New portfolio piece- Fire Hydrant

spectre1130

So on my week off from school I decided to get off my laurels and do a model for my portfolio. The model was done following a tutorial by Ben Tate. Him and his brother Chris put out some of the most concise, well done, and easy tutorials I've seen to date on 3ds Max modeling. I will be unwrapping and texturing this as time allows. Let me know what you think .

Lucas Annunziata

As far as the model goes, its looking pretty good. As far as it becoming a portfolio piece, I would be hesitant to have anything in my portfolio that is based off of a tutorial as it really doesn't show much creativity, and shows more that you can follow directions.

I still think that going through this asset from start to completion will be a really good exercise, but treat it as that...just an exercise. Then take what you've learned from this prop, and set out to create your own asset from scratch. Maybe even making your own tutorial on your own process.

spectre1130

Good instructions I think. Thanks.

ZacD

I made a recent thread about using tutorial pieces in portfolios, there's some good advice in here.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93880

You do a great job with it though, nothing looks off, good luck with uv and texturing.

dirigible

Your model looks good.
What darbeeno said is right.
My only input is that there isn't any reason to put your poly-count on the image. It's not going to be used in-game, obviously. I have to confess I don't know how film modelers deal with polycount, but I don't THINK they usually bother posting them. I think simply showing the wireframe is good enough.

spectre1130

ZacD wrote: »

I made a recent thread about using tutorial pieces in portfolios, there's some good advice in here.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93880

You do a great job with it though, nothing looks off, good luck with uv and texturing.

I here you on the using tuts as a port piece for sure. Everything I just read on that blog was pertinent and to the point I might add. I actually know that all my instructors told me to never use a tut project as a port piece, but I didn't listen. I have made many models on my own from scratch but have never really posted them anywhere. When I do, they are largely ignored anyhow. I have had to do many speed modelling, unwrapping, baking, texturing challenges while at school, yet many of them have been failures in my mind.

On a side note, I did take some liberties on this model with regards to the actual modelling process as I didn't follow it letter by letter.. It isn't unwrapped or textured either which I was going to do on my own. I think now I will just move on and learn from this as well. This 3d art thing is very complex and humbling to say the least-not that I ever thought it would be easy.

Anchang-Style

But still even if it's not a piece that is taken from a tut perse, it's a subject that is covered by tooo many too known tutorials, therefor...

spectre1130

Anchang-Style wrote: »

But still even if it's not a piece that is taken from a tut perse, it's a subject that is covered by tooo many too known tutorials, therefor...

You didn't quite finish that sentence?

Anchang-Style

I did the japanese way just say the part until...(see what i did there )
what i meant to say is, that the hydrant eventhough yours looks very different, very high quality compared to the tutorial piece, it is such a famous tutorial piece, that it gives a certain subnote to a portfolio handed in for appliance. The first thought of human Ressources "oh a fire hydrant, never have seen one of those" redgarding of that yours is a lot different from others.

Zipfinator

He's just reiterating on the point that a following a tutorial for a piece you plan to display on your portfolio isn't a good idea even if you took some creative liberties with it. It's still just a fire hydrant. That brings me to a new point that wasn't mentioned yet, which is that I would try to avoid using anything so overdone and generic on your portfolio. Employers want to see that you're creative and a good artist. You're also going to want to have things on your portfolio that will catch the eye of any recruiter and a fire hydrant 100% doesn't do that, especially considering that hundreds of freshly graduated are submitting generic portfolios with school exercises on them such as fire hydrants, dumpsters and damaged concrete barriers.

spectre1130

Gotcha ya'll. I'm definitely gonna work on some fresh creative work asap. I do appreciate the crits by the way. The truth is hard for some to hear, but not for me.

Anchang-Style

If you can incorporate it into a bigger work even small generic parts like this are important to be executed well, so don't throw it away.

Alberto Rdrgz

i honestly can't picture a fire hydrant being an impressive portfolio piece

LW3

@Alberto: I think it comes down to the intricacy of blending multiple cylinders at different angles with other shapes. Potential employers can gauge your ability to boolean together multiple shapes by hand. I also think that from a "baking of lightmaps" aspect, it also presents a real texturing challenge that can impress in just the right way.

I would also like to point out that there are several hydrant-based project threads all happening on this very forum... which makes me think that perhaps hydrants are all the rage and thus as a serious artist, you should abhor and detest them. Perhaps as a show of creative moxy you should do a portfolio dog relieving himself on said hydrant. This may give you the edge you need to surpass the dozens of hydrant-based portfolios that inevitably will be gracing the desk of the people you approach.

For me, I'm a low-poly wonk. When I look at this beautiful hydrant, all I can see are the 117 polygons and 18-face collider I would need to put it into a cityscape and shoot it with an FPS AK-47. Still, it's good work.