[Portfolio] NanaD, Props & Environments
I'm getting really close to graduating, and finally got my website up and working.
http://shawnadickson.com/
I'm looking for critiques on everything, I tried to follow the advice in "your portfolio repels jobs" and make the site as easy to use as possible.
Right now I know the link to the wireframes & textures for the house isn't working. I'm still piecing together some renders for that.
I've got a week left until our portfolio show and I want to polish everything as much as possible.
Thanks so much!
http://shawnadickson.com/
I'm looking for critiques on everything, I tried to follow the advice in "your portfolio repels jobs" and make the site as easy to use as possible.
Right now I know the link to the wireframes & textures for the house isn't working. I'm still piecing together some renders for that.
I've got a week left until our portfolio show and I want to polish everything as much as possible.
Thanks so much!
Replies
I look at your portfolio and im left thinking "meh, its fine". Sounds a bit harsh but ill explain why.
I dont know if the majority of assets you have on display are from the same project. The reason i say this is because your portfolio has this kind of depressing feel to it, the colours are dark and quite grey, same with the lighting and thats echoed throughout many of your assets with a couple of exceptions probably because their subject matter is quite dark and gloomy. If they are not then maybe its a style choice you have made? This would be fine if you had variation in your portfolio but you dont at the moment.
I want to look at a portfolio and be excited, i want to see something new and unfortunately the stuff you have shown, whilst well executed in areas, isnt exciting because of its very nature.
I think the artwork you show has a really big effect on how people remember your portfolio. Whilst you may have succeeded in conveying the dark and gloomy feel of many of your assetts that doesnt excite me in any way. My advice would be to try something slightly more upbeat with a different colour pallette to show diversity. Maybe make a whole environment out of it as you have suggested you are an environment artist.
The only other suggestion that i have is to work on your material definition. Taking the Mausoleum as an example. The base and the walls are the same texture and are quite noisy. This doesnt help translate the shape very well. I would take more inspiriation from your ref. Look how light the concrete is in areas and how the dirt falls on the building. Just because its concrete there are other colours in there other than grey. Cool blues, dark greens and also creamy textures. I think you just need to look at the pallettes your using. Its easy to make everything look monochrome.
I hope the advice helps and you find it constructive.
Here are my impressions:
You have a clean site with easy navigation. YOu present some nice assets an environments there which in my opinion have good potential.
But I also think, that for some assets you could get more out of them. So here are some suggestions:
For the house I would suggest to redo the lighting. Try to get some clear areas of light an shadow. At the moment there is some light and dark areas, but no clear shadow of the pillars for example.
For the hearse I suggest to go into the texture. At the moment you can't really tell which material it is made of. I gueas it should be worn out wood. The could be more detail in this as well as color. The texture is very greyish. Also I'm missing some worn-out ornaments, or bolts, or pins or what ever fits on such a thing. Also I would leave out he switched on lantern, because it doesn't make sense when the hearse is broken.
The texture of the mausoleum could also use a bit more detail. At the moment it looks like you used some tileable textures, but as you have a customized texture for the model I would suggest to get more special details into it. Like dirt on the base, or areas with dosh or twines.
The tree can also be improved by pimping the texture. The texture applied to the model doesn't look like you actually use a 1024. You can get more out of it.
Leave out or at least turn down the glow-effekt. INstead add an ambientmap, so that the eyes can have a glow. Also I would use improve the lighting on the tree, such that it gets some dark shadowed areas. Those will make a nice contrast to the glowing eyes,
So far my impression. Good work so far, ut there still things to improve.
- That broken hearse (looks burnt to me).. why is the lamp still glowing? doesn't seem broken to me. maybe it has gameplay functionality to draw the viewers eye but it doesn't seem like it.
- The broken mausoleum. I think the diffuse could be 256x256 too.. at least from the views you are portraying it from. Not sure why you have to make it extra big in this case.
- Spooky tree needs a lot of rework I think. The end quality doesn't justify the texture sizes imo. It kinda looks blurry but it shouldn't. Trees are hard.. I wouldn't even dream of trying it myself
- Mausoleum. You spelt it mansoleum on the image. Also I'm not sure about the scale. The door is supposed to be huge I imagine (the bricks are small and the "window" on top is small too). But the wooden planks covering the door seem huge in comparison. And who is going to look out of the windows on the door? Seems like you took an image of a door and smacked it on top of your model.
see.. the problem is.. the colors are dark and gloomy, which is fine. but it doesn't give me that FEELING. it just doesn't feel authentic so to say. like the victorian house scene is a little too well-lit imo.
I'd suggest putting each model into context and then give "well-lit" pictures next to it. it's good to show that you know what things are actually going to be used for and it doesn't seem like it.
The good news is that it doesn't seem to be a lack of talent, just try a different approach to your work. Keep at it, you have come a long way since I first saw you post the spooky tree. Good luck.
the Victorian House scene is in Unreal 3 but unfortunately it doesn't looking like a picture in Unreal 3 to me anyways. You could add a lot of mood to this scene, terrain in the back ground, floor fog, etc. Make it look really scary. Something like this: http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/909/909768/batman-arkham-asylum-20080912001310895.jpg also, if the house is modular, then you should be showing the pieces of the house separately. It will help understand how you built it from the modular pieces.
The Hearse scene feels the same way, terrain and grass? C'mon make it look a little believable
the presentation of these scenes will help your portfolio
I would axe the tree(har har), it is in my opinion the weakest thing in your portfolio. The model is blobby and the whole branch structure just isn't working. I would at the very least look up some references of trees and re-do it. I also think you could come up with something better than an intensely glowing face to make it "creepy" as well.
