[Portfolio] Eric Topf, Environment/Prop Artist
Greetings Polycount,
I've been lurking on the forums for what seems like forever now, but I've finally got the nerve to actually post. Anyway, my name is Eric Topf and I fancy myself an Environment/Prop Artist, though I consider myself highly adaptable (yet well aware that "specialization" is key).
So, I want to get back into doing more personal projects for myself, and what I've been doing at work is not going to be something I can use in a portfolio (unless I attach a massive technical document on how it all works, violating who knows how many NDA's :poly131:). So without further ado, my website:
http://www.erictopf.com/
Now for more ado.
It's been a while since I've managed to compile feedback on my personal work, and it's run the gamut from "Awesome!" to "Talentless hack!" And I wanted to get another wave of feedback before I dive back into creating new things (or perhaps salvaging current work with new polish if possible).
The demo reel is pretty out of date too. I made it in After Effects a long time ago. Not sure if anyone recommends a better way of making demo reels now (my gut was telling me to create a scene in UDK and just render a cinematic, though that might take too much time and be too "pie in the sky").
And then the website itself. I'm sure there are a lot of things wrong with it, but I'll still hear thoughts on what can be done. My Dreamweaver skills are pretty novice, but I'd like to think I can enhance things somehow.
Thank you in advance for your feedback. I'll definitely respond to any and all criticisms......Politely I promise
I've been lurking on the forums for what seems like forever now, but I've finally got the nerve to actually post. Anyway, my name is Eric Topf and I fancy myself an Environment/Prop Artist, though I consider myself highly adaptable (yet well aware that "specialization" is key).
So, I want to get back into doing more personal projects for myself, and what I've been doing at work is not going to be something I can use in a portfolio (unless I attach a massive technical document on how it all works, violating who knows how many NDA's :poly131:). So without further ado, my website:
http://www.erictopf.com/
Now for more ado.
It's been a while since I've managed to compile feedback on my personal work, and it's run the gamut from "Awesome!" to "Talentless hack!" And I wanted to get another wave of feedback before I dive back into creating new things (or perhaps salvaging current work with new polish if possible).
The demo reel is pretty out of date too. I made it in After Effects a long time ago. Not sure if anyone recommends a better way of making demo reels now (my gut was telling me to create a scene in UDK and just render a cinematic, though that might take too much time and be too "pie in the sky").
And then the website itself. I'm sure there are a lot of things wrong with it, but I'll still hear thoughts on what can be done. My Dreamweaver skills are pretty novice, but I'd like to think I can enhance things somehow.
Thank you in advance for your feedback. I'll definitely respond to any and all criticisms......Politely I promise
Replies
If you are an environment/prop artist, then slap me in the face with it. Let me see your thumbnails as easily as possible, rather than having a big image that says its a 3d artist portfolio, as we already know this from the header.
Cut your 2d stuff. None of it is up to par, and really detracts from the rest of your work.
Jason Lavoie
Polygoo
and my personal favorite
Damian Lazarski
Jason has changed his site 3 times since I have been on here and each time it gets better and better. Damian has presentation down to the T, showing his textures, modkits etc.
Just a thought. The work it self isn't too bad, I just think with a little help in presentation it could help boost it a lot
Of course the site needs a lot of work, but as I said, I am very clueless when it comes to web design (as you can see, even hotlinking stuff screws me up). It takes me forever to figure out the right html/css codes to just get things aligned properly, let alone make sure it's all functional. It's something I'd rather not have to deal with to be honest and rather just focus on the actual artwork itself.
Yeah, the 2D stuff will go, I think the only reason I even put it there was because I was trying at one point to go for more 2D artist positions in terms of flash/vector art since those seem to be a hell of a lot more frequently available than 3D art positions these days thanks to iOS/social/fb gaming.
Thanks!
Less hassle with your website...which allows you to upload and manage the look of the site over the hard coding/monkey work you're probably doing right now. You're stuck to the themes they offer you, but you can still add your own personal touch to them. Plus its very user friendly...just drag and drop what they call elements, and a lot of the CSS is controlled under the hood.
Check it out.
1. main page with a few fairly large banner or thumbnail images for major sections. Try to lay it out so everything on this page can be seen with minimal scrolling.
2. each section page is usually just a column of full sized images. One click at the main page then all anyone has to do to see a whole section is scroll. Make it easy and its more likely people will actually look at everything you took the time to prepare for posting.
3. some sort of header with your name, contact info and link to your resume on every page. Again make it easy for someone to find all the info they'd need to consider you for a job.
