Hey everyone,
My name is Ben Strasser, I've been kicking around these forums for a couple of months now. I've recently graduated from my program and I am looking for critique on my couple of pieces and content on my site. I'm hoping to use the summer to build a strong enough portfolio to land a job of some kind in the fall.
http://benstrasser.carbonmade.com/
I will also start using this thread to update my works in progress rather then make a new topic about every new piece I make.
Thanks
Ben Strasser
EDIT: My WIP's are at the end of this thread, would love some C and C
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Replies
The best way to show of your environment is by getting it into an actual game engine. UDK is free and is probably the most used, so I'd say download it and give it a go.
The WWII is being destroyed (see what I did thar? Since all the buildings are broken?
The boiler room is a bit dark too, but I'm pretty sure that's my monitor, since these are a bit dark. Overall the lighting looks a lot better here!
The big flaw in these scene however are the piping and wiring in the scene. If you look at the piping on top of the boilers you cylinders with at least 20 sides
which is the same amount as the boilers even though these are 10 times as large.
But then when I look at the bend pieces of metal holding the walkways up then are really lowpoly and clearly show the polygons. Get rid of some of the sides on those pipes and some more to the bend pieces of metal.
Something people keep underestimating (as did I for a super long time) is silhouette. From the current camera perspective there is no way I could have seen the piping had 20 sides, which means they are wasted on them. The bend metal thingy however was the first thing that caught my eye (sadly) because it was standing out because of the polygons showing in the curve.
One last thing would more be focused on the portfolio rather than the actual work.
Your drawings all though not bad are clearly your weakest point and have nothing to do with the job position you are aiming for. So unless you have awesome environment/prop drawings you can show off I'd say get rid of the 2D section. It has nothing to do with what you're aiming for and at the moment takes away rather than add anything to your portfolio.
Good luck, hope to see lots of your work during the summer
Hope that helps
Thanks Metalliandy, Where I get those numbers from was 512 x 3 down which is 1536 and 1024 x 5 across which would be the 5120. I just showed those numbers that way more as a whole rather than as 512 here 1024 here etc. Should I have approached it that way?
A set of WW1 Props--
Crate
Lantern
Rotary Phone
Rations
Table
Tactical war pieces
Mostly all HP at this point, starting the LP/ texturing process today.
Here is the first bit of normal baking:
Im using mudbox to extract the normals, however its giving me errors. Im thinking its probably hows it is unwrapped. Anyone that could point me in the right direction would be great!
its great to see your still working hard on your portfolio !
your HP are turning out great nice work, you've really improved a lot since those arcade sets
Now there are some problems w/ your UVs for the wooden crate.
heres a pic:
also i'm not sure if you've already bought this, but this is great texturing Tut ! i watched this in my 2nd year right before i started my ww2 project is helped out a ton ! btw looking forward to seeing that Tonka truck )
http://eat3d.com/texturing
theres a student discount too !
Ill fix up the uvs and bake the normal again. Also with the AO, is it the same way as the normal? Low from high?
I just bought it now
your projection of ur HP is really weird, are u using RTT or Xnormals ?
another thing that you need to start doing is overlapping UVS.
this will help maximize pixel density (increase the overall resolution of your texture map)
For example, take the side face ( the ones closet to the camera) and overlap that with the face opposites to it, i'm referring to the one of the other side
you can overlap that anywhere other then the 0 to 1 space in ur UV editor.
like all those smaller parts in the bottom right corner can be overlap, since its sooo small that the player probably wont notice the unique normals on it. and the small parts on the top left area.
also check out this crate
Good luck!
I've been having some trouble with baking my normals. Not really sure where I'm falling short. Or i might be just making a problem that is actually a problem at all
Here is the normals for the table found above:
My main issue with this is the lightness of the entire image. Also the clarity in the bake.
It seems to be fairly pixely, or non existent.
Ive done it a couple of ways, Ive tried using Scanline, mental ray, with a sklight without....
Any tips?
