Failed Art Test Critiques
polycounter lvl 13
I just finished work on this art test and apparently I failed. I sent an email to ask what needed improvement, but I haven't heard anything yet, so I thought I would see what Polycount had to say. I actually felt better about this one than any of the art tests that I passed, so I'd like to figure out where I went wrong.
The budget for the test was 10,000 tris, 5 materials with up to 4 2048x2048 textures for each material. That seemed much higher than I needed, so I only used 9897 tris, and 2 materials with a combined total of 7 2048 textures. That still seemed excessively high to me, but it was well within the budget. Maybe I should have used the full budget, despite despite that.
Concept (I've seen this posted all over the place, so it's not confidential.)
High Poly
Final
The budget for the test was 10,000 tris, 5 materials with up to 4 2048x2048 textures for each material. That seemed much higher than I needed, so I only used 9897 tris, and 2 materials with a combined total of 7 2048 textures. That still seemed excessively high to me, but it was well within the budget. Maybe I should have used the full budget, despite despite that.
Concept (I've seen this posted all over the place, so it's not confidential.)
High Poly
Final
Replies
- HP is super tight loosen your edges a little so that your normals can actually work for you. Not just one pixel of bevel in the texture.
-Textures are pretty mushy and don't have much clarity or crisp details. Also some of the grunge in no sensical and doesn't tell a story.
- I cant see your LP wires but your silhouette seems to be good and your bake is clean it just comes back to that the normals are to tight to actually help much.
- Material definition is very lacking, I'm guessing its metal from the edge cracking but really doesn't read like that. Try using a edge highlight pass to really pop out edges.
-As for materials if they give you 5, use five or 4. The must have been looking for a cinematic type asset and playing it safe isnt going to help you unless you really really could wow them.
-Dont get me wrong the piece is solid it just needs alot of the little devils in the details work. Mostly in textures and material definition.
-Dont be afraid to play with a bit more range in your specular channel, and also make sure to level your textures before saving them (helps to get rid of the graying effect)
Hope this helps, keep at it you definitely have skills just refine refine refine
If you had a month or so then there are a lot more of little details missing and other are the wrong scale. The texturing is a tad rough, and the spec really isn't working as much as it should. It's solid overall but lots of little stuff could be improved.
Looks like you gave it a good go. They probably won't respond to you about where you can improve. But don't get down on yourself. We have ALL failed many art tests. In fact, I think I've failed every single one, but it's not a failure if you learn from the experience, and keep on trucking. You fail when you give up. And you're not going to give up. Right?
My immediate reaction to seeing your final model was, where is the normal map? Spec map? It's looks really flat to me. And the lighting isn't helping much.
I see some scale issues, which is a problem I usually have as well. The front looks good, but the geo inside, when compared to the concept art provided, looks smaller. So the inside geo and the geo as you go further back, look noticeably off. Also, the texture resolution looks low for being 2k. Can you post your textures as well? What did you render your model in?
The materials aren't well defined, the textures are very low rez, I don't see any specular/normal map combo, and there are too many polies in places that don't need them (such as the panels).
Lastly, the concept is much rounder in appearance, your model is much more bulkier, based upon the last panel alone near the tip, you can see the size difference.
So, the reason the textures look blurry despite the huge size is that I forgot to set the textures to cinematic in UDK. It automatically compressed the hell out of them. As soon as I made the switch it was fixed. I guess I was too tired and blurry-eyed to notice when I turned it in, but I can't believe I didn't see that before.
I'm going to work on the textures and materials tonight. I will post my textures and UV maps after I make one more pass over them. I will also post the low poly wireframe and shaded views along with some orthographic views.
BradleyWascher:
-I will go back and widen the gaps between the metal plates some to improve the normals.
-I'm going to work on the textures and the material tonight.
DeadlyFreeze:
-I had 2 weeks for the test.
Gobee:
-The test is from Certain Affinity.
-I'm not giving up, but a year of this is starting to take it's toll.
-Part of the scale issue between the front and back is from the slight fisheye distortion from UDK's camera. If anyone knows how to get rid of that I would love to hear it because I have no idea. I will post orthographic views of it later tonight or sometime tomorrow so you can see it without any distortion. If you see anything still looks wrong then, just let me know.
Ace-Angel:
-I'm going to work on the materials and the texture res problem is a check box that I forgot.
-I'm not sure what you mean about the polys in places I don't need them. The shaded view above is the high poly. I will put my low poly and wires up in a little while.
-I see what you mean about mine being blockier than the concept. I mostly notice it a the base of each of the arms that hold the ring in the back. I will work on that some tonight too.
"-I'm not giving up, but a year of this is starting to take it's toll."
It was a good 5 years of "Thanks but no thanks. Thanks but we have decided to choose an applicant that better fits our needs. blah blah blah" before I finally got my break. I know it takes it's toll but this industry is really hard to get into. And I've said this before on Polycount, it's even harder to stay in it. Going contract to contract is not fun, but if this is something you're truly passionate about.. it doesn't matter. Keep at it man. The No's suck, but when you finally get hired.. damn it feels good. Makes all the no's worth it.
