Hey Andy great portfolio....I was pimping it on PC earlier today as a great example of what can be done with blogger (....and a scary amount of talent doesn't hurt either :) )
I don't regret the career, though I do regret the huge amount of student debt I acquired in the process when cheaper alternatives seem plenty these days.
If you look at the localmaps that came with doom3, they pack a silly amount of data into the texturespace- this model is 422 tris, with a 512x256 texture (it's squished into 0-1 in the uv view here)
Huge improvement! I'd try reducing the amount of dither (at this scale it looks like a very rough surface) and work some hue-variation in to the ramps. You're making progress!
This seems a whole lot scarier, mostly the amount of money someone is supposedly willing to pay for it: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14&item=3774640005&rd
I've had the same bake-dot-issue and the only thing that worked for me was to give the cage's Push Amount one or two click upwards...then hit render - voil
Anyone have any insight to this trend I'm seeing of Simpleviewer to display a large amount of images? I'm personally not a fan, but it is very upfront and to the point. I was just curious.