My Deviant art constructive Critique required

Nemecys · May 2009

Hi guys im new to this forum and ive just started modelling, well ive been on a games development course at college and this was my first experience at 3DS Max just finishing first year, we dont really modely that often. Out of actualy assigments i think we have modelled maybe 10 different things MAX.
1 of those being an entire scene the other small character related things such as.. face modelling, character modelling, etc. so really total time of actually doing work in 3ds max is about 3 months of good solidwork like 6 hours a day if that makes sense (6 hours a day for 3months if that) so please be kind and im looking for constructive criticism as i would like to greatly improve my work,

http://www.nemecys.deviantart.com/

There is a link to my deviant art its probably well i thought the easiest way for you guys to comment and view my work rather then thread after thread if i work and comlpete more pieces i may post on here more

thank your very much for the help i will hopefully recieve

renderhjs · May 2009

this should be the real link:
http://www.nemecys.deviantart.com/gallery/
always drop your gallery first

lots of uncompleted single item stuff - with grayish renderings. Things to address:
- grayish renderings, see:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=62878&page=2#33
- try to focus on a complete scene. For example the gun could use some bullets or other assets, perhaps some nice texture and final neat renderings so you can put it as a finished work piece in your portfolio
- anatomy lessons (if you have a course somewhere around you, try to take some, or simply draw alot each day)

...and lots of other things that come with expierence

dolemite · May 2009

Welcome to Polycount!

The desert eagle is cool. You need to learn how to model properly. There are many smoothing errors across it becuase you have big Ngons on the sides. Try to keep things blocked off into quads and tries, with a even distribution of polygons.

To be honest, I would start a new thread with a new piece. Pick an object (maybe a desert eagle?) and model it. Post updates and get people's feedback.

[Deleted User] · May 2009

I recommend using more reference for your textures, and also relying less on photo-sourcing for the time being. If you learn to paint a good diffuse texture in PS, you'll be able to incorporate parts of photos much more effectively (and have less of a need to).

Right now, those textures look like they've got a bunch of overlaying stuff, but it's mostly not working together to make something specific. The glass one, for instance, appears to have a 'cracked paint over rusty metal' texture multiplied over noise-filtered greenish blue for the glass part, and the same texture continues over the frame, combined with a wood texture over light gray. But if we look at some glass pictures in Google Images (like this one from Cydonian.com), we can see that the glass cracks in a much different pattern, it appears a different color while reflecting the sky, etc.

So to get better results, you'd want to look at the reference and determine what you know about the material you're looking at, and how you know it. (eg. you know it's glass, because you can see through it; how do you know you can see through it and you're not just looking at something that color? what visual cues tell you what you're looking at?) And then when you know what key points define that material so that you know what is, paint those elements into your texture so it conveys that material too.

The best way to get good at the last part is to get lots of practice, lots of reference, and lots of custom brushes. Become intimately familiar with all of the brush settings available to you in Photoshop. Make useful custom brushes and save them onto a USB key so you'll have them on whichever school computer you're on. You could just download other peoples from dA, but it's worthwhile to get really good at making your own so that you can always get exactly the effect you want when you need to. But brushes alone won't really help you. You need the ability to duplicate what you see onto paper/pixels/whatever, and the easiest and quickest way to work up that skill is through life drawing and observational drawing in general. Keep a sketchbook of nothing but drawings of things you see in front of you and do quick sketches everywhere you go. Don't even worry about the quality, just practice constantly and you'll notice an improvement in how well (and how easily) you can draw any given thing. The mental process involved translates to anything you do artistically (3d modeling included) so it's worthwhile to invest the time in that kind of practice along with anything you do to improve technically.

Also, if you don't have the software at home, start spending a whole lot of time in your school's computer labs. You're paying them an assload of money largely for the privelage of having access to their equipment, so don't be shy about hogging the labs at every possible opportunity.

Marnik · May 2009

fly_soup wrote: »

I recommend using more reference for your textures, and also relying less on photo-sourcing for the time being. If you learn to paint a good diffuse texture in PS, you'll be able to incorporate parts of photos much more effectively (and have less of a need to).

Right now, those textures look like they've got a bunch of overlaying stuff, but it's mostly not working together to make something specific. The glass one, for instance, appears to have a 'cracked paint over rusty metal' texture multiplied over noise-filtered greenish blue for the glass part, and the same texture continues over the frame, combined with a wood texture over light gray. But if we look at some glass pictures in Google Images (like this one from Cydonian.com), we can see that the glass cracks in a much different pattern, it appears a different color while reflecting the sky, etc.