Also I recently purchased the Texturing Dvds from Eat 3d so im working through them hopefully ill find my error by watching through them.
Thanks
Ben
1st. make sure you dont have any overlapping UVs in the 0 to 1 space
2nd. turn on scanline, enable light tracer... put a skylight in ur scene.
go your ur RTT settings, under options -> it should open a second window..turn off the cage, and adjust the metres settings...
Here is what I got with it,
Any help is appreciated to get it as good as possible
Ben
Ok here is where Im at with the crate, Ill get the rest up tomorrow evening,
the amount of dirt u have on ur texture right on is fine, the problem i have w/ it is that you should add more wood as the base material. This will really help sell the crate alot more. check out the pic i posted in the earlier port, in that pic u can see the base wood material showing though
i hope this helps !
Ok this is where I am with it now, I still have a couple things im working out with it. Im liking it better with the brighter wood texture showing through.
apply this idea to the wood you have.
what will happen is that you see a better transition from the wood to the paint.
make sure u have the 'all layers' button on
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/42-tutorial-hard-surface-texture-painting.html
The inner mechanisms were based around other machinery that I was able to find.
Ive pretty much got this machine Hi Poly done now, start the low soon.
Looking at it now there are some discrepancies..:poly122: Ill be fixing them
Here is the Crate again after following the tut mentioned above. I think it may have worked better if right from the start I had the same mentality the tut teaches. It still seems to be fairly similar...
there is some pinching close to the gear, but that can be easily fixed.
For those rations objects, you first do a levels adjustment on all the diff maps. Right now it looks a bit too dull. Second, i dont see a strong AO bake or even the normals popping though. u did a great job on the HP models but for some reason ur bake didnt transfer though... and add a few more polys to the grey can, it could use some more rounder edges
i hope this helps
Here is another prop started, aiming to have all of them done by the end of the week.
ur normals have improved alot from the last posting.
when are u gonna textures this man ?
I have to get the group of props I started done by Friday. (thats my goal anyways)
Working on the textures atm
Here is the updated rations:
Here is the updated crate, made some changes to the normals,
i would just like to see lots more details on the diff.
like of this object is used, wear and tear, discolouration. stuff like that
it helps some much to tell a story in ur diffuse map ! and spec too dude !
EDIT: great looking HP model !
I can see what you mean, Ill keep going on the other props for now and then do a revisit to each before they are all considered done
Ben
but there is still room left with your textures, they all look like you stopped half way trough. as most of your stuff is based of real world objects - it shouldnt be that hard to get references which will help you tremendously increasing overall texture quality.
and watch your poly distribution too
keep on pushing, just put a little more work into it, and you'll get some pretty nice results.
Here is the updated projector,
Been staring at the textures for a bit now, Any help would be great
Ben
BUT
ur AO bakes arent any good man
what are u using for ao bakes ? RTT or xnormal ? they really need to improve.
also i like ur bas colours,
BUT
i think u did to play around w/ the values of the colours a bit more - add more punch/contrast
that way it helps identify each object/element better
I know they seem very cruddy..
Im using RTT, Should I be doing it as a whole object or as single pieces? Any special settings :P?
Thanks again
Ben
Good luck man, looking great!
settings:
skylight ON
light lister
active thingy... its in the render tab at the top. the drop down box. first on the list i think..."thingy"
doucle check ur cage
hammerly ON
superstar....thingy ON
try that...."thingy"
Also Hiten when you say Explosion method what exactly do you mean?
Ill be sure to try that "thingy"!
Here is where I'm at with the phone very basic...
Also the wire has yet to be dealt with. Next on the list.
Also Im going to add some more polys to the head of phone.
that phone needs more polys all over the place, you did a great job on the HP model
but this LP isnt cutting it...
and i dont like is the base textures, instead of jumping to photos use simple solid colours to block out the elements first.
like of texturing like Chantal's life drawing class.
main forms = colours
simple outline = base textures
muscle details = dirt and stuff...
i hope that helps...