Right I am going to give some flat out contradictory 'bad' advice. so bear this in mind, and weigh it up agains other peoples advice.
don't worry about finishing things.
So finishing is a skill you can learn and get better at, but right now, you don't need to learn finishing, or flesh out a portfolio, you need to get more comfortable with your 3d package.
My advice to you is to focus on doing whatever you are working on well, be it low poly budgets or unwrapping or texturing... But don't be afraid to scrap it if it goes nowhere. This is NOT to say scrap everything that doesn't work. You still have to push projects as far as you can. Just, don't kick yourself for not finishing them. At the end of the day, if you keep working and focus on picking up skills you will learn from the experience. And the next will be better.
Models are definitely looking better. What's the goal with this? If you're going to be baking a normal your smoothing groups need some work, there's several places where there appear to be none at all. I'm not a gun guy so I don't have anything to critique on the added "crap" but just make sure you're not just adding stuff to add it, make sure it has a purpose.
school props not going so well with normal map generation. You'd think a manhole would be easy. When I use my envelope to "find" the high poly mesh it gets all distorted and cone shaped. It sort of resembles the base low mesh but it gets screwier as I enlarge the envelope. I've played with more settings regarding the envelope but they don't seem to help. I have tons of tutorials so I'll get back on it, trial and error
Playing around and "baked" a magazine holder
1024x1024 on Medium quality Maya Settings.
Some screwiness around the bottom lips of the holder.
school props not going so well with normal map generation. You'd think a manhole would be easy. When I use my envelope to "find" the high poly mesh it gets all distorted and cone shaped. It sort of resembles the base low mesh but it gets screwier as I enlarge the envelope. I've played with more settings regarding the envelope but they don't seem to help. I have tons of tutorials so I'll get back on it, trial and error
Playing around and "baked" a magazine holder
1024x1024 on Medium quality Maya Settings.
Some screwiness around the bottom lips of the holder.
Your normals on the floaters look reversed. Bake out some more, it's good youre finally doing that.
The last two posts of your high poly work are looking good. You need to bevel your 90* corners though. Take a look at this pic here:
See how the corners aren't sharp? You'll never see perfectly sharp corners in any manufactured product. And for baking, you need to have "looser" bevels than realistic, so the map picks up the details well.
I would personally recommend "finishing" your projects based a a skill that you want to learn. So for example, one of your guns, "complete" it as an exercise in high poly modeling. Don't worry about texture, or anything else, just get the particular skill down. Do that a few times and then move on. You need to have moderate skill in your high/low poly models before your textures will bake clean. Without clean models, you simply wont get clean bakes.
You do need to finish your projects, but not necessarily in the game ready production sense, that is just too much conceptual knowledge to get all at once.
It's not that they shouldn't be sharp, but if you're baking a really hard edge on your HP to a hard edge on your LP then the normal map isn't really doing anything. Even if it's a slight bevel, you want to avoid 90 degree angles (even if it may be 90 degrees in your reference) you will get a better bake.
It is going to be very difficult to get a convincing cactus needle effect by normal mapping the cactus surface. Most likely you'll need to make some alpha planes for the needles, much like you would do leaves on a tree.
It is going to be very difficult to get a convincing cactus needle effect by normal mapping the cactus surface. Most likely you'll need to make some alpha planes for the needles, much like you would do leaves on a tree.
Ok
I wasn't sure if it would work or not
good to experiment right?
Just informed by my group leader in class that no texture or normals needed on any class models... they'll be seen at a distance so just a brown mtl for wood, grey mtl for metal...
oh well. Busy trying to get this crap done how I thought he'd want it and apparently I can lower my standards a ton. Not expecting that
Just informed by my group leader in class that no texture or normals needed on any class models... they'll be seen at a distance so just a brown mtl for wood, grey mtl for metal...
oh well. Busy trying to get this crap done how I thought he'd want it and apparently I can lower my standards a ton. Not expecting that
Never lower your personal standards. Instead raise them up above whatver they currently are. Glad youre improving but you need to keep going.
Low poly because won't be seen up close according to group leader
I'm guessing when he sees it he'll want it at half poly but I won't know till he sees it
It doesn't seem very lowpoly to me. Round ball in the center of the wheels (sorry forget technical term :P ) has far to many polies, that area alone could be cut in half if not more. Additionally the luggage has to much modeled detail, you could save some polies by removing the indentation seam running around the center of it.
