

Thank guys. I'm working on a new portfolio design with your critiques in mind.

Also about the 2048 texture sizes... those two assets were made back when I was just following the eat3d tutorials... and that is what they used so I just used it. But my most recent piece, the barrel, only had a 1024. So I have been trying to keep everything I do from now on smaller.

thanks again for the advice!

Wilex

Nice looks like you got your modeling and texturing fundamentals down. Best of luck with school. Make sure you really dive in there and get everything you can out of it and keep posting your work here.

Looking at your work now i would say you could probably pull off all those props with smaller textures and still get the same ammount of detail. So try using the smallest texture you could imagine on your next peice. Also experiment with non square textures sizes such as a 512x1024 for an object like your pillar. Good Luck! keep making new art.

Mark Dygert

I agree with the texture sizes, 256 and 512 are pretty much the work horses for props. 1024 for bigger custom props and wall tiles. 2048 is sky box big, actually I think sky boxes are now 4096? but still you should get the scale reference.

I think unreal clamps texture size at 1024? So the originals you import may be 2048 but what unreal is more than likely showing is 1024, unless you check a box when importing which forces the higher res.

They might have pushed that cap up or turned off the forced size by default, in UDK?

You can view the texture density of objects in unreal by reading up on it here:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ViewModes.html#Texture%20Density

I use a 4:1 ratio, 4px for every unreal/source unit. If you create a asset that is 256x256 units you need a texture that is 1024x1024. Considering a character in unreal is 96 units tall that sounds about right for a wall tile.

Using the 4:1 ratio you can then figure out how big a barrel would need to be to maintain the same textel density. A barrel is roughly half of a human so 48 units tall, so it would need a texture 4x as big roughly, 192px raw pixels, round it up to the nearest power of 2, 256x256px, giving it some room for the end caps and a little detail.

Or a less mathematical approach would be:
Double human height, 1024px.
Human height, 512px.
Half human height, 256px.
Quarter human height, 128px.
and so on down the line...

JasonLavoie

I like Vig's explanation, handy indeed.

But... I don't think unreal clamps texture size to 1024... its at least 2048 or above I believe (check out some of the skyboxes which get up to around 4096) meh... either way I really like Vig's approach to the whole subject, and I'm defiantly gonna steal some of his logic fo sho!