www.ghostscape.com
Johny already suggested I remove Optimus and I think he's coming out, he is old work and quite frankly doesn't look that good, but I'm a transformer fanboy.
Please be brutal. I don't work in the industry yet but I'd really like to change that.
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,so bad my monitor had a hickie after looking at it.
honestly though, your strongest piece imo is the Metal gear solid box.
Keep working though! your stuff does have potential!!!
it looks to me you have a talent for props, Youv'e heard it before, and I'll say it too, the best way to get your first job is as a prop/environment production artist.
edit: your low poly military vehicles are great too!!
I think I would agree with the decision to remove Optimus Prime.
On your Mobile Field Turret model, I think it could stand to be lower poly, 7000 tris is pushing it. Also I think you did a good job of utilizing your UV space, but it just doesn't look like that model needs a 2048 map to me. Maybe there are some areas where you could have overlapping UVs?
On your Level Elements from Wings of Megaira, I think the building texture is very uninteresting. Maybe you could try to break it up a bit more instead of just having the same repeating tile.
Also, I dunno if it's just me, but your site seems to be REALLY slow, I thought some of the links were broken even. But again, maybe it's just me.
Hope that helps
It's working fine from where I am...what browser are you guys using?
The picture that first displays for Wings of Magaira is kind of dull, the dragon is just flying over some water getting shot at, the action packed screens are more interesting as well as showing off more of your work.
I'm not real hot on the wizard's pet, it's a very thrown together design.
If you're advertising yourself as an environment and props modeler you need to post more environments and props.
Lastly, open with your RTS units, always put your best foot forward
Lose Prime it hurts to look at it. It may (or may not) be accurate to the G1 toy but it doesn't look like what the majority of people would remember prime was, the cartoon. It looks like you spent a lot of time modeling Prime but the texture and the pose are not helping him. I would rather see 5 posed nontransfromable interoperations of prime that are dynamic over 1 direct copy off the G1 toy. A good defuse map could salvage prime but his issues are rooted in the design he is based on and that is very hard to over come.
Most of the meshes I see are very dense. I see lots of objects that should be separate and not welded to each other. Having them all welded is causing the poly count to be VERY VERY high. This is just a guess but I could cut the poly count to 25% of what it is now, on the loader/mech thing (1st image).
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Something tells me someone told you once that intersecting objects cause problems? Some numbnut teacher at some school or some widely distributed tutorial keeps telling people that all meshes should be one joined piece. While he partly correct, like a toddler that points at a cat and says DOGGIE!" The toddler means fuzzy thing with 4 legs but is not schooled enough to understand the difference between a cat and a dog. Two planes sharing the same world space will cause Z-Buffer flickering problems, but only at angles that are close to perpendicular. But things that intersect at any angle greater than 10 degrees is perfectly acceptable, even on really old hardware, most of the advanced hardware people are developing games for can handle intersecting geomenty and actually handle it better than joined meshes.
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What area specifically look welded that you are seeing that look like poor construction?
[rant]
Something tells me someone told you once that intersecting objects cause problems? Some numbnut teacher at some school or some widely distributed tutorial keeps telling people that all meshes should be one joined piece. While he partly correct, like a toddler that points at a cat and says DOGGIE!" The toddler means fuzzy thing with 4 legs but is not schooled enough to understand the difference between a cat and a dog. Two planes sharing the same world space will cause Z-Buffer flickering problems, but only at angles that are close to perpendicular. But things that intersect at any angle greater than 10 degrees is perfectly acceptable, even on really old hardware, most of the advanced hardware people are developing games for can handle intersecting geomenty and actually handle it better than joined meshes.
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And this is why I Vig. I tried explaining that to my teacher who was telling the other students that all of their meshes had to be one piece. He said he would have to do research and get back with me to tell me if I was correct or not. Ahem. In his defense, he hasn't been in the industry for years and years. So maybe it was different then, but he should be keeping up to date.
Anyhow, as far as your site goes Ghostscape. The layout is nice, clean, and effective. Though, I would say don't be afraid to show your artistic/design skills through your site as well. You don't need to go overboard, but atleast show some colour theory. Something other than white on black. Beef up that description font another pt. Get rid of optimus, as said before. The low poly models are by far the best pieces, but Humphrey is the first thing that caught my eye. I think you would benefit from some more original characters like that. I would even recommend getting rid of "Level Elements from Wings of Megaira", or zooming out to give an in-game camera angle the way they were meant to be seen. As of now, being so close to them, they take away from your other pieces. I also agree with the density of the some of those assets that Vig pointed out.
Good job so far, needs more solid work on it to really fill it out.
Vig I really don't have much welded on my models, I'm fully aware that intersecting geometry works well. There are a couple of things welded on the mech, like the lights on the top, but much of it (things like the cylinders that wrap around the guns, the ammo boxes and ammo holder, etc,) are done with intersecting geometry.
What area specifically look welded that you are seeing that look like poor construction?
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- The little boxes on the side of the leg are all welded when they can be intersecting.
- The cylinder knees have two extra sets rings of polys they don't need and they are welded to the legs. Using simple cyliders that are slightly wider than the legs would let the legs bend inside the cylider when it animates.
- The ladder rungs don't need to conect to the edge of the ladder.
- Just a bunch of little things that would add up to some major detail. If your target is 7000 tris and you manage to shave out 2000-4000 that is a TON more detail you can pack in, you could even add rivets, bolts, antena, chamfer the edges of everything go totally nuts and still come in under 7000.
The most common come back for my poly miser coments is "Yeah but todays tech can totally handle 7,000 tris". that is correct it can, but would you rather have 7,000 tris of pure eye popping detail or 7,000 tris that comes off looking like 2,000.
If you want you can send me the max file and I'll spend a an hour or two hacking it down? I'm not offering this to be a dick but to hopefully open your eyes to a new way of doing things Vig at Vigville.com
Actually you're right all of those are welded. The original thinking was "less intersections is better for normal maps" but that doesn't really apply in those areas. There are some areas that are done with intersecting bits but you're right.
When I originally started the project I had a target of 8,000 triangles and when I came in under that I didn't optimize much more.
The legs however are actually pretty optimized - the center hinge peg is actually just a flat circle, and the reasoning behind the multiple rings for the leg is that when it animates you'll see the rings sliding, so replacing the hinge with a single cylinder instead of 3 wouldn't work as well for animation purposes.
But thanks for the paintover and the comments.
Thanks to everyone for all the helpful advice! Polycount is simply the best site for game artists
The last post was from 2006 dude, his portfolio improved since then.
edit: Ah Ashervisalis beat me to it lol
"Why does it suck?" not "Who does it suck." That latter can get sexual real quick.
Also, good job on the necro Andy.
@Ashervisalis
New portfolio? Heck, he shipped a Red Faction game hah!