My first and second demo reel

MiragentGames

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ04m89lYn4&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL"]Demo Reel #1[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEt1gAnYgVQ"]Demo Reel #2[/ame]

MiragentGames

Thanks. Spent quite a bit of time on it...though the second video is by far my fav. The terrain itself took days to compose(a mixture of mudbox, maya, photoshop, and world machine). but i got it to look stellar~

MiragentGames

Thanks for the comments. Currently working on a third demo reel with a concentration on more futuristic themes.

MiragentGames

Here are some screens of the second video in a different time of day. What a difference it made, haha.

realeyez

Hi, nice work. There are a few things that stood out to me in the first video that I think if you changed could be made much better.

0:20 - The smoke coming from the chimneys are literally just spawning clouds. It would be nice to have a steady flow

0:37 - I think those trees look great, but we don't need to fly right through the with the camera, and especially not in a pace where a branch of one tree sticks straight through another.

2:16 - Same thing with the cloud of smoke. It materializes out of nowhere, and at an uncanny rate.

2:18 - 2:22 - You have some mad texture stretching going on here. You don't necessarily have to remake the texture, but I'd move the camera so that we don't see it.

2:32 - The brick on the inside of the castle wall is stretched twice as much as the stone brick/blocks on the castle. Maybe a nit pick, but it's noticeable.

2:56 - The flags here with the white background looks like you forgot to mask off something in the alpha. I'd change the color or lose them. They're also very rigid. The texture behind the castle is VERY stretched (at a couple of other points too, but most notably here).

3:03 - You can cover up the edge of the mesh that you're panning that texture through with water spray/mist to make it look more natural. Same thing for the top where the water actually falls over the edge of the rock.

ZeroBigSis

Lovely work. One suggestion I have is regarding the bricks on the castle in the first video - they look obviously repeated which detracts from the model - maybe put some moss here and there to break it up a bit, although just my opinion.
Loving the atmosphere of the environments, it really draws you in, congrats

danjohncox

Looking over the first video feels like a really good example of why people should be cautious using really epic music on demoreels. The music FAR outweighs your demoreel's ability to impress a sense of magnificence. Each time the music kicks in the viewer is presented with a lackluster vista. The waterfall isn't horrible, but its not nearly as impressive or grand as the music suggests. The same and worse goes for the castle.

These scenes are far too big for your ability to fill them in a meaningful way. The scale isnt impressive at this point because the tiling is really noticeable, in both texture and assets. Your lighting is generally nice and the camera moves through the tree branches is nice (except when it keeps going through trunks of trees which really ruins it).

These worlds need more attention to detail instead of just scale. I'll use the castle as an example.

Your shapes that you modeled out need to become more noticeable and intentionally designed. many many shapes are lost because of the tiling texture. Look at this castle for example



There are clear design choices being made to break up the shapes and make interesting silhouettes. But those shapes becomes more noticeable because of the framing elements which are different colours or values (the windows, top sections, crenelations). Now even in this example the tiling brick gets a bit heavy, but its softened a bit by the less detail heavy crenelations and windows. Those give our eyes a spot to stop and rest. As well any of the dark sections they're getting from ambient occlusion and general lighting give us that same rest for our eyes. Since you're really only using dynamic lights and 1 tiling texture for everything we've got no where to rest and take in larger shapes. In contrast your castle is much more akin to this.



There are details there, but they're lost in the tiling of the texture and generic shape. Hard to find silhouettes only make the matter worse.

You've got a great sense of atmosphere for the most part in both of these videos, but none of it holds up to close viewing or higher resolutions. You should focus on a much MUCH smaller scene and try to get those details right. Working at this scale, and at this quality will not help you get a job on the majority of fantasy projects unless you're looking for work on something like the recently released Game of Thrones game, or flight sim type games.

Hope any of that helps.

MiragentGames

danjohncox. Thanks you gave me alot to think about! Although...all the comments I'm getting from anyone seem to go towards my first video. Either the second one isn't that interesting, or was so awesome that everyone's speechless ha ha. I do want to know what the response on my second one is, as i spent a considerable amount of time on it(much more time than the first).