This scheme is straightforward, and lets a visitor get through even a fairly large body of work easily.
Whether you code the site yourself or use a site builder doesn't really matter as long as you get an effective showcase for your work. several friends of mine have had good results with carbonmade.
Here's a bunch of sites that use this system. The links Poffington posted also stick pretty close to it as well.
http://shogun3d.com/
http://www.wireframeworlds.com/
http://sunhutzu.carbonmade.com/
http://www.konradbeerbaum.com/
http://www.toren3d.com/
As far as the work itself, some of it looks a bit dated. If I'm not mistaken that's UT2004 in the temple city stuff? Also a 1:1 texture map is usually not the best way to approach a large building. Tiling textures and modular detail pieces will get you much better resolution.
Scrolling on the main page should be at a minimum. Scrolling down a column of images for each section is way better than clicking five ten or even more thumbnails. I added a bunch of links to my earlier post...
As far as the older work goes.. its your judgment call to make, but what you put up is what people will use to guess at your abilities. If the only example is one that's done incorrectly in an 8 year old engine... Again, its up to you. Its never easy to make cuts to your own work, but tough self editing is usually a good thing.
Oh well, it's due for the cutting block then
Those are some great websites you linked to. I'm trying to view the source codes for them and figuring out how they made them. It's really hard for me though. Coding websites just rubs me the wrong way. I know there are template websites, but most of those I've tried had some crappy issues where you couldn't get the source codes for the templates or edit them much, and I haven't found any templates that really resonate.
wordpress blogs are easy to setup as well, depending on your host they can be free and customizable.
So yeah, admittedly my website will probably wind up looking like a carbon copy of one of those sites in that thread (or another site), but as I said, I'm no genius at web design. Dunno how I'll fit my work into it yet though, many of my screenshots are various different sizes.
So yeah, I realized after a bit that all I was trying to accomplish with making a simple website, was something that was essentially what blogspot already provides, so I just said "eff it" and got me one of those. And man, it definitely does make a difference.
http://erictopf.blogspot.com/
I made my domain point to it as well, so we can all forget about the horrifying layout of my original site.....right? :poly136:
Anyway, not intending to rest easy. All I have now is the foundations to build something on (which are hopefully somewhat sturdy), so now I can make more cool stuff.
that is awesome, you ever finish it or do more to it?
One nice bit of feedback I got recently from someone at Valve regarding this piece was "try to give each prop some sort of character". I immediatly realized what he was saying, because, you could take some of the props as they are now and simply label them as "generic tech part 1" and such and such. By giving them character, you make them unique. That's what I aim to go for.
Glad you like it though!
Also, that low-poly greyscale environment in your older pieces is quite interesting. Why not texture that and spruce it up?
And the Mayan environment lighting is using mental ray's sun/sky. So it was more than just placing one light and hitting render. It is low-poly stuff though, so it could potentially be placed in Unreal. Actually come to think of it, they are props I had created for UT2004, so they have been in Unreal at one point.
The rough whiteboxes are actually what I'm working on now. I have to tackle each piece individually though, and because most of them are "rough", I'm in the process of trying to figure out how to make them more interesting.
Sorry if it seems I'm ripping you, I'm not, I think you definitely have what it takes, and that you realise developing and taking crits is the way to do that, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering at all.
And yeah, UV mapping is still something I'm learning. In the past I tried to cheat a lot by overlapping UV's, but that's not really feasible (I don't think) for game engines and especially for stuff like AO.
Hah, nope, not ripping in the slightest. I've been on the receiving end of much worse
This site has no contact info or resume (or it's super hidden). Even if you were the best applicant I received, I'd pass you over because of not knowing how to reach you or knowing anything of your experience.
Also, watermark your images with contact info.
Your lighting is often terrible and you should use something like Marmoset to get a better look at your objects.
Your texturing skills are average/low but because you make terrible UVs it looks bad from up close.
At the moment (if I were you) I would get rid of everything except the maxis stuff and the unreal objects, and for the later I would relight them in marmoset and redo the texture/UVs if I wanted to show them.
Your diffuse maps super busy for the style. Usually the diffuse doesn't need more than just color info. save that stuff for the Spec map. Find references for the materials you're trying to create.
Observation is the most important part of making textures.
