I'm sorry, not really contributing here, but daaaaaaaaumn those rock textures in the material section. So freaking clean and sexy!!!!! How are they sculpted if I might ask?
As for the portfolio I think it looks very clean and easy to look at!
Hey Damian,
Fantastic stuff; you've got a great range of work in here with some very high quality pieces. I think there's a few things you could do to fully flesh out your portfolio but as it is, this is some excellent work.
- I really love your cellar environment. It's very simple but that adds a lot to the charm. You've got a solid lighting setup, simple hot-cold colour scheme and a few very well made assets. You've done a fantastic job using just a few simple objects to create a really stellar environment with a great sense of atmosphere and mood.
- Your foliage stuff looks great, and it's a really nice touch assembling the pieces into a scene. Shows it off well.
- The riverside is fantastic. You've done a very meticulous job assembling the scene into a place which feels genuine. I like the slightly post-heavy feel. I think this, along with most of your other environments, feel very similar and unfinished in some regards. They are all beautiful environments, but it feels like most of them are made of very similar elements with no real focal point, as if you've started the environment, nailed the background elements, and then just never got around to adding building the main focal area. I remember this started out as a Victorian mansion and I personally would really love to see you follow that through and fully flesh out and entire environment, instead of just making landscapes/scenery. I don't think you'd have a very hard time as the hard work has already been done, and whatever you decide on adding in has a very good chance of looking great in its setting.
- The Office building is nicely done. I remember the thread you created and it was inspiring seeing you tackle something outside your norm. I think you pulled it off well but feel it doesn't really stand out as anything special on your portfolio. Perhaps assembling a scene around this and a few others would help sell this as more than just a practice piece.
- Oasis is gorgeous, really well executed. The video is a great touch, although perhaps a few shots wouldn't hurt. Again, I feel it's really well executed but fairly empty, waiting for something to tie it together and make it a more interesting space.
- I love your textures! Extremely crisp, clean, easy to read. Your rock wall texture is beautiful; the grout is extremely authentic, you used great restraint on the AO, and the brick placement/damage feels very natural. All the other textures are all extremely high quality, the cliffs are a bit too stylized; I feel it could be useful to make a more realistic cliff texture just to show a variety of style, as currently most of your work leans towards a slightly stylized look.
- High Poly is great - let's see more!
Really, your stuff is fantastic. Been a huge fan of your work and you remain a great source of inspiration for me. Your portfolio is really strong as is, although I feel like either taking one of these environments to completion or beginning a new scene and fully flush it out with a clear focal point, sense of place, etc. would really benefit (perhaps finish that POP scene?).
Anyways, excellent stuff, and best of luck!
Brygelsmack:
Thanks mate! My older work wouldn't probably fit in here, since that was way before I could model anything
sltrOlsson:
Thanks man! When I'm sculpting I tend to rely on a very small amount of brushes. In zbrush, I tend to use Standard, Smooth Stronger, Trim Dynamic and High Polish. I tend to use Trim Dynamic to define the planes, since I'm not a huge fan of the way the flatten brush works. When I work with Trim Dynamic I tend to alternate constantly between the subtractive and additive sculpting modes. This is what creates these crisp edges, both in the concave and convex parts of the highpoly. It's a bit di
Also, when it comes to rocks, a crumple brush with a large radius can do wonders some times.
Paul:
Thanks a lot for taking your time to write such a detailed post! I really appreciate it.
Your critique pretty much mirrors what I've been thinking about some of my pieces; all my friends keep telling me I'm crazy but I'm happy to hear that someone thinks the same way
Most of my current work is a bit like landscape paintings. They might be somewhat nice to look at, but in most cases there is little meaning or story behind them. In fact, over the past few years all my attempts at going beyond that would end up with me getting too caught up with the technical side of my artwork, or lacking the skill to execute my initial ideas. I would also often decide on a scope that was too big and had to end up repurposing my artwork (as with the Victorian Mansion and POP scene).
This is however something that I really want to change and explore some grounds that are new to me. Focus more on the artistic side of things and push my obsession with technical details to the side. I'm hoping to change some of that with a piece that I'm working on right now and perhaps achieve more, with less.
I will be certainly revisiting that PoP scene as well. Oasis is my least favourite environment and I was unsure whether to include it or not. I'm hoping to remake it almost from the scratch and make it "flow", by modelling large chunks of the whole environment by hand. The fact that I rely so much on modular pieces is what I feel is holding me down and making some of my pieces look very similar. Using more unique geometry and thinking in terms of a scene, rather than separate elements is something I've been meaning to do for a long while.
As for the materials, going in a more realistic direction is something I'm still a bit wary of doing. I tend to avoid using alphas and unprocessed photos, as I want to strike this balance between form and surface detail. But I totally agree that I should try and do something more realistic and rough-looking. Going to come up with something once I get some spare time
Again, I really appreciate your post! I may not be able to make the changes immediately, but it really showed me what I should focus on in the coming months.
Thx for the little breakdown Damian! I've realized that my rock sculpts often are to noise, in terms of shapes, and doesn't really have any defined big shapes. That's what's so appealing with your textures!
Damian, I am a really big fan of you work. The creating foliage tutorial on 3DMotive has been an invaluable asset to me in learning environment art and has really helped me on my current piece.
Not really to much to crit on your site, as all the work looks really polished.
