2010 Environment Art Demo Reel
polycounter lvl 11
Hey there guys, if you've seen my threads some of this stuff will look familiar to you, but either way I want your opinion on my reel :P.
I'll be graduating from Full Sail University on Friday from the Game Art degree program. It was a wild ride, but I'm glad I took it.
Anyhow, here's my goods :P
http://www.vimeo.com/9089426
I'm trusting you guys to not abuse my phone number :P
I'll be graduating from Full Sail University on Friday from the Game Art degree program. It was a wild ride, but I'm glad I took it.
Anyhow, here's my goods :P
http://www.vimeo.com/9089426
I'm trusting you guys to not abuse my phone number :P
Replies
The old west area doesn't really scream "check out my stuff in UDK" to me, the lighting is kinda bland and very brown, surprised you didn't take advantage of the new lighting engine, make your environment stand out something like this.
I think with a little bit of polish on the reel, update the lighting, show off more models and textures the reel could be amazing.
Good luck with your job search
1st environment.
I think it would be way more interesting if you made the different buildings stand out from each other with different construction materials. Different bricks, and painted concrete. Right now most of them are looking too similar, to me at least it's a bit boring.
2nd environment.
This one is suffering from a lack of variation on the ground textures, add a few more variations here, like grass and sand.
The foreground and background lighting don't seem to match.
Boiling Point:
This just doesn't strike me as awesome, sorry to be harsh, maybe remove it...
Or maybe the shot is to character focused, it might be better to show this scene without gameplay/characters. The UI is not helping you here either.
The ground and sky could definitely use some variation.
Vehicle shot:
I think you should take this vehicle and make a proper textured low poly version, or at least texture this high poly version.
The ground here is also in need of some variation.
Using some decals to add some blending between the items on the ground with the ground would be cool too.
The lighting in this scene feels a bit washed out as well, I guess it's supposed to be overcast/hazy. Maybe change it to something with more contrast and bounced light like bright daylight.
EDIT:
Keep at it and best of luck with your job search
I agree with the first post, you have a bunch of what looks to be solid assets and good environments, but we don't get to see them long enough to evaluate them.
I also agree that the lighting could be a bit more dramatic.
It's very good for a student reel. You should be proud.
Thanks for the comments and such guys, I really appreciate it
CONGRATS, MAN! Go have a beer and a nice steak. Thats the best way to celebrate, post-DRC! You've earned it, man.
Haha of course, Minor problem with the beer and steak though as I'm 20 and a vegetarian :P.
I'll toss the version up with the phone number and such, I trust the members of this site moreso than youtube. *edits first post*
O.o
Missing windows? Because I can see them in the texture of the wall..
Midget trees? O.o
I don't like how stuff falls from up in the air somewhere in the last scene :P
Second needs a proper relight and more polish and atmospherics. IMO if you gonna have a reel for environments, you'd better have some nice FX in there to make it worth it over a higher res still.
The bricks in your first enviro might be a bit too big OR it might be a framing issue (probably the latter!)
One final niggle - and this is all for nothing - is that the UE powered Wireframe flashes are pointless. Nicely executed, shot wise, but pointless. Far too little time to be of any use, and generally, it's not that big a deal about what's geometry and what's not as long as you dont go ottp
this is why a static portfolio rules faces harder.
I think it makes it all look more believable. As if its an old apartment, converted into storage. Makes it look lived in.
The Western scene was rough for me, and my oldest piece in the reel. I made that back in April and then spruced it up with the UDK and such... but then when I went to record with FRAPS it would record with super super low gamma and you couldn't make out anything in places that were dark because it just went to black.... so I had to put an ambient light in the scene which killed my shadows
@Ben Apuna:
The Alleyway scene was based off of an alleyway back home... it wasn't until after I finished most of it that I realized that all the brick was kinda boring haha. I wanna go in and touch that part up.
The western scene was a rough one for me, between trying to find proper reference and getting into the scene was just rough. I do need to touch this one up quite a bit.
