I'm currently debating whether or not I should just focus on one or both. Most the attention grabbing stuff on Artstation seem to be stylized PBR. So far I just have portfolio work that is hand-painted. Anyone have any suggestions? I really enjoy hand painting, but can't help but feel like the PBR route is the right way to…
This would no longer be PBR, so let's not confuse matters by calling it so. If you're messing with the shaders specifically to break physically based rendering principals, it's an NPR (non-photorealistic) rendering pipeline. You can, however, do straight up hand painted maps for all the standard PBR map types…
My gut reaction says stylized PBR has more career options, since that's what big games like Overwatch or Crash Bandicoot are doing. When I think of 'hand painted diffuse only' it's mostly mobile/PC games although even they are making the switch to a fully PBR pipeline too. Although, I don't see the harm in focusing on…
@LSheridan looking at your artstation I advise you do some stylized PBR assets. I really like what you have up there but it's all diffuse only. It would be good to show you can do proper reflective/gloss values. I love stylized PBR stuff. Can still have that watercolor-y handpainted look but stuff like metals really pop.
You're kind of just playing with semantics, though. Based on the conversation, he seems to be referring specifically to the Overwatch style when he says "Stylized PBR", which I'd say is the most common representation of that.
Sorry I didn't clarify, I guess I meant just hand-painted diffuse compared to doing any kind of PBR workflow on a stylized character. Most direct examples being WoW compared to Overwatch.
"hand-painted" vs "stylized" isn't a thing. You can do stylized PBR, you can do hand painted PBR, you can do hand painted stylized PBR, and you can do hand painted, stylized, NPR. None of these ideas are mutually inclusive or exclusive. Hand painted simply means you painted something by hand. You may choose to exaggerate…