The luggage yeah i threw up there to see what it would look like. Not gonna be like that when it's done, probably just simple boxes with a mild bevel
Thanks for tips on the hubs, they are a bit too dense
I was gonna redo the wheels overall and then add details for my own pleasure, working parts and pretty it up a bit. Even though those details will not be in the final model I want to see this through
Well I am graduating tomorrow and have been applying for most any job that I qualify for and is at least $23 an hour, which is what I need to live on my own.
I have my linkedin, behance, and facebook up
I am using Indeed to search for jobs.
I've applied to 6 different places.
I'm finding that the bulk of my "work" is not helpful to the jobs that are hiring in the graphic design field. Like I see a lot of jobs seeking UI designers or simple data entry positions.
Not sure what to make of the jobs that are hiring but I can't stand being at home for more than 4 hours so I need to get hired and my own place fast. My personal life is in shambles so I am throwing myself 100% into the job market. My main stress relief, the gym and bench pressing, is wearing thin to be honest.
PS none of my work that I made for the final project ever got in there. :poly142:
working on various gun stuff and photoshops
still working on my aurora gun uvs. Sort of complicated but i've heard again and again i need my uvs straight or else the texture work won't really matter
been a while
made a bunch of stuff but nothing super great or "finished"
working on an android game with some guys at the moment. asked to whip up some simple 3d defensive turret props.
working on that
says less than 1200 polies for any one object
this is probably the best for my skill set at the moment
will post stuff
Been a while
Tried my hand at sales. I learned it is not a strength at all. "Hey do you want this?" "No." "Okay then. Have a good day." Is apparently the wrong way to make a sale, lol. I have no persuasion techniques besides beating someone up but you can't do that at the door apparently
anyways, been working on some stuff
and it's been a long time since i painted so i'm giving it another go
I saw your high poly work. I KNOW you can do better man. This looks like you just threw it together as fast as you could, with no regard to quality.
Stretching everywhere, noisy textures, badly defined forms, heavy faceting.... Dude! You can do better than this! Don't post work just because you 'finished' something.
Sorry if it sounds harsh, but are you comparing your assets to assets in a AAA game? That's the only metric that matters when looking for a job in the industry.
I've scrolled through this thread and saw some of your artwork. Theres a huge variation in quality of the assets, seeing for example the descent uzi and sword from 2011, and the last ones. How come?
The ring's design itself is cool, but the execution of it is just - don't want to be harsh, but - bad. Which can happen, we've all been there, but you'll need to critique your own works to improve.
I'd suggest, watch some tutorials, see how others do their stuff. There's tons of (free) learning materials on the internet.
As for the last two pieces, there are some very obvious things that you really should look into and improve.
To start, learn how to proper unwrap / create nice UV's. Without those creating nice textures becomes very hard to do (the crystals (?) on the ring are very distorted, stretched, which is bad).
Seccond, the materials don't look convincing at all. The sword (without a blade) is using just a standard woodtexture and the rest is a flat color. Besides that, the normalmap you're mentioning isn't visible at all + the spec is ruining the definition of the wood, which now looks like, I don't know, not wood.
The gold on the ring doesnt have any reflections on it, doesnt look like gold. Try to search up how convincing gold materials / textures are created, maybe even take a step into the 'next gen' PBR world. Also, the wireframe is visible in both the objects, not sure if that's for presentation purposes (in which case it's bad because it's not clearly visible, or had something different in mind with it?
You seem to like creating guns (don't we all), I'd suggest you take some time and just watch those tutorials created by Millenia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tgy0lBdJK0). Just look at them - they cover about everything you seem to have trouble with - see what he does, why he does it, and why it results in results than yours. Then try to do it yourself, in a smaller scale. Repeat, evaluate, become better.
That said, though my feedback is bad as always, I hope it offers you some help to improve yourself. Good luck, now GO!
First of all wtf? the normal doesn't look right at all when applied.
also i see like no difference between the 512 and the 1024 map
i did export at tga but uploaded in pngs here
ideas??
This is why you shouldn't use tinypic, they recycle URLs. Luckily it was just a selfie rather than a XXX image.
I'd strongly suggest taking that Skyrim ring off of your portfolio, you are only as strong as your weakest piece. I can understand if you're trying to learn low poly hand painted stuff but it is not portfolio quality.
Giving photo-manipulation a go.
After 3 cans of Starbucks Double Espresso Coffee and no food all day I got a lot done, haha. I just kept going until I felt like it was pretty well filled up.
Please leave comments/questions.
