Portfolio Feed back

obrien_jimmy

Hi

Ive been putting together a portfolio of sorts lately and need some feed back on what people think of it.

Theres some video links down below.

Id really appreciate feedback regarding the stuff ive put together so I know what people both think of it and hopefully what an employer wants from a 3d artist.

Also if anyones looking for someone of use in 3d max please dont hesitate to contact me

http://vimeo.com/27319496

http://vimeo.com/33456373

http://vimeo.com/32819315

Thanks in advance

Jimmy.

watchingd

Hey Jimmy,

Looking through your portfolio its fairly impressive, did you teach yourself or take a course?

I would recommend looking at some gnomonschool student reel's to get a general comparison in a similar field.

obrien_jimmy

Hey

I was thought mainly in college what I know but I have to be honest with you a major amount of what I learned is all by myself and just spending large amounts of time looking at tutorials and trial and error and lots of hair pulling. The basics in college even though we were promised LOTS more and never got it for one reason or another.

I appreciate the feedback by the way.

red_ice

Hi jimmy!

First off whats your background in 3d? Where are you studying and what year are you in?

Its obvious that you have an understanding of the software, however if i was to pick away at it and take notes on the main video (which i did), i would have the following to say.

The camaro

1. over all structure is good.
2. There is weight/bulk to the model.
3. There are too many inconsistencies.
4. The wheels look different to the body, they are of a higher standard.
5. The lines don't match the car, and you can see into the model. Killing the illusion of weight.
6. The smoothing is terrible and the light is very harsh.
7. Too round. Edges are too close together causing the bumps.

It looks as tho you worked on the polys rather than the edges/vertices of the model. The paneling on a car should be flush and smooth. A good tip for this is to model the basic shape of the car with as low polygons as possible. Put turbo smooth on, a few iterations, isoline display, then work with preview mode on on each edge/vertex. This will give you the end result as you model.

Each of your panels dont match, and your windscreen is kinked. if they were made up with low polys, they would line up and flow better. Only add polys to pin down the shape, NEVER EVER add polys where they arent needed.

1. much better result when textured and lit.
2. this may be your strongest point.
3. Good texture and light will cover up a bad model.
4. look into better glass/see through plastic texturing.
5. better animation renders, too low fps. not smooth

Your texturing isnt bad, its not great tho. It looks like a c4d render. Default scanline renderer is very limiting, and weak. Start using Mental ray, it comes with max as standard. If you really want to go all out, look into vRay. It is most definitely where it is at, it will improve your texture and light ten fold, literally. My texture and light is Infinitely better now that I use vRay.


enterprise engine room

1. looks too cartoony.
2. No bumps,
3. basic light,
4. mainly looks like rudimentary shapes positioned into place rather than a moulded polygon set.
5. The floor is stretched.

learn how to use FFD modifiers and work bumps and displacement maps and again, get into vRay. You can clearly model polys to the shapes you want, include that in the scenes aswell!


Viper plane
very nice model. Again tho, some of the paneling seems to be out of position. nicely textured.



film academy
cup looks too big for the seats. The seats look melted, as do the back wall panels.


Google sketchup stuff looks nice.

Main enemy
looks great. nice lines however the edge flow looks off in the wireframes. Where you have the chest panels should have a straight edge flow shaping the chest, that edge flow is going around the back of the panel, this looks bad in wireframe!


z-brush
stuff is nice, looks very low poly tho, and low detail for today's standards. The reason people use zBrush/mudbox is because it allows you to work with millions of polygons. It is not intended (although a lot of people seem to think it is) as a lazy way to learn how to model. You can shape polys in max/maya/c4d and imo you would have more control over it in those applications. Build your mesh with a proper edge flow in <insert software> then import the .obj to zBrush and take it up to the millions.


I may come across as harsh, I don't mean to, I'm not by any stretch amazing at 3d but I understand what it takes to be good at the software. I've been working with max about 10 years now, still a huge mountain to climb! There is a load of potential in your work. You really have to pay attention to the small details, in particular, the smoothing and lines of your models.

obrien_jimmy

Hey

Yeah i dont mind the criticism atall to be honest.
At themoment im not in college atall I finished up last year and in the meantime just doing my own thing in 3D non professionally and just trying to improve my skills.

My latest was the transforming bumblebee which I worked quite alot on and just finished.

red_ice

obrien_jimmy wrote: »

Hey

Yeah i dont mind the criticism atall to be honest.
At themoment im not in college atall I finished up last year and in the meantime just doing my own thing in 3D non professionally and just trying to improve my skills.

My latest was the transforming bumblebee which I worked quite alot on and just finished.

Great stuff jimmy, it was ment in a constructive manor. Its obvious you know what you are doing with the software. Your modelling on the bumblebee project looks like it was built with too many polys before the smoothing was applied to it, and the changes made to fine tune the model are what caused it to look off.

It looks to me like you need to simplify your work a whole lot more, basic shape, then pin your corners into position. The idea is to keep a model as low poly as possible, and if you removed polys from the bumblebee project id say it would be a whole lot better looking.