Random trees I found:
http://www.jimzim.us/pics/hawaii/d06.jpg
http://ucscplant.ucsc.edu/ucscplant/Grounds/images/bw_oak_tree.gif
Second to that, your textures/and materials could use some cleaning-up and refining. Like it was said before, it
s hard to tell what some things are made out of and some of your choices are odd. I've never seen rock like that on a victorian house(at least as a balcony), unless the columns are made of steel, I don't know how they would support and upper story made of that heavy stone. Give the construction materials some thought, look at some references and it will make the whole thing read much, much better. The glow coming from the windows is too white and intense as well, I would back it down a lot and warm-up the color. Some material tweaks in unreal would be helpful too.
Snagged some quick pics of victorian houses:
http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/42eb4dc7-186f-4b54-a939-35f9d3aa06f1.jpg
http://users.rcn.com/scndempr/dave/schoolimages/queenanne1.jpg
http://z.about.com/d/architecture/1/0/h/k/staugustine007.JPG
The hearse doesn't look broken so much as smooshed. Try breaking one of the wheels and/or removing it and moving it a distance away. It also suffers from confusing materials, what I expect to be splintered wood reads as charred blakc concrete. Also, the lantern is still hanging the direction it would be if it was upright. Since it's just a hearse, you might want to think about putting that in the scene with the house and turning that into a more fleshed out environment.
Your war wagon looks like it has some potential, but it also needs some material help. Since it was inspired by WoW, this would be a great chance for a softer, hand-painted, more colorful textured piece. The wood texture you have on there is too noisy, there's too much going on, nowhere for the eye to rest. Also, there's no tri count or wireframe I can see. That could be a pretty cool piece if you go back and give the textures another shot.
The modeling on the mausoleum looks pretty good(though I think you could take out some subdivisions in places like the floor especially). Again though, the texture is uniform and noisy. Maybe try making the roof a different material, the trim, the sidewalk, etc so it doesn't look like you just slapped a tiling brick texture on it and called it done.
All in all I think you could re-tool some of your props and the victorian house into a scene and maybe turn the mausoleum into something. I'd like to see some more varying subject matter and color palettes in your portfolio. All you really need is 3 really kick ass environments to make it happen. Sorry if this all comes off as harsh, like I said before, it's my intention to help you here. We've all been where you are. Good luck and keep it up!
So first up will be the Mausoleum.
Mausoleum: The texture is dark, monochromatic and too noisy, should look at the reference more for inspiration and get the worn look into there. (Dirt and Wear)
I spelt Mausoleum wrong on one of the images.
Break the bottom off and rebuild it to save polys instead of having it connected to the walls.
Thanks so much again, I can't believe how wonderful these crits are.
I'm trying to get some color and wear and tear in the texture.
Diffuse only, no specs or normals:
The old texture:
But I have a question at this moment about NanaD texturing and the issue of dirtying up...forgive my possible noobness here.
if NanD was to add dirt and such things like bird crap rain streaks etc....just general dirtying up.....how would he stop the tiling since its a modular peice?
I assume the whole thing is on 1 texture sheet since its made from 3 modular peices copied however many times...meaning add more dirt/grime etc means more very ovious looking tiling.
Is the answer to simpley to use up more texture memory by making another texture sheet to add this much needed varity or make more room on the existing texture sheets making the overall texture lower in rez.....or looking at whats_true just wrote is grunge and such these days done almost exsclusivily with decal planes?
Hopefully sort out my remaining bit of confusion
Anyway I agree,more general grime needs to be added ...I like the idea of things like bird crap. I also agree its seems like a very noisey and hard to read texture.
Not a fan of the new colours,reason being it looks you have just kinda thrown them in there and prefer the old version due to the subtilty of the colours, personal taste maybe.
Good luck.
John
Anyways, I think you sort of answered your own question in a way Bronco, but I hope this helps.
Study the texture on the ref you provided. Look at the dirt, the colours and also the general wear and tear.
Your map choice is confusing. You have a 1024 texture for the diffuse and then 256 textures for the normals and spec yet i dont see the door on any of those textures. This means that somewhere you have another texture (possibly 3 if you have normals and specs for the door also) so thats six! textures for 1 minor assett. Hmmm.
I would create a 1024 diffuse, normal and spec for this including the door then if it required me to down res it i could. I think you need to plan your texture layout a bit better, cholden has a website talking about tiling textures. If not do a search for "thirding" and you will find it on the forums somewhere.
This is for your portfolio, so you really need to pull out all the stops. I would make it more elaborate, maybe even do some carved stone bits and/or gargoyles on top, stairs with rusted wrought iron handrails, things like that. I would also consider fattening up the arch details around the doors and the columns. Anything to give it more history, character and story. Why is this here, why is it significant, why do I want to go explore this place?
All of this can be done with reusable/tiling/thirding textures. A tile for the roof, the trim, a reusable window bit, one for the doorways and the stone tile you had before. 1024 diff is more than enough to have it all in there. After you get all that down you can do some alpha'd vines and plants and then add alpas for wear and tear. I hope some of this was helpful. Keep it up.
2) The env in the Broken Hearse scene is pretty bad... You could do a lot with the lighting and some minor terrain changes and really help this along.
3) Looks like your spec maps are just copies of your diffuse? Sometimes that can be a good place to start, but really I think you need to be more thoughtful about applying spec. If its not being used its a waste.
Regarding the texture tiling: Take the aformentioned suggestions others have given you and see if you can also bake an ambient occlusion map, then multiply it over your tiled diffuse texture node to break the tiling down even more. You should be able to do this easily in Unreal 3, and also by using a Layered Shader along with a Multiply/Divide node in Maya.