[Portfolio] – Chris Martin/CMart (Asset Artist)

CMart

Hey PC,
I recently graduated from collage and am currently perusing a job in games. I have been working on rebuilding my website and updating my work. I would love to hear critique about both my website and the work on it. Ive been working with a new layout for my website and I'm trying to go with something that i can use with my windows phone as well as on a website and both allow for a professional look where i can display my work. I would also love any input on how to make my website or work look more professional. I mostly work with Maya and have been learning lighting mostly on my own after i graduated from collage, but I feel most of the models are well light, but I still have a few errors ( see. Paris Landscape video). Popping with the lighting as I animate a physical sun light across a curve. I hope soon to get my auto repair shop done. I've heard its good to have an environment for your assets so I'm working to make an environment to fit the primary assets.
I look forward to seeing what everyone has to say and that you Adam for getting me approved and able to post!

www.chrismartin-cmart.com

achillesian

1. make basic images of each asset easy to get to, perspective view first, then things like wireframe, textures, flybys secondary.

2. show images in engine, showing mental ray renders doesn't help you a lot when you're looking for a job in the real time industry. Maybe divide your site into real time assets and movie assets.

3. The quality of the car and guns seem fairly good, but I didn't see a low poly for either of them.

4. Regarding your environments they are lacking organic material, and high poly zbrush type sculpting. The gaming industry no longer uses the crazybump method much for their normal maps.

5. Noticed a few typos, not only in your post here, but on the website, not the biggest deal if they like your work.

nfrrtycmplx

your website makes my face hurt because everything is moving... everything should be static until it is responding to input from the user... like, pushing play on the video... or mousing over a link...

slide shows and scrolling stuff are annoying...

also, the white background is icky... white backgrounds make art harder to sees...

@achillesian: #4 - the industry no longer uses the crazy bump method? the nvidia filter and the crazy bump tool both have their places in production. only mention it because it's dangerous to throw around assumptions like that... better to say, "your normal maps aren't very good"

i didn't get so far as to look at the env stuff because the stuff on the front page was so hard to look at (all the moving and teh white background). This is what most employers will do... unless they are looking for an intern or a junior junior junior artist candidate. presentation is 9/10ths...

nfrrtycmplx

after looking at the env stuff (finding it rather) i'd suggest starting with smaller env props and working your way up to large buildings...

your buildings are flat and uninteresting surfaces that transition abruptly to one another... your accessories *(awnings and whatnot) lack form... they look like they're made of one solid piece of an alien material...

silhouette is the most important thing... and all of your env stuff can be broken down to a few straight lines.

etc etc... so on and so forth. Lot's of excellent portfolios with similar work you can look at online... and lots of folks here who have commented on other portfolio threads that had similar issues...

good luck

Dylan Brady

Veyron: the model needs alot more attention to edges. the polycount looks WAY to high for an ingame car, and yet you have all these hard edges everywhere. even on a low poly car you want to pay attention to the bevel/chamfer of an edge, its a very important element of vehicle design to have hard edges the lead into soft edges.

Weapons: The modeling looks clean, but the textures look like you've just barely gotten out of the block out phase. Your headed in the right direction, just keep going!
Also, the beauty renders seem to have almost no lighting information in them.
Dug up my fav tut for rendering:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/413-tutorial-setting-up-render-scene-part-1-a.html
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/414-tutorial-setting-up-render-scene-part-2-a.html

System

If you are a model/texture person you don't need videos unless it's lots of animation or a huge scene. Also javascript rolling marquees are way out of touch with modern web design.
Try a simple design with colours that compliment each other and run that design through the whole site, here's something quick I cooked up for you;



The car looks good although from the back clay render some parts look lower poly and then I noticed in other areas that complexity isn't evenly divided throughout the model.
Personally I would model out everything on this car, the tyre treads, the buttons inside, the floor mats etc and make a cool high poly model and learn how to bake a low poly from that.

CMart

I forgot to explain about my website I'm using a really simply intuit website builder program that has stuff like scrolling pics and the pic galleries. I don't do much webdesign and this program doesn't really let you put in your own code really, but i defiantly see what most people are saying about the moving pics and layout. What is a good color for a background btw, black or some kinda off grey? People were saying also that composites are the way to go? Should i start making composites for my objects?
Thanks for the input guys. As for normal map creation would anyone suggest mudbox or zbrush? While I was in school zbrush was just starting to come around and mudbox was unheard of till i was a senior. Where do you think i should start with learning either of these programs. I know tutorials are the obvious choice, but should i look for like gnomen workshop tuts or something?

MattCan36

Then learn web design or use a site like deviantart, carbonmade, etc. Or make you layout in photoshop and slice it up and take that into dreamweaver to get it set-up (google this process). None of the things are difficult to do. The work itself needs a lot of work.

PixelMasher

The bright white backgrounds on images are killing it. you cant see any texture detail because the contrast is super high against the background. a dark grey like polycount's color scheme for the render backgrounds would make the colors pop a lot more.

I would suggest at some eat 3d or 3d motive tuts to get familiar with proper normal mapping techniques, looking at your normals for your guns they dont look proper and are probably really hurting the final result.
www.eat3d.com
www.3dmotive.com

hope this helps a bit man, keep at it and just start making new art with what you have learned in the past and build/expand upon those techniques.
cheers!