My new wallpaper. It's one of those things that becomes amazing because of the work put into something that's so wrong. I dunno if that makes it beautiful only by the innocence that it has breathing from every pixel.
Seriously, my advice would be to focus on 3D and leave Matte painting alone for the moment, but if it relaxes you or you really enjoy it on a personal level....go nuts and please post the results.
Your natural potential and improvements seem to be with guns. I'd stick with that and spend the next few years working on the fundamentals of it.
agreed, some of your best work in this thread is from the beginning, 3 years ago. It's not perfect but it seems like you have some skill at hard surface modeling that can be polished.
I hope yall feel better by putting me down. I'll keep posting art because I like getting shit on.
I'm trying to show my flexiblity on various mediums, 3d, painting, drawing, concepts, web, etc.
The thing is you dont focus on one thing and fail to see the quality of your work and have a standard for yourself. You still dont make a high poly model and bake it to a low and dont even know how to unwrap properly. There are millions if not hundreds of trillions of tutorials on these things and people tell you to slow down and learn the fundamentals. You make guns and mechs and all this stuff, but you should take your time and learn how to have proper maps, how to make a high poly, how to bake out normals, and yet you spend time doing the SAME Things without improving upon them.
People wont care about your flexibilty at various mediums if you're not good at any of them. Stick to one, and have one as a side hobby, such as drawing, but make for now high poly modeling and learning the proper workflow your main priority.
Some people are being rude but you are being rude by not listening. I had this conversation with a friend who is doing the same things you are recently and i sat him down and told him he needs to do some tutorials and do them well ( previously he'd half ass do them) and never got anywhere. He started doing tuts and following them well and in a few months his skill level has gone up quite a bit.
DO SMALL PROJECTS AND STUDIES NOT WHOLE GUNS TO START WITH. Start small, start easy and work your way up, people fuck this up so much. Also start with a concept someone made as well. But before you do any of that at all start with tutorials and learn the proper workflows. IF you follow through and do them 100% like the instructor I promise you your work quality will improve greatly. Do a lot of tutorials. http://3dmotive.com/series/the-briefcase-workflow.html
I hope yall feel better by putting me down. I'll keep posting art because I like getting shit on.
I'm trying to show my flexiblity on various mediums, 3d, painting, drawing, concepts, web, etc.
dude, you joined in 2009, by now you should be killing it -- instead you don't even know how to properly bake a normal map. and that takes 2 weeks to learn at most.
currently you have no flexibility, stick to something.
I hope yall feel better by putting me down. I'll keep posting art because I like getting shit on.
I'm trying to show my flexiblity on various mediums, 3d, painting, drawing, concepts, web, etc.
Don't do it. Don't act like that. Nobody tries to be mean to you. Everyone wants you to become better. You should be respectful because people used their time to respond and give you advice.
You can use what you read and improve or act like that and stay the way you are. Your choice.
You see if I offered constructive feedback I'd just get ignored whilst you move on to another "medium". What is the point? To continuously brush off the efforts of much more knowledgeable artists, like you have done for years, isn't just rude, it's flat-out arrogant and insulting. When I said I'd never been this frustrated reading a thread before I meant it.
It's not just that, it's also the complete lack of self awareness that gets me. I just don't understand.
You want some advice? You need to focus on one, small project, go back to the beginning of this thread, and follow the wealth of crit you've already been given, else you'll continue to get "shit on".Why don't you go back to that very first Uzi you made, fix the proportions, and work hard on getting the workflow down? You need to understand that your work is bad and needs massive improvement, and that moving on to another medium is not an option if you want to improve.
People will be much more willing to help you as long as you show you are willing to take their advice and put the effort in to finish it.
Replies
don't worry about finishing things.
So finishing is a skill you can learn and get better at, but right now, you don't need to learn finishing, or flesh out a portfolio, you need to get more comfortable with your 3d package.
My advice to you is to focus on doing whatever you are working on well, be it low poly budgets or unwrapping or texturing... But don't be afraid to scrap it if it goes nowhere. This is NOT to say scrap everything that doesn't work. You still have to push projects as far as you can. Just, don't kick yourself for not finishing them. At the end of the day, if you keep working and focus on picking up skills you will learn from the experience. And the next will be better.
I barely use 10% of the functionality of Maya, I know
added a bunch of crap to the gun
work on it when i get bored
gonna redo the stock, its horrible
Friday gun 6 hours
date today
back at it tomorrow and work on normal map generation for school props
Playing around and "baked" a magazine holder
1024x1024 on Medium quality Maya Settings.
