OK! so, here I am, starting this art dump, and thus finally finishing this portfolio of mine. Had the worst year last ... year. so, here I am starting new looking for you lovely people for guidance and constructive criticism.

First off I think I should lay out the plans and goals of this art dump:

1. To put together a nicely balanced Environment Artist Portfolio
2. To elevate my skills and challenge myself
3. To hopefully inspire the people in this site that inspire me

I plan also, to create about 3 environments and a Myriad of props.

The first scene.

Empire:

A totalitarian government building, this is heavily inspired by 1984 book, and Art Deco architecture. I want to put a totalitarianist twist on art deco and get a moodily lit environment like dark city and achieve a vibe that's at the same time welcoming, yet ominous.

Just like 1984 the scene will have tele-screens propaganda and party banners. I will be changing the story for the sake of my scene.

and here are some of the High Poly's: (sorry for crappy screen grabs)




























P.S.

I'll try my hardest and darnest to update this every Sunday. or whenever i can in between the week.

unbelievable!
Some of the best Env model pieces Ive ever seen >_<
Do you use array tool alot?
Thats the only way I could see this being possible

Floored. This will be an epic thread. I can not wait to see lowpolys of these. Keep up the good work!

amazing quality and details, could you explain your workflow a little? i'm guessing with those kinds of polycounts you're using some sort of sculpting software then just bringing back into max for rendering? i'm pretty sure my computer would choke horribly with those kinds of polycounts!

Originally Posted by tharle

amazing quality and details, could you explain your workflow a little? i'm guessing with those kinds of polycounts you're using some sort of sculpting software then just bringing back into max for rendering? i'm pretty sure my computer would choke horribly with those kinds of polycounts!

I dont think he's sculpting them. It looks like its box modelled and then just copied out since most of the work have several symmentrical axes he can use to fill out he piece.

That being said, damn awesome work man! Good presentation and fantastic model and visual quality on every piece! I really dig the whole art deco style you got going.

God I loved Dark City. Looking forward to seeing these textured.

Originally Posted by tharle

amazing quality and details, could you explain your workflow a little? i'm guessing with those kinds of polycounts you're using some sort of sculpting software then just bringing back into max for rendering? i'm pretty sure my computer would choke horribly with those kinds of polycounts!

What version of 3DS Max do you have? 2012 got significant improvements to its performance under high polygon counts.

Lot of nice design work. Very art deco. What are you using for reference or inspiration?

Excellent

God thank you so much everyone this is more than i expected it's the greatest thing to wake up to. I'll try to answer each question.

Bonebrew22: lol thanks dood, Um the tools i use vary a lot it's usually for what i need at the moment that being said i regularly use, the grid, path deform, bend, ffd, push, shell... ugh i'm blanking but yeah those are mainly it.

Poffington: thanks, dood, i absolutely love your work.

Tharle: I'm not sure i have a workflow per say lol but what i usually do i think of a piece i need and then get the references suitable and try to distill small amounts of details and combine them. I'll try to record myself and post it up towards the end of the project.

Wrath: I found a bunch of images thru google images, picasa, and some really awesome flickr groups. http://www.flickr.com/groups/artdeco...ool/tags/door/

also, this website www.decopix.com but mainly, google images.

Bibendum: Using 2010 at the moment, my system isn't perticularly fast it's just AMD dual core 2.6ghz and 4gbs of ram and a small quadro card.

thank you so much guys! i'll try to post some of the bakes i have soon as i'm trying to find a suitable color pallet for the scene.

yep, super-subscribed. this is gonna be interesting to watch unfold

Ok so this thing has been a headache all day but i finally got some screen grabs of the bake.

will need to redo them cause one of the uvs mess up.

why bother connecting all of the geometry on the top of the base that goes to the rivets. you could just as easily make the rivets and base into separate elements and save yourself A LOT of geometry.

I like the globe... and the bake looks flawless to me.

Looking classy, keep it up

I'm pretty much gobsmacked at the high level of quality you've got going on here man! This will no doubt be a thread of epic proportions!

Looking pretty awesome sir! I agree with Oniram though.

On that last picture, you can easily see there's a lot of stuff that you could get away with less geometry, even making it look better that way, leaving the normal map do what it does best.

Nice stuff tho, congrats!

Really nice work. Loving the style of the assets. Gigantic fan of dystrophic fiction and especially Orwell, really looking forward to seeing this complete.

I humbly suggest this link for some references.
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009...-of-third.html

Thanks again guys.

Oniram, you're right i took your advise and optimized the model and cut some of the fat!

Walrus! you're a lifesaver! I've been looking (and failing) for Third Reich Architecture thanks so much! this helps a ton!

I think i want to paint the enrionment in a military theme so some green bronze-ish textures with gold and marble. still playing around with colors.

oh yeah here's the cleaner mesh:

Your polycount distribution is bad. Your going to dence in the circular and bending areas were you dont need to be. Its not that its a high tri count, but a unnecassary high tri count. Could drop kick it by at least 3K me thinks~~

Originally Posted by whats_true

Your polycount distribution is bad. Your going to dence in the circular and bending areas were you dont need to be. Its not that its a high tri count, but a unnecassary high tri count. Could drop kick it by at least 3K me thinks~~

damn... yeah i see what you're saying. I think my only explanation is i didn't want it to become an eye sore, since the model is huge in the game engine its about 400px high
so i really wanted to to distribute polys in the curves direction. What would you do? and what particular parts would you trim?

cool stuff! i love that twist to the base of the globe, great character to the piece!

so, i went back and compromised and optimized this thing its probably gonna be the last time i mess around with it, pretty happy with the results. Shrunk the Polycount from 9336 to 7332. So about a flat 2k tris. I'm gonna keep in mind what you guys said about the distribution.

here's the new one:

agree on the polycount, but damn this is good i think you can go lower then 7k though
I need to learn modelling skills as good as you do before i talk more - cheers! subscribed lol

some cool stuff here, but i'm concerned with the widths of some of the edges on your high poly models. your screenshots don't have anti aliasing, but are fairly large, and you can see that many of your meshes have shapes which are getting lost already, so just imagine what they're going to look like at harsh angles (like the floor/ceiling meshes) or from afar (any background props.)

make sure you really strive for those nice fat edges so your meshes bake down nicely and read well at odd angles and from a distance.