[Portfolio] - Daniel Aichler, Environment Artist

graylen

Hi Everyone,

I just finished my portfolio site and I was hoping I could get some feedback about the site and the work. I am going to send this out with the hope of getting a job so any ideas on how to improve would be appreciated.

Thanks

www.danielaichler.com

AtlusZMH

nice stuff! Some of your weapons could use a little lovin on the spec maps.. they look very flat matte at the moment! Its really amazing what a decent spec map will do to sell metal textures

also love the use of that slider

percydaman

The environments are nice. One suggestion to finish them off is to add some larger scale dirt/damage. Either with decals or with vertex painting.

bonds0097

I would change the polycounts to say 'tris' instead of 'tries'. The latter is the common way to abbreviate triangle, the second is a synonym for 'attempts' and I would like to think you did not have to start your pulse pistol over 1172 times.

I would also second the opinion to tweak your spec maps. Your materials are not reading properly at the moment on the weapons. Where are the renders from? I would specify whether your renders are in MR, Marmoset, UDK, etc. like you do for the environments. If they are rendered in MR, I'd stick 'em into Marmoset and re-render them there, it's always better to show your stuff in a game engine.

Your guns are also very low poly, which is fine, but I would spice things up a bit by making a full-blown FPS gun in a higher poly range since to be honest there's more FPS's than TPS's, right?

graylen

Thanks AtlusZMH - the weapons are very old models, I will def put some time over the weekend to upgrade them up a bit, thanks for the tip about the spec maps!

percydaman - which one were you talking about? the city one has dirt maps init, and the starship bridge was not meant to have any dirt in it I was trying to keep that old sci-fi feel of bleeps, creeps and sweeps

bonds0097 - Thank you so much for the fix! English is not my first language and sometimes I make stupid mistakes. As for a new gun, what kind of poly count should I aim for? and whats a TPS? I am not a FPS girl and I don't think you meant the Toronto Police Service.

achillesian

I think the biggest problem with the weapons is presentation, and maybe a little more contrast in the normal maps. Better lighting would help them a lot though.

I also really like the little image sliders that show different versions of the environments, with and without wires, that is really cool.

bonds0097

Graylen, by TPS I meant Third-Person Shooter, versus an FPS or First-Person Shooter. In a third-person game, the player will typically see a weapon from much further away so the polygon counts will be lower. In an FPS, weapons are up close so they're generally much higher poly and will have localized detail in the areas the player sees the most (such as the top of the weapon and some of the side facing towards the player). When you make an FPS weapon, you also have to consider how interesting it looks from a first-person view and I think making a weapon geared towards FPS' is probably an important thing to demonstrate on your portfolio if you want to be a weapons modeler.

As far as what to model, just pick something cool that interests you. Lord knows there are enough AR-15's out there so I'd pick something you don't see quite as often or maybe even a fictional concept, though it can be useful to show you can replicate a real-life weapon. I wouldn't worry too much about polycount, it'll vary greatly depending on how complicated the weapon is. Just focus on nailing the forms and silhouette and optimize as much as possible while ensuring that the stuff the player will be staring at most of the time looks as good as the high-poly does (so no jagged curves or eight-sided cylinders and the like).

Kharn

Hey there,
First off nice start to a portfolio,
Im not certain Medieval is the right description for that city. Glass and chimleys where not available to most people until Renaissance. You could do with making it look lived in too, dirt on the ground, bags, barrels, crates, you get the idea ^^ Game environments are walked not seen from the top, the player has to walk through it.

The SciFi scene need some better material definition, specs and reflections are important. Small amount of ware and tear could be nice too. Also more props.

fearian

Drop the weapons. Your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest piece and they are much weaker than your environments.

The renaissance city could defiantly use a bit of final polish to really sell it. There's a certain lack of detail in areas around the edges of windows, flagstones on the ground, concave corners of the church... Some decals would help here.

keep it up!

System

Medieval city looks very good.

I think fearian has a point about the weapons and it seems everything underneath the starship scene. If you can bake from high poly to low poly it will improve the look of your models but you may want to check out some texturing techniques and normal mapping tutorials first.

Old Pillar: http://eat3d.com/pillar (high poly, low poly, baking and texturing)
Next-Gen Texturing: http://eat3d.com/texturing (advanced texturing techniques)

Good luck.

graylen

achillesian - Thanks!
bonds0097 - Thanks for the detailed explanation a new weapon is next on my to do list.
Kharn - It started out as a Medieval building but you are right it is a Renaissance City now. Will change the labels. As for adding stuff for game level, the scene started out as a cinematic and ended as game res. I guess I should add more stuff but I wonder if I should invest more time into it or just move to a new concept since I only have 2 environments on my site. As for the Sci-fi - I was going for the clean look - not the modern sci-fi. I wanted to keep that Christmas lights and cardboard look of my fev 70s shows

fearian - My mentors insisted that I should keep them in for the moment since I only have two environments and I have to start looking for a job (there comes a time when mooching is just not a viable option anymore). As for the city do you think I should invest the time or just work on a new concept? to tell the truth I am kind of sick of looking at it.

GCMP - thanks for the links, the weapons models are old (about 2 years I think) I am working on a new car model at the moment and will remove them once I have more stuff to put there.

Darkmaster

I agree with what most people are saying here so far. I think that your environments are waaaay cooler than the weapons that you show on your site. I know it's easy to get attached to assets, but it really would benefit you to drop those from your site. I think that presentation doesn't do them justice, and they are just not at the same level as your renaissance scene and sci fi environment. Really like your work though, and the website is well designed! Keep up the good work man

graylen

dustinbrown - do you happen to know of a good way to capture wireframe from UDK? at the moment I used the wireframe material and edited in Photoshop so I could get wireframe with back face culling, that's why its so fuzzy. I managed to transfer the level to Maya but I cant seem to find a way to transfer the camera (it moves as a static mesh object) so getting the exact camera angel is almost impossible.

dustinbrown- thanks! I think I will remove the weapons before sending it out, hopefully Ill have some other models to put in there.