Boiling Point was a student game that I worked on, it's ugly and I'm not really proud of it, but by including that I wanted to put across that I've been through a game development cycle, and was hoping that it'd spark questions from an employer.
The Ambulance Scene was done mostly with just Physical Sun and Sky in Maya... I'm not a rendering guy at all, (I like my renders to be at 60 FPS haha) and so it was a struggle for me to make my Maya scene look presentable without UT3's systems. I made a low poly version of the Ambulance (Well... it's almost done) but they didn't want me to include that as much as they wanted the highres version in the reel. It all came down to not having enough time to finish up that asset while still making sure it'd look good. I do plan on finishing up that low poly version though.
@il Duce Primo:
I didn't want to include wireframes, but for my grade in the class they required them, so I did. I plan on doing a still portfolio online and that'll have my wires in it more so than this reel.
@jmchristopher:
By barely showing my assets I was hoping for people to want to see more of it, and then go to my website to look for more of them, that and I didn't want to bore them with a long reel, so I aimed for the 1 minute mark.
@Griffinax:
Of course there's missing windows!
The midget trees were my second attempt at making a bush lol... they came out tons better than my first attempt, but still failed. I need to find a better route.
^^See, he's got the right idea.
@ImSlightlyBored:
I was planning on having some 3D tumbleweeds blowing around in the western one, and was toying with the idea of sand blowing around... but never got around to it
My brick sizes are strange in that first environment.... I know haha. I just haven't gotten around to fixing that one yet.
Thank you all so much for your advice/critiques. Keep em coming!
Also, if anyone knows how to fix the low gamma fraps issue, or has an idea of how to make good bush or a 3D tumbleweed not look like garbage haha please let me know, that'd be wonderful. :P
*secret handshake*
dayam i want to put the girabbit in udk now... would you help me with that?
I'm glad you decided to put it back up. You have a nice student reel, and a hell of a foundation to build on. Fortunately, you also have some great crits here. Fix a majority of the issues outlined in this thread, and you will be sitting pretty with a GREAT reel.
However, I don't agree with this.
When I saw the clip, I literally said "Awesome" out loud. It's short and, like you said, shows you know the game dev cycle. Is everything in that game your work?
One thing I want to point out that I haven't heard. I'm not a big fan of the music selection. Maybe the sound level is a bit too high (my volume is set kinda low). You could still have the entire reel match up if you just lowered the volume. I've heard its always better to risk it being a little low, than a little high. Music selection is something I've struggled with, but it seems to be a big deal.
Overall, I think you can afford about 30 more seconds. Either that or trim some assets out of this one. It goes by too quick and everything suffers. Your work is too good to not show it :poly121:
Ah, didn't think of that :P
well that just makes it awesome-er doesn't it?
What I don't like about the last scene is, that everything falls rigidly, it would have been better if you added a bit of ease-in and quick-out on the objects, would show gravity in action, and maybe dust poofs or something like that, execution could have been better, nothing else
And once again, grats on your grad
The thing with the lighting is that I can't record the stuff as I see it for some reason, I have terrible Fraps issues where my Gamma goes super super low when I record, so the process for fixing lighting is twice as long as it should be, and never looks just right because I lose a lot of the contrast in it. (I have to crank the brightness WWAAYY up on my lights in UT3 to compensate for the terribly low Gamma caused by Fraps)
I haven't been able to find a solution to this Fraps issue... if any of you guys have one please let me know.
I tried Camtasia by the way.... couldn't get a decent frame rate with it... so that made that one unusable.
As for the ambulance, I have a low poly version nearly done, when I make a revised reel I'll definitely toss that one in there somewhere too. The stuff falling from the sky... I just didn't have the patience to spend that much more time animating all that stuff haha. Plus, I didn't know how to make little smoke puffs show up... which would have been nice but again... I dunno how I'd be able to do that and make it look good while not taking a few days to do it. (Again, any advice/tips on this would be awesome haha)