Ben Merrick- Portfolio Thread

benmerrick3d

Hey guys,

Im new to the site, so thought I'd just post up my showreel and website- no point posting up tons of images.

I graduated from a Degree and Masters in 3D Animation at the University of Hertfordshire in 2009 and have done 3D Visualisations and worked on a Honda TV commercial (aired in England Feb '11) since then.

I am currently working on my showreel and looking for work as an Environment Artist.

Crits and comments (and any jobs!) are welcome:












My showreel
My website

Thanks,

Ben

Treacharous

Hey pretty cool stuff there and good luck with the job search.

benmerrick3d

Thank you.

I did not realise the images wouldnt resize themselves, so I have edited them and added some close ups and texture maps.

popngear

I think the materials badly need a pass to break up surface types. The concrete, pipes, walls, all feel like the same lambert. Try adding specular highlights to both with different specular power values. Compositionally for the environment shots, I would suggest using the camera and lighting to highlight something interesting and draw the viewer's eye. In the wide shot, there is a large area of concrete with not much going on; It could really use some sort of foreground element. For the sceond image, now my eye is gravitating towards the foreground spotlight but the area could use some more interest. Add some details to try and tell a story. Whenever I add any detail to a scene, I always think beforehand how did it get there? There are some rust leaks on your pipes so perhaps you can add some moisture below that area on the concrete, maybe even a fresh puddle. The area with the ladder looks like it could be a potential work hazard so it could have warning labels. These are just a couple of ideas but you can go to town with it. Now onto the lighting! Of course you can use lights to shine on things you want to highlight, which you are. However, there are some things getting lost in the scene and I would suggest trying alternating light/shadow with depth. For example, having the the of the pipe in the rear lit so that it doesn't get lost in the shadows of the brick wall. Some other minor lighting issues are that the bulb is not emitting any light inside of the lamp housing and the cone on the rear light is extremely sharp. Lastly, I'm assuming since there are normal maps that this should be next-gen however, the tesselation and texture resolution need to appear much higher (the textures more so) to sell that. Keep plugging away and I hope this helps.

benmerrick3d

Thank you for the comments.

Firstly there isnt really a way to do puddles/real reflections in the Marmoset engine (I googled this and couldnt find a way) otherwise I would love to add a puddle to the foreground, and stuff as thats how I wanted that area filled in my design.

I agree the lighting could do with some work, such as the rim lights you suggested. I will see to this when I come round to updating the scene after I have finished my new one I am making in the UDK.

As for the texture resolution and poly count/tessellation I have found that hard to work to due to many people saying different things. People at my University I graduated from suggested working to 1024 maps for a scene like this, and suggested working to as low poly count as possible whilst still making the scene look good- as it is always easy to work to higher poly counts so to work to a low count shows your ability to work under restrictions and that you could easily do better work by having more freedom with the poly count.

It would be good to get some views on this subject for future work/reference as some people say work to the lower count to show that ability, and others say work to a higher count so I never know what sort of numbers to be working to to show this on my reel. I feel that I have shown it well with the lawnmower LOD's in my showreel with a quite high poly version so was happy going for a low poly version of this scene. Unless you think otherwise?

Thanks

Stromberg90

Well about poly's, you use what you got to make the silhouette look good.

The pipes in the scene are way to lowpoly for the size they are at, try to think about scale when creating objects.

Your scene looks very old, like you wouldnt see this in a game this days(That is true for the lawnmower aswell)

If i where you i would take the time to look on the forums after models others has done, there you can see how the polycounts is and such.

benmerrick3d

That lawnmower is the middle LOD, the high res one is here:



And on other forums they said about 8000, 2500, and 500 tris for the LOD's for an asset like this would be good numbers to be used in something like Dead Rising as an asset.
Do you advise differently to that?

I can change the polys around in the scene though and make the pipes more rounded, and I will look to do that when I come back to the scene. Thanks for the advice.

Firecracker197

Is modeler/modeling spelled with one L or two? It might just be different over there but I would check on that.

benmerrick3d

Yeah its two 'L's in England- you got me worried for a moment there that I had been spelling it incorrectly all these years lol Thanks for noticing it for me to check though

aajohnny

I like your stuff, only thing is I feel the textures are a bit stretched on the alley scene. If you ever need help or anything message me! Good work.

benmerrick3d

Thank you for your comment and your offer for help. Which bit did you think was stretched?

samgriffiths

remove the splashscreen.
Make it load straight to ur strongest piece.

benmerrick3d

I am going to edit the pipe scene in a couple of weeks, and make the floor and wall texture tileable, to increase the resoultion of those 2 textures. I did not realise the way to do it properly in the game engine until today- I did not know it was common to use planes in front of the the wall- for example- and have the dirt on one of those planes, and then have the bricks tiled behind it.

JO420

If you want to get more resolution out of your pipes you can try this method,i used it in the last project i worked on to make make large pipes with good pixel resolution.

Ok so you will take a texture sheet and lay it out like this...

- 1 and 2 are horizontal tileing sections,i use these parts to make one half of the main body of the pipe. Since the pipes have a look of construction to them,seams,bolts,etc. you can use this to hide the textures seams.

- 3 and 4 are the ends of the of the pipe or end of the wider conection part.

-5 and 6 are the sides of wider part of the pipe where they connect.

after that you can take the pipe model,instance it a few times and rotate it so different details show up at different lengths of your pipe system. For curved parts and parts of the pipes i want to draw attention to i made uniquely mapped models.

To make variants use the same layout,replace with new texture and you can have a pipe with a different type of look.

benmerrick3d

Thank you for the advice, I will look into that when I come back to that scene.



The TV, Print and phone App advert I worked on is finally out, woop! It is currently being shown on ITV, Channel 4 and Five in the UK, but will put it in here anyway:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnwsAr8eBQA"]Honda Jazz 'This Unpredictable Life'[/ame]



Its easier for me just to post this image to show the things I made (some I have changed the textures on since the advert):



Some of the models are very briefly on camera in the middle of the advert, but are clear in the print advert- need to check if I can show that yet

Ben

benmerrick3d

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been away working at Mediastation doing some freelance work for them, and am just coming back to updating my portfolio now.

I am finishing off a couple of scenes then I will make the changes that have been recommended to my earlier scenes.

Regards,

Ben Merrick