If you make another environment tutorial I would love to see how you would go about making your waterways.
Damian, love the page! A definite inspiration to aspiring enviro artists (like myself). Do you think having wireframes on your lowpoly work (props, building, etc) would be useful?
Replies
As for the portfolio I think it looks very clean and easy to look at!
Fantastic stuff; you've got a great range of work in here with some very high quality pieces. I think there's a few things you could do to fully flesh out your portfolio but as it is, this is some excellent work.
- I really love your cellar environment. It's very simple but that adds a lot to the charm. You've got a solid lighting setup, simple hot-cold colour scheme and a few very well made assets. You've done a fantastic job using just a few simple objects to create a really stellar environment with a great sense of atmosphere and mood.
- Your foliage stuff looks great, and it's a really nice touch assembling the pieces into a scene. Shows it off well.
- The riverside is fantastic. You've done a very meticulous job assembling the scene into a place which feels genuine. I like the slightly post-heavy feel. I think this, along with most of your other environments, feel very similar and unfinished in some regards. They are all beautiful environments, but it feels like most of them are made of very similar elements with no real focal point, as if you've started the environment, nailed the background elements, and then just never got around to adding building the main focal area. I remember this started out as a Victorian mansion and I personally would really love to see you follow that through and fully flesh out and entire environment, instead of just making landscapes/scenery. I don't think you'd have a very hard time as the hard work has already been done, and whatever you decide on adding in has a very good chance of looking great in its setting.
- The Office building is nicely done. I remember the thread you created and it was inspiring seeing you tackle something outside your norm. I think you pulled it off well but feel it doesn't really stand out as anything special on your portfolio. Perhaps assembling a scene around this and a few others would help sell this as more than just a practice piece.
- Oasis is gorgeous, really well executed. The video is a great touch, although perhaps a few shots wouldn't hurt. Again, I feel it's really well executed but fairly empty, waiting for something to tie it together and make it a more interesting space.
- I love your textures! Extremely crisp, clean, easy to read. Your rock wall texture is beautiful; the grout is extremely authentic, you used great restraint on the AO, and the brick placement/damage feels very natural. All the other textures are all extremely high quality, the cliffs are a bit too stylized; I feel it could be useful to make a more realistic cliff texture just to show a variety of style, as currently most of your work leans towards a slightly stylized look.
- High Poly is great - let's see more!
Really, your stuff is fantastic. Been a huge fan of your work and you remain a great source of inspiration for me. Your portfolio is really strong as is, although I feel like either taking one of these environments to completion or beginning a new scene and fully flush it out with a clear focal point, sense of place, etc. would really benefit (perhaps finish that POP scene?).
Anyways, excellent stuff, and best of luck!
Thanks mate! My older work wouldn't probably fit in here, since that was way before I could model anything
sltrOlsson:
Thanks man! When I'm sculpting I tend to rely on a very small amount of brushes. In zbrush, I tend to use Standard, Smooth Stronger, Trim Dynamic and High Polish. I tend to use Trim Dynamic to define the planes, since I'm not a huge fan of the way the flatten brush works. When I work with Trim Dynamic I tend to alternate constantly between the subtractive and additive sculpting modes. This is what creates these crisp edges, both in the concave and convex parts of the highpoly. It's a bit di
Also, when it comes to rocks, a crumple brush with a large radius can do wonders some times.
Paul:
Thanks a lot for taking your time to write such a detailed post! I really appreciate it.
Your critique pretty much mirrors what I've been thinking about some of my pieces; all my friends keep telling me I'm crazy but I'm happy to hear that someone thinks the same way
Most of my current work is a bit like landscape paintings. They might be somewhat nice to look at, but in most cases there is little meaning or story behind them. In fact, over the past few years all my attempts at going beyond that would end up with me getting too caught up with the technical side of my artwork, or lacking the skill to execute my initial ideas. I would also often decide on a scope that was too big and had to end up repurposing my artwork (as with the Victorian Mansion and POP scene).
This is however something that I really want to change and explore some grounds that are new to me. Focus more on the artistic side of things and push my obsession with technical details to the side. I'm hoping to change some of that with a piece that I'm working on right now and perhaps achieve more, with less.
I will be certainly revisiting that PoP scene as well. Oasis is my least favourite environment and I was unsure whether to include it or not. I'm hoping to remake it almost from the scratch and make it "flow", by modelling large chunks of the whole environment by hand. The fact that I rely so much on modular pieces is what I feel is holding me down and making some of my pieces look very similar. Using more unique geometry and thinking in terms of a scene, rather than separate elements is something I've been meaning to do for a long while.
As for the materials, going in a more realistic direction is something I'm still a bit wary of doing. I tend to avoid using alphas and unprocessed photos, as I want to strike this balance between form and surface detail. But I totally agree that I should try and do something more realistic and rough-looking. Going to come up with something once I get some spare time
Again, I really appreciate your post! I may not be able to make the changes immediately, but it really showed me what I should focus on in the coming months.
However this is where you showcase your latest work, so I understand if you don't want these here. I can just remove them if you want.
I'm just trying to say that they still look great. (:
Trying to get something going, a bit wobbly but better then my last.. Thank you
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1415501/PolycountPictures/TilingRockSculpt2.jpg
Not really to much to crit on your site, as all the work looks really polished.
If you make another environment tutorial I would love to see how you would go about making your waterways.