New to the forum, so...one of my first posts
Hello, I'm studying Game Art and Design at SCAD currently. Recently took my first Maya class so I figured I would post up my initial work I'm most proud of. I'm a bit nervous...so I hope all goes well. C&C welcome.
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the hills in your first scene are pretty wild looking and incline way too fast in order to pass off as believable. try more gradual curves, looking at photos of what you're trying to recreate, and adjust your scene accordingly.
your second scene has a nice sinister mood to it, but the lighting seems uneven, doesnt blend too well, particularly in the back corner, where one face almost goes pitch black, and then right next to it is a completely different value. maybe you have reference photos that would say otherwise, but just off first glance, the scale looks very off as well. The walls in the scene are making the ground floor, tables and sandles look extremely tiny. It's also hard to believe the blood spatter would be that uniformly distributed on the wall, and be that high in the first place.
it's difficult to get a good look at your scenes because you've taken very claustrophobic shots of your environments. Pull that camera back a bit, up the resolution on your renders, and give us some new shots. :]
there's a lot of room for improvement, and it'll all come in due time as you go through school. Seeing as you've just finished your first maya class, take the critique that you receive here and apply it to your new projects. Stay productive, keep working fast, and share your work with a lot of people! Good luck! :]
Polycount is a bit intimidating, but I'm trying to get past that.
What did you use to render it out with? I'm guessing its a maya software render? Make sure you've got the quality set quite high (like Production) and the image size turned up to a bit larger. And what lights are you using?
Best thing to do when learning (in my opinion) is to just get stuck and produce as much as you can. Like illustrating, some of your first stuff won't be your best. But keep doing it and you'll get faster and learn better techniques.
Thanks for the tips guys. I'll try to produce more when I can, these were produced with the knowledge that I was taught this past quarter.
Personally, I'd say steer clear of Sun and Sky when you're starting out. It is fast and gives you nice realistic results, but won't help you understand lighting or give you much freedom. Look into tutorials by Jeremy Vickery and Jeremy Birn (Vickery lit for Pixar, think Birn still does) for good traditional lighting in Maya.
Yup Vickery's one is awesome. Birn's is really good too. The guy's got amazing skills.