Some screwiness around the bottom lips of the holder.
See how the corners aren't sharp? You'll never see perfectly sharp corners in any manufactured product. And for baking, you need to have "looser" bevels than realistic, so the map picks up the details well.
I would personally recommend "finishing" your projects based a a skill that you want to learn. So for example, one of your guns, "complete" it as an exercise in high poly modeling. Don't worry about texture, or anything else, just get the particular skill down. Do that a few times and then move on. You need to have moderate skill in your high/low poly models before your textures will bake clean. Without clean models, you simply wont get clean bakes.
You do need to finish your projects, but not necessarily in the game ready production sense, that is just too much conceptual knowledge to get all at once.
need portfolio pieces
I get out of college in May and been wondering what have i been doing all this time? jacking off making guns...
re-design website and 99% work is not portfolio-quality
making a LinkedIn profile after the webby is done
Ok
I wasn't sure if it would work or not
good to experiment right?
Guys say it's probably too detailed already so going to finish it and make basic textures
oh well. Busy trying to get this crap done how I thought he'd want it and apparently I can lower my standards a ton. Not expecting that
Never lower your personal standards. Instead raise them up above whatver they currently are. Glad youre improving but you need to keep going.
Low poly because won't be seen up close according to group leader
I'm guessing when he sees it he'll want it at half poly but I won't know till he sees it
Thanks for tips on the hubs, they are a bit too dense
I was gonna redo the wheels overall and then add details for my own pleasure, working parts and pretty it up a bit. Even though those details will not be in the final model I want to see this through
I have my linkedin, behance, and facebook up
I am using Indeed to search for jobs.
I've applied to 6 different places.
I'm finding that the bulk of my "work" is not helpful to the jobs that are hiring in the graphic design field. Like I see a lot of jobs seeking UI designers or simple data entry positions.
Not sure what to make of the jobs that are hiring but I can't stand being at home for more than 4 hours so I need to get hired and my own place fast. My personal life is in shambles so I am throwing myself 100% into the job market. My main stress relief, the gym and bench pressing, is wearing thin to be honest.
PS none of my work that I made for the final project ever got in there. :poly142:
still working on my aurora gun uvs. Sort of complicated but i've heard again and again i need my uvs straight or else the texture work won't really matter
made a bunch of stuff but nothing super great or "finished"
working on an android game with some guys at the moment. asked to whip up some simple 3d defensive turret props.
working on that
says less than 1200 polies for any one object
this is probably the best for my skill set at the moment
will post stuff
Tried my hand at sales. I learned it is not a strength at all. "Hey do you want this?" "No." "Okay then. Have a good day." Is apparently the wrong way to make a sale, lol. I have no persuasion techniques besides beating someone up but you can't do that at the door apparently
anyways, been working on some stuff
and it's been a long time since i painted so i'm giving it another go
so far, 3 hrs work
(View in 3D)
https://p3d.in/lH4lG
I saw your high poly work. I KNOW you can do better man. This looks like you just threw it together as fast as you could, with no regard to quality.
Stretching everywhere, noisy textures, badly defined forms, heavy faceting.... Dude! You can do better than this! Don't post work just because you 'finished' something.
Sorry if it sounds harsh, but are you comparing your assets to assets in a AAA game? That's the only metric that matters when looking for a job in the industry.
I've scrolled through this thread and saw some of your artwork. Theres a huge variation in quality of the assets, seeing for example the descent uzi and sword from 2011, and the last ones. How come?
The ring's design itself is cool, but the execution of it is just - don't want to be harsh, but - bad. Which can happen, we've all been there, but you'll need to critique your own works to improve.
I'd suggest, watch some tutorials, see how others do their stuff. There's tons of (free) learning materials on the internet.
As for the last two pieces, there are some very obvious things that you really should look into and improve.
To start, learn how to proper unwrap / create nice UV's. Without those creating nice textures becomes very hard to do (the crystals (?) on the ring are very distorted, stretched, which is bad).
Seccond, the materials don't look convincing at all. The sword (without a blade) is using just a standard woodtexture and the rest is a flat color. Besides that, the normalmap you're mentioning isn't visible at all + the spec is ruining the definition of the wood, which now looks like, I don't know, not wood.
