Is my portfolio sufficient for an entry level job?

BenBen12 · Feb 2019

Hello all!
I am Ben and i'm new on these forums, after years of freelancing for individuals and small startup companies i have been wondering if my portfolio would qualify for an entry level position within the 3d industry. It is rather frustrating as my portfolio is currently build up out of the commissioned work i did and these projects were on a tight budget and a shorttime frame which didn't really allowed me to flesh things out. Just now i started doing some of my own work in the hope this will demonstrate sufficient skills. The commissioned work i did does show an understanding of 3d modeling and it's techniques but the themes themselfs are rather simplistic. Opinions would be most welcomed!

portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/benah

Thanks
Ben

Carabiner · Feb 2019

Not yet, no. You're going to have a hard time unless you're applying at a studio that really leans on a cartoony style with solid color textures - and even then, your work still doesn't show me that you can do the trickier parts that even a simple style can require.

By that I mean, most of your models are fairly basic shapes. You haven't shown us any UV breakdowns or texture sheets. You haven't shown that you can bake a normal map. You haven't shown that you can work from a concept.

All those are things that I would expect an entry level artist to be able to do, so if you want to be a competitive applicant, you'll need to update or add to your portfolio while taking things like that into consideration.

BenBen12 · Feb 2019

Carabiner said:

Not yet, no. You're going to have a hard time unless you're applying at a studio that really leans on a cartoony style with solid color textures - and even then, your work still doesn't show me that you can do the trickier parts that even a simple style can require.

By that I mean, most of your models are fairly basic shapes. You haven't shown us any UV breakdowns or texture sheets. You haven't shown that you can bake a normal map. You haven't shown that you can work from a concept.

All those are things that I would expect an entry level artist to be able to do, so if you want to be a competitive applicant, you'll need to update or add to your portfolio while taking things like that into consideration.

Thank you for your feedback, i also feel a lot of it is quite basic even for lowpoly things. and now that i look at it it looks kind of artistically exhausted. I guess this is a side affect of freelancing. I want to get rit of the commissioned work items asap, and replace them by more dedicated work with some identity.

Zi0 · Feb 2019

A small studio that does mobile games might hire you but the chances are pretty low. What kind of job would you fancy in the 3D industry? Also why did you make 4 topics to ask this question?

BenBen12 · Feb 2019

Zi0 said:

A small studio that does mobile games might hire you but the chances are pretty low. What kind of job would you fancy in the 3D industry? Also why did you make 4 topics to ask this question?

Ha, the 4 topics of the same discussion was because i appearantly wasn't able to post anything yet(new member) but now they all of a sudden posted. During my days as a freelancer i always enjoyed doing lowpoly and i'm pretty sure i want to direct my energy to creating a lowpoly based portfolio with my own stuff rather than commissioned work

FourtyNights · Feb 2019

The harsh truth is that you don't get anywhere with the current content on your portfolio. You need to start learning these things ASAP:

1. A high poly model. Either a hard surface or an organic asset. The workflow for hard surface stuff is generally requiring a subdivisioin surface modeling, and the organic workflow requires sculpting. For example, a character asset has organic sculpted anatomy, and sometimes hard surface accessories.

2. A low poly model. Organic HP assets need to be retopologized to a lower polygon meshes with a rigging/skinning/animation friendly topology. Hard surface HP assets are usually optimized down to a low poly from their un-subdivided cage meshes.

3. UV unwrapping. Good UVs have these features:

* smartly planned and hand marked seams for the most ideal UV islands

* non-overlapping UV islands

* minimal distortion

* as even texel density all over as you can, most of the TD for important parts of the object

* semi-tightly packed to the square (i.e., 1024x1024) or non-square (i.e., 1024x512 or 512x1024) texture area, leaving a little bit space between UV island for decent edge padding/dilation

4. Baking. You'll need to bake the high poly information to your low poly. Before baking, you'll need to triangulate your mesh and stick with that same triangulation all the way to the final render of your low poly asset, or otherwise your normal map may have shading errors. Always use a cage/projection mesh with baking (it's essentially the copy of your low poly, and it should encompass your HP completely when inflated). Types of maps you'll need to bake at a minimun are:

* tanget space normals

* object space normals

* ambient occlusion

* curvature

* position

* material id

Addiotinally you could also bake for extra tweaking or special needs:

* concavity

* convexity

* thickness (usually for controlling the translucency effect on character's skin)

5. Texturing. Bring your triangulated low poly mesh and baked maps to Substance Painter (highly recommended software to use for texturing 3D game assets) and start texturing. Even stylized hand-painted assets require baked helper maps.

6. Render your final textured low poly game assets in a real-time game engine such as Unity 2018, Unreal Engine 4 or Marmoset Toolbag 3. Any one of these are good choices. Since you have lots to learn, stick with a basic but good three-point lighting setup.

Zi0 · Feb 2019

BenBen12 said:

Zi0 said:

A small studio that does mobile games might hire you but the chances are pretty low. What kind of job would you fancy in the 3D industry? Also why did you make 4 topics to ask this question?

Ha, the 4 topics of the same discussion was because i appearantly wasn't able to post anything yet(new member) but now they all of a sudden posted. During my days as a freelancer i always enjoyed doing lowpoly and i'm pretty sure i want to direct my energy to creating a lowpoly based portfolio with my own stuff rather than commissioned work

I see that you are based in the Netherlands, there are a lot of small studios that make mobile games etc but its hard to get in because they get a steady stream of interns. Best thing would be to update your portfolio with only game ready assets.

BenBen12 · Feb 2019

Zi0 said:

BenBen12 said:

Zi0 said:

A small studio that does mobile games might hire you but the chances are pretty low. What kind of job would you fancy in the 3D industry? Also why did you make 4 topics to ask this question?

Ha, the 4 topics of the same discussion was because i appearantly wasn't able to post anything yet(new member) but now they all of a sudden posted. During my days as a freelancer i always enjoyed doing lowpoly and i'm pretty sure i want to direct my energy to creating a lowpoly based portfolio with my own stuff rather than commissioned work

I see that you are based in the Netherlands, there are a lot of small studios that make mobile games etc but its hard to get in because they get a steady stream of interns. Best thing would be to update your portfolio with only game ready assets.

Yeah, i haven't start looking at them yet as i'm now redoing my portfolio, i'm starting with drawing some concepts and turn them into 3d variations of more complex models show the complete understanding of the process and all, and fully textured them from there on i will actually look at the market

Is my portfolio sufficient for an entry level job?

Replies