So to get better results, you'd want to look at the reference and determine what you know about the material you're looking at, and how you know it. (eg. you know it's glass, because you can see through it; how do you know you can see through it and you're not just looking at something that color? what visual cues tell you what you're looking at?) And then when you know what key points define that material so that you know what is, paint those elements into your texture so it conveys that material too.

The best way to get good at the last part is to get lots of practice, lots of reference, and lots of custom brushes. Become intimately familiar with all of the brush settings available to you in Photoshop. Make useful custom brushes and save them onto a USB key so you'll have them on whichever school computer you're on. You could just download other peoples from dA, but it's worthwhile to get really good at making your own so that you can always get exactly the effect you want when you need to. But brushes alone won't really help you. You need the ability to duplicate what you see onto paper/pixels/whatever, and the easiest and quickest way to work up that skill is through life drawing and observational drawing in general. Keep a sketchbook of nothing but drawings of things you see in front of you and do quick sketches everywhere you go. Don't even worry about the quality, just practice constantly and you'll notice an improvement in how well (and how easily) you can draw any given thing. The mental process involved translates to anything you do artistically (3d modeling included) so it's worthwhile to invest the time in that kind of practice along with anything you do to improve technically.

Also, if you don't have the software at home, start spending a whole lot of time in your school's computer labs. You're paying them an assload of money largely for the privelage of having access to their equipment, so don't be shy about hogging the labs at every possible opportunity.

Great advice ^_^ I've got 5 or 6 sketch books lying around my dorm, one of them is something like 5"x8" and great to take with me on the bus for creeping people ou- errrr, additional life drawing practice =D

Oh, and Nemecys, I'm elderyouth on deviant art, I left what advice I felt I could give there, good luck!

Nemecys · May 2009

renderhjs wrote: »

this should be the real link:
http://www.nemecys.deviantart.com/gallery/
always drop your gallery first

lots of uncompleted single item stuff - with grayish renderings. Things to address:
- grayish renderings, see:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=62878&page=2#33
- try to focus on a complete scene. For example the gun could use some bullets or other assets, perhaps some nice texture and final neat renderings so you can put it as a finished work piece in your portfolio
- anatomy lessons (if you have a course somewhere around you, try to take some, or simply draw alot each day)

...and lots of other things that come with expierence

Thanks for the quick note on using the gallery link ill refer to that next time, The greyish renderings are to to with teh fact i have alot of things as more WIP's then finished products im very inconsisten atm.

With the gun i will add textures bullets etc upon completion but i work in a very step by step style, so the textures i will leave till last.

Thank you for the critique i will keep it all in mind

Nemecys · May 2009

fly_soup wrote: »

I recommend using more reference for your textures, and also relying less on photo-sourcing for the time being. If you learn to paint a good diffuse texture in PS, you'll be able to incorporate parts of photos much more effectively (and have less of a need to).

Right now, those textures look like they've got a bunch of overlaying stuff, but it's mostly not working together to make something specific. The glass one, for instance, appears to have a 'cracked paint over rusty metal' texture multiplied over noise-filtered greenish blue for the glass part, and the same texture continues over the frame, combined with a wood texture over light gray. But if we look at some glass pictures in Google Images (like this one from Cydonian.com), we can see that the glass cracks in a much different pattern, it appears a different color while reflecting the sky, etc.

So to get better results, you'd want to look at the reference and determine what you know about the material you're looking at, and how you know it. (eg. you know it's glass, because you can see through it; how do you know you can see through it and you're not just looking at something that color? what visual cues tell you what you're looking at?) And then when you know what key points define that material so that you know what is, paint those elements into your texture so it conveys that material too.

The best way to get good at the last part is to get lots of practice, lots of reference, and lots of custom brushes. Become intimately familiar with all of the brush settings available to you in Photoshop. Make useful custom brushes and save them onto a USB key so you'll have them on whichever school computer you're on. You could just download other peoples from dA, but it's worthwhile to get really good at making your own so that you can always get exactly the effect you want when you need to. But brushes alone won't really help you. You need the ability to duplicate what you see onto paper/pixels/whatever, and the easiest and quickest way to work up that skill is through life drawing and observational drawing in general. Keep a sketchbook of nothing but drawings of things you see in front of you and do quick sketches everywhere you go. Don't even worry about the quality, just practice constantly and you'll notice an improvement in how well (and how easily) you can draw any given thing. The mental process involved translates to anything you do artistically (3d modeling included) so it's worthwhile to invest the time in that kind of practice along with anything you do to improve technically.

Also, if you don't have the software at home, start spending a whole lot of time in your school's computer labs. You're paying them an assload of money largely for the privelage of having access to their equipment, so don't be shy about hogging the labs at every possible opportunity.