I just wanted to say that you have talent. Keep at it. Failure is an accepted thing. If you accept failure it will begin to weigh you down. Keep moving forward and you will get to your goal.
The way I look at life is, this is a chapter. This is the chapter before the next. The next chapter will begin once you are at the desk of your new job. It is up to you to fill in the pages with hard work, dedication, devotion and the ability to turn night time into day.
- D.Carmine
More "curvey" edges in your HP, so the bake to LP becomes clearer. And try to collect references on metall and when you do rust, dirt or other "nasty" stuff, they should tell a story.
Collect reference reference reference. Trust me, i've done alot of shit that i never finish because of lack of textures. Then i've done stuff i've finished that looks lite utterly shit, because of lack of.. yep you guessed it!
It took me three years of art test after art test to land a job. Just keep working on your stuff. The more you do the more you'll improve. Keep posting new work here on PC and you'll be improving in no time.
Here are the new renders:
Some people said that there seemed to be a scale issue. I think a big part of that is from UDK's camera. Just in case, here are the orthographic views from Maya. If you still see a problem please point it out.
I'm still working on the textures, but here is where they stand right now. I haven't had a chance to work on the textures for the internal parts yet, but I'll post those when I get around to it.
Last but not least, here are the wireframes for the low poly.
Any thoughts on the specular map? I think I may need to darken the paint down some more so the highlights on the metal show up a little better.
The white areas also look pretty clean, just a perfect spot for some blackened streaks from orbit reentry or meteor scar impact streaks.
Looking at your diffuse I think you can definitely push more on texturing, stuff like adding in smaller frequency details like bolts/screws to define the panels a bit better. Most of your metal are the same tone, the large 'A' frame could be different so there's some contrast with the interior metals and pop out the shape more.
http://nickolasjjackson.com/?p=269
http://zero9breaker.deviantart.com/art/Chrysalis-Rescue-System-284483719
Hope it helps.
1. Bake a projected ao map from your high poly and a simple ao map from the combined low poly, then combine them in Photoshop. This is well help your normals stand out as well as make the object seem more 3d.
2. Wear spots on metallic textures tend to have brighter specular, not darker.It could be that you're doing this, but at the moment it's hard to tell the difference between grime and wear.
3. Use nDo, crazy bump or something similar to add wear to your normal map based on the wear you added to the diffuse map.
4. Darken your white on the diffuse map. If everything is white, then the shiny bits can't show off as well.
5. Don't forget to play with shaders in UDK. It's not uncommon to multiply the emissive and spec by some factor to get a brighter glow.
6. Individual metal panels tend to have very slight changes in overall coloration. A slight overlay layer in black or white can help produce that effect.
Anyway, that's just off the top of my head. Keep working; it's a nice piece, but the competition is rough. Have patience.
Pardon the ignorance, but what do they mean by "5 materials"? Like a diffuse/specular/normal/gloss? Do they mean materials presented, like you're supposed to make the model somehow incorporate elements of plastic and metal to test you're surface texturing?
I would recommend not using front lighting (where the light source is near/behind the camera) unless you know what you're doing because if you aren't careful it will remove shadows and kills the shapes in your model, leaving it looking almost fullbright (like your first screenshot)
I would have tried putting the lightsource in the upper right, behind the pod, to put the front of the pod in shadow which would show off the lights in the design.
The way you changed the ring in the rear bugs me also, looking at the design I thought it was sort of holographic or made of bands of light or something...
At first glance at your maps, that spec isnt contrasted enough. The way materials are read from other materials is the level of spec they have/reflectivity. It seems like your spec isnt using the full range of values as i'm barely seeing any black. That means that your spec will read as plastic and not metal.
I also noticed that you didn't do almost any mirroring of geometry to save uv space. That would probably be my guess as to why you didn't get it. You weren't resourceful enough in your texture space. You could have mirrored this thing like crazy and maintained those crisp texture details.
I did read someone say that your texturing was a little weak and i would have to agree with that. Think of all of the things this machine has gone through, or does on a daily basis. I would say having atmosphere entry burns towards the front of the ship, maybe some oil leaks, dents....etc. Just really tell a story with your texture work. Not a literal story but an implied story. You should realize that when metal is scratched..it's always scratched from a direction. Your scratches seem to always follow the direction of the cut line they're being scratched from, as opposed to being scratched along the shape of the ship as a whole. (if that makes sense) When a vehicle has any sort of scratches on it, it will typically get them from being in motion, and the scratches should follow that motion (as well as any other pieces of grunge).
You should really keep working on this piece and posting it on polycount before you move onto your next art test. OR just keep these things in mind on the next one. Like wascher said, it's not bad by any means, it's just the details under the hood that are weak. The optimization, resourcefulness and texture work.
Keep at it and goodluck!