You say my texture/UV skills are low, but don't give any examples once again. Also, you wish for me to re UV those Unreal objects. Why would I do that when they are unwrapped to a constant texel density? Well, I don't know which normal maps you are referring to, but those are mostly generated from high poly meshes using Transfer Maps in Maya. Though I use crazybump as well for other details. Can you give more specifics in regards to my workflow? Again, that's pretty vague terms.
Which diffuse maps again are you talking about? The ones for the Unreal objects look fine to me. Also, with regards to the spec map, I keep having difficulties getting it to work in Unreal, it just doesn't seem to give me any "shine" at all. And all those Unreal objects were made from image references as well.
-Your highpoly models seem unclean (fire hydrant), e.g. a lot of triangles and not as much quads as possible. Also the edge flow doesn't look very smooth.
-The texture of the fire hydrant looks blant, i almost thought it was an untextured model with just grey material aplied. Maybe this color was on your reference, but i dont like it. It looks extra dull because of the desaturated (back)ground.
-the props together look a bit uncohesive. I would suggest to make a small scene filled with similar props so you can show composition, lighting and coherent art style skills.
What is the problem with the spec map? If u make the spec map brighter, you will have more specularity. With the specular power slot u can adjust the size of the hotspot.
I mostly stayed vague because I didn't have the time nor motivation to write a tldr; post at the time.
There's lots to be said about your textures or your UV choices. Like learning that having equal texel density over an object everywhere is not always a winner. Learning how to make a good re-usage of your textures (stacking, tiling) to save space and so on...
I always try to help my best when I decide to post in someone's thread but sometimes there's just so much to say that:
A) it's gonna be too long for me and the person might not even want to hear it;
Now if you want help on specifics I'm sure I/we can write a few things. Some already did.
Well you seem to know your job better than us, so in that case I'm glad I didn't spend hours writing a post then.:)
...and you were wondering why your lighting lacks? It's got nothing to do with the code that Epic wrote, it's to do with your knowledge of what good lighting is. You need to study some art direction, colour theory... search for videos of Trine 2 on youtube. You'll get what I mean. Shit's like a moving painting.
As for the Maxis stuff, you're right, that's not texel density perfect, because it's one of those instances where an engine/pipeline has different needs and limitations.
go ahead and fucking try it! you'll see. Stop being lazy.
Probably gonna catch hell for this post after saying I was done too.
It mostly seems like you just don't want to hear it, at all. You tarted of by saying that you wanted critique and that you were tired of hearing "wow, that's awesome" (and I'm with you, if you put something up you don't want to hear it, god or bad doesn't matter). So that's what you got.
Your write that you want to work with environments and props. You just happend to get one of the absolute top environment artists on PC to give you crit, from ParoXum. Now, what he wrote in the first post was pretty much "I don't have time for a longer post at the moment, but these are the main problems with your work". Pretty much implying that there would be more in depth critique ahead. Just saying, if you would have relaxed for an hour you would have gotten what you came here for. And yeah, I can see how hes post could come of as ignorant and douchey but that's the real Polycount spirit right there. The most honest critique you'll ever gonna get.
Taking pride in your work is obvious that you do. I do. But there's a difference in defending your work with everything you got, and fairly aggressively to for that matter, you'r NEVER gonna get anywhere. You would have been better of with the people telling you it was "awesome".
Try to go back and see what people wrote before you started defending your self in every possible way, there is information there that would be invaluable for you if you just toke it in. And btw, stacking stuff in a texture, reusing stuff and still have a good AO is more of a common standard then not doing it. It's not always what you think is right, you always learn. There's always gonna be newer, smarter and better looking ways of doing things. That's why i love game art so much. The technical side is just awesome. You'll never get to know those things if you keep that attitude up. It's a simple choice.
Good luck in life. I hope you have a brighter view of things involving your life. And yeah, just wanted to quote you on something.
A Zen master of great renown was visited by a young philosopher who had traveled from a distant land to meet him. The master agreed to see him because the philosopher came with high recommendations by his teachers. The two sat under a tree to converse and the subject hastily turned to what the master could teach the young philosopher. Recognizing the flame of youth, the master smiled warmly and started to describe his meditation techniques. He was cut short by the philosopher, who said: Yes, I understand what you are talking about! We did a similar technique at the temple, but instead we used images to focus!
Once the philosopher was done explaining to the master how he was taught and practiced his meditation, the master spoke again. This time he tried to tell the young man about how one should be attuned to nature and the universe. He didnt get two sentences in when the philosopher cut him short again and started talking about how he had been taught meditation and so on and so on.