The gold on the ring doesnt have any reflections on it, doesnt look like gold. Try to search up how convincing gold materials / textures are created, maybe even take a step into the 'next gen' PBR world. Also, the wireframe is visible in both the objects, not sure if that's for presentation purposes (in which case it's bad because it's not clearly visible, or had something different in mind with it?
You seem to like creating guns (don't we all), I'd suggest you take some time and just watch those tutorials created by Millenia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tgy0lBdJK0). Just look at them - they cover about everything you seem to have trouble with - see what he does, why he does it, and why it results in results than yours. Then try to do it yourself, in a smaller scale. Repeat, evaluate, become better.
That said, though my feedback is bad as always, I hope it offers you some help to improve yourself. Good luck, now GO!
This is why you shouldn't use tinypic, they recycle URLs. Luckily it was just a selfie rather than a XXX image.
I'd strongly suggest taking that Skyrim ring off of your portfolio, you are only as strong as your weakest piece. I can understand if you're trying to learn low poly hand painted stuff but it is not portfolio quality.
2000x1037 pixels
By Alex Grenlie
August 31st 2014
Giving photo-manipulation a go.
After 3 cans of Starbucks Double Espresso Coffee and no food all day I got a lot done, haha. I just kept going until I felt like it was pretty well filled up.
Please leave comments/questions.
And not try to fill it over just because.
Plus, you seem to be all over the place man.
One day is modeling, the other is drawing chars, then the other you're doing matte painting.
No wonder you suck at all of those things. Just choose one and stick with it.
Sorry to be blunt. It's the truth.
Seriously, my advice would be to focus on 3D and leave Matte painting alone for the moment, but if it relaxes you or you really enjoy it on a personal level....go nuts and please post the results.
I started on page one and ended here. argh...
So much good critique gone to waste.
Reading through this thread I thought I accidentally changed the format and was reading the newest posts first. Talk about the Benjamin Button effect.
Listening to feedback doesn't seem to be your thing, you're at least 5 years away at this rate from getting a job in games as a junior.
agreed, some of your best work in this thread is from the beginning, 3 years ago. It's not perfect but it seems like you have some skill at hard surface modeling that can be polished.
I'm trying to show my flexiblity on various mediums, 3d, painting, drawing, concepts, web, etc.
You mean people being open, honest and giving you tons of feedback? Well bugger.
The thing is you dont focus on one thing and fail to see the quality of your work and have a standard for yourself. You still dont make a high poly model and bake it to a low and dont even know how to unwrap properly. There are millions if not hundreds of trillions of tutorials on these things and people tell you to slow down and learn the fundamentals. You make guns and mechs and all this stuff, but you should take your time and learn how to have proper maps, how to make a high poly, how to bake out normals, and yet you spend time doing the SAME Things without improving upon them.
People wont care about your flexibilty at various mediums if you're not good at any of them. Stick to one, and have one as a side hobby, such as drawing, but make for now high poly modeling and learning the proper workflow your main priority.
Some people are being rude but you are being rude by not listening. I had this conversation with a friend who is doing the same things you are recently and i sat him down and told him he needs to do some tutorials and do them well ( previously he'd half ass do them) and never got anywhere. He started doing tuts and following them well and in a few months his skill level has gone up quite a bit.
DO SMALL PROJECTS AND STUDIES NOT WHOLE GUNS TO START WITH. Start small, start easy and work your way up, people fuck this up so much. Also start with a concept someone made as well. But before you do any of that at all start with tutorials and learn the proper workflows. IF you follow through and do them 100% like the instructor I promise you your work quality will improve greatly. Do a lot of tutorials. http://3dmotive.com/series/the-briefcase-workflow.html
dude, you joined in 2009, by now you should be killing it -- instead you don't even know how to properly bake a normal map. and that takes 2 weeks to learn at most.
currently you have no flexibility, stick to something.
Don't do it. Don't act like that. Nobody tries to be mean to you. Everyone wants you to become better. You should be respectful because people used their time to respond and give you advice.
You can use what you read and improve or act like that and stay the way you are. Your choice.
It's not just that, it's also the complete lack of self awareness that gets me. I just don't understand.
You want some advice? You need to focus on one, small project, go back to the beginning of this thread, and follow the wealth of crit you've already been given, else you'll continue to get "shit on".Why don't you go back to that very first Uzi you made, fix the proportions, and work hard on getting the workflow down? You need to understand that your work is bad and needs massive improvement, and that moving on to another medium is not an option if you want to improve.
People will be much more willing to help you as long as you show you are willing to take their advice and put the effort in to finish it.