Now that you point out the glass i definately feel as though i should have tried alot harder, your correct about the overlaying factor, it was merely to obtain the feel for glass as it would only ever be seen from a distance, it wasnt an attempt at making glass players would interact with.

The sketchbook idea sounds very very very good i am definately going to start doodling things on a more regular basis, it seems as if it would help me.

Would you mind explaining to me more about the painting a good diffuse, as the though of say painting my own wall is very daunting i wouldnt know where to star =S

As for using the college computers, well there pretty damn horrific but thats beside the point just like to point out my college sucks don't go there XD
i have the software available at home im never usually motivated enough to use it and very inexperience also but this experience has motivatedme more to improve myself

Thanks for the indepth very useful critique

Nemecys · May 2009

Marnik wrote: »

Great advice ^_^ I've got 5 or 6 sketch books lying around my dorm, one of them is something like 5"x8" and great to take with me on the bus for creeping people ou- errrr, additional life drawing practice =D

Oh, and Nemecys, I'm elderyouth on deviant art, I left what advice I felt I could give there, good luck!

ahh hey elder thanks for the comments also N-gons is that polygons? sorry never heard that term before i learn from one source being my friend whos imo a VERY good modeller for his age and hes never reffered to it he will probably know the meaning though XD

Marnik · May 2009

an n-gon is a face on a model that has more than 4 or 5 sides. Notice how on alot of models, the wires make a stretched square or a triangle? That's because it keeps the mesh clean and smooth and shows a good polyflow.

Where are you going to school at?

Nemecys · May 2009

ahh right i didnt know there was a term for that my friend told me that first time round never make a poly with more than 4 sides, the tutorial i watched about making a gun didnt mention that and his came out fine with mulitple sides, i was going to change that on my gun either conver to a mesh or just add the connects myself

and i got to college at Shrewsbury College of Arts and Tech its in the UK diabolically under funded we've got single cores and 5 y old dual cores at if not older with a mix of 8 and 7 so half the time we cant even move seats if say our computer overheats which is damn often cause i cant export my work

So rage worthy, no game engines either for us to use no Source or UE its horrific but oh well thankfully i have my friend to teach me instead of our media teacher for the games course :S lol

what about you?

[Deleted User] · May 2009

Nemecys wrote: »

Would you mind explaining to me more about the painting a good diffuse, as the though of say painting my own wall is very daunting i wouldnt know where to star =S

Sure. I just start with a flat color and then start laying down details that make it seem like what it's supposed to be. (I know, that sounds like an oversimplification) I made up an example, just to show what I'm talking about:
http://i41.tinypic.com/13z6a9f.jpg
It doesn't really explain the process explicitly, but it shows the custom brushes I used, which are what I used to describe the material from the reference. That second brush down was used for maybe 80% of it. I start by roughing it in and then keep going, getting more specific with things until it looks enough like what it should. In this case, that was about a 15 or 20 minute process.

Realistically though, if you're going for photorealistic results, there wouldn't normally be a reason to do an entire wall by hand anyway if you had photos you could use. It wouldn't be efficient. But for when you don't have photos, it's mad applicable.

Ben Mathis' website has tutorials on texturing and oodles of other stuff, and I don't have the link, but if you google "hard surface texturing tutorial" there's a really good one that comes up.

Nemecys · May 2009

thats quite a good example at first it looked more like a zoomed in version, i see would you reccomend this say for... skinning a character or something more... custom to what you were doing? or items? scenery is very limited more of alterations to a simple structure like trees only change in colour and shape, while a person varys in many other important aspects.

i hope this makes sense it probably doesn't it is 2 am here, but i have to say to all of you especial fly_soup

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

for taking enough interest in my progression, a person none of know, maybe never will, and are helping me improve by taking your own time to show and tell me

what an awesome community

P.S. ill come back to this tommorow and read it over again and probably edit this post XD

EDIT:

Okay edit time.... just incase people were wondering im learning from Cyph3rs hes a very good teacher tbf, par his anger outbursts and urge for more speed XD

Nemecys · May 2009

now that you have all helped me with my work, i would like to see if you guys have any ideas that i could attempt to model and/or texture to help me practice and improve thanks

s0id3 · May 2009

A good old crate.

Snader · May 2009

heck no. barrels for the win.

or you could try something more original:
-painters easel
-piano
-desk chair (+ desk?)
-a set of office supplies
-model your own digital camera/phone/computer
-cuckoo clock
-headphones
-pair of sneakers
-teddybear
-barbeque
-you could choose a few of your own items that say something about you and make a stillife of sorts about who you are (think clothes, hobbies, job etc)

My Deviant art constructive Critique required

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