Once again, the master patiently waited for the young philosopher to end his excited explanations. When the philosopher was quiet again, the master spoke of seeing humor in every situation. The young man didnt lose any time and started to talk about his favorite jokes and how he thought they could relate to situations he had faced.
Once the philosopher was done, the Zen master invited him inside for a tea ceremony. The philosopher accepted gladly, having heard of how the master performed the ceremony like no other. Such a moment was always a privileged one with such a man. Once inside, the master performed flawlessly up to the point where he started to pour the tea in the cup. As the master was pouring, the philosopher noticed that the cup was being filled more than usual. The master kept pouring tea and the cup was soon full to the brim. Not knowing what to say, the young man stared at the master in astonishment. The master kept pouring as if nothing was wrong, and the cup started to overflow, spilling hot tea on the floor mattresses and the masters hakama. Not believing what he was seeing, the philosopher finally exclaimed: Stop pouring! Cant you see the cup is already full and overflowing?
With those words, the master gently placed the teapot back on the fire and looked at the young philosopher with his ever-present warm smile and said: If you come to me with a cup that is already full, how can you expect me to give you something to drink?
This story was adapted from Michel Grandmonts Tasting a New Cup of Tea.* We retell it here to illustrate the sort of attitude a successful apprenticeship requires. The more experience you already have, the more effort you will need to put into emptying your cup, clearing your mind of bad habits, setting aside the pride you have in your skills, and opening yourself up to the different, often counterintuitive, approaches of your more experienced colleagues.
* http://www.ironmag.com/archive/ironmag/2000_mg_reality_of_learning.htm dead link...
You're going to need to learn ZBrush. Most environment artists have at least a basic knowledge of it. It's hella fun.
If you look closely at other talented 3d artists work, you will see that almost all highpoly models have clean wireframes so you get the best baking results among other advantages like easy post-editing of the model.
It looks like you continue modeling on a smoothed highpoly model which is not the ideal work flow. Normally you would work on a unsmoothed version of your highpoly and smooth it if you want to just view the final result. If this doesn't make any sense to you, i suggest looking for sub-d workflows/tutorials like this one:
(one of the first hits via google i could find. It's in max while you probably work in maya, but the basics are the same)
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Did you even read what i wrote? Srlsy, stop defending and explaining your self. Sure you want to explain your workflow, but you came here asking for help. Your headline should have been "Art dump - I'll explain what technique I use (I really don't want to hear about the other, better techniques there is out there)".
And yeah, I can see why ParoXum wrote that. Why the f**k should he put time into trying to help someone just writes it of as BS? I would have written the exact same thing.
You are a real energy drainer really. I didn't want to be negative, but really you are. If you'r not gonna stop being so up in your self you'll end up in a very lonely place, let me tell you.
Can I ask you for this, read my post and what I refer to. Take everything that it says for the exact truth, imagine that it would be, and see how that feels. No need to write anything down in here or what ever. Just try it. Maybe something new would start to grow. Imagine that, rad shit.
The flowers for EA/Maxis though are great, the best work in the portfolio by far, colorful, well executed and presented.
This is a problem, as an artist you need to market yourself. It's very important that people can find your contact information and even your website if they try to google it.
I also believe that if people feel that you're coming off as arrogant, or that you can't take critique, chances are that you're exactly like that. People are trying to help in any way they can, you just need to have the "Kill-your-darlings"-attitude and thicker skin and take most of the critique to the heart, especially from those more experienced and skilled.
Just suck it up, present yourself as positive, out-going and willing to learn and take critique. You don't ever want to burn any bridges in this industry.
Good luck and keep working though
dude it'll take you like a week. I suggest you just swallow your pride, start enjoying your work, instead of the "that looks awesome" comments. Humble down padawan, YOU'LL GET NOWHERE WITHOUT CRITIQUE.
instead of making fucking bullshit ass excuses and batting away critique, make notes and better your work.
grow up.
And well, there you have it for now I guess. I have to go back and redo my workflow. Thank you for that image Hupie. It is disconcerting that I myself was unable to see a problem with those areas (at least not even thinking model topology was a cause). And you are right, my highpoly model in that instance was mainly derived from Maya's Smooth tech. I wasn't sure how else to create a highpoly model that was dimensionally close to the lowpoly so that the Transfer Map envelope would catch it accurately.
And now that I have a clearer head. Gotta watch a lot of tutorials and practice. Thanks again everyone, and sorry for being such an ungrateful ass
*Whoops, looks like that was already said* Oh well, it's worth repeating.