Hi happy polycounters. Just finished my portfolio (with the help of http://looak.se).

Please tell me what you think of it. I know the design of the site isn't that special :P, but im more interested of your opinions about the content.

Lol, forgot the link: www.jacob3d.com

Here's a pic to draw your attention

looooooooooove it man

sup holmes, that folio be poppin, but I'm bout to drop some dope wisdom up in this b:

- Too many samey shots of the subway. Consider having an area in the subway env where the light fixtures are broken and the surfaces are lit only by bounced light.
- Overall diffuse colors for different surfaces of the subway have too much contrast between them, which is hampering your ability to convey lighting. Brighten up your darkest base diffuse tones and tone down your brightest.
- Specify what was used to create your renders. 3DS MAX? Maya? Marmoset? UDK? If you are using a realtime solution, make sure they know!
- I know I can set the youtube video to 720p, and you know you can, but will the person scanning for recruits know? You might be better off not giving them the option of crap res video at all if you can't have it default to 720p.

That tank is shit hot. Great lighting on all your work actually.

I think the video turntables are totally unnecessary and actually make your work look worse. Otherwise, great work.

Only thing I have to say is in terms to the FN FAL. Why does it have duct tape? I know it's a picky question, but it just doesn't seem like it has any other use than giving grip (unless you have some sort of gripping issues).

Thanks A BUNCH for the feedback .

Zack F: The shots of the subway is in the game-engine we are using to make games (so sadly no bounced light). I know it can look a bit dull, and i will fix this, just havent had the time. We are using a predifened color scheme for the the game so it looks better ingame when your always seeing the same colors, but i understand where your coming from. Will do my best to make it better.

Im using Cgfx in maya for most shots, will be specifing how things a rendered. Great tip.

About the youtube clip... This is probebly pretty wise, had a guy looking at my site (from a company) and he thought the quality was bad, so I had to remind him that he had the option of 720. (however he really liked the fact that i had turnaround videos) Will fix it for sure!

Titan: Duct tape is pretty useless. But it was for a "gangsta" game and we had to make it so it looked somewhat "special". Check out my "Games" tab man

woooow..
I love your tank. nice texture work and presentation...
One thing I would get rid of is the character you put on the second shot...
is it photoshoped? I don't know but it is not helping....

I have to agree with Zack about the video thing. Unfortunately it's something I thought about using in my own portfolio, but seeing it in practice makes me want to reconsider. I do however like the idea of presenting a turntable of the model so, is there any other alternative?

Quicktime could be used and would get rid of the low res problems but I don't like the idea of forcing people to install the plugin. I don't even have it installed myself, I hate it.

Could it be done in Flash? Like, import the turntable movie as images into the timeline. Or is there any free template/plugin/whatever that would make this easier and better, like having controls such as the turntables on the ZBrush website.

Anyway, food for thought.

Looks pretty good, though I didn't even watch the movies I checked out all the pics though some really nice stuff there man. Great lighting on all of them.

Yeah, generally speaking its better to have high resolution images than videos. I wish I could really see some huge shots versus the vids.

I think your work is really great, especially for a student, its awesome.

The main thing I would crit art wise is your metal (the guns, and tank). It looks overly shiney to me, like polished metal, where I would expect it to a lot less so. I feel like its so close, but just isn't quite right.

Anyways, good luck on the internship hunt!

Your resume is very confusing at first glance. I can tell you I spent 11 KY-Point in character desing. am I doint that know as my job? Heck no! None of that stuff is needed imo. You spent time rigging. Does that mean I should hire you as a rigger? You know shaders. Well done!

Piont is, all of this should show in your work, not telling me what you did in school. Its all moot if its not applied to what you do (and want to do).

Also, you dont need to show me your flats in the turn around videos. If I want to see them, I can just scroll down. No need to show me something I can hardley see.

Good work over all though. Grand stuff mate!

Thanks again for the feedback and positive comments (it warms my heart ).
I will try to get to it ASAP.

wasabi: I put planes of characters on one pic to give the viewer a sence of scale. it dosent look that good, but I dont really think it F***s up the picture either.

felipefrango: I think youtube is a great alternative, because you dont have to install anything. Having to install anything will turn some people away. Mabey it will get better when I set the movie standard to play in HD.

BradMyers82: I agree on the metal. I think its the gloss map being to bright. I will TRY to fix this, but chanses are I might not have the time

whats_true: I know some coureses can seem trivial, but I want to show the people who look at my portolio that I have gone thru a thorough education at the game assembly. I want them to know I'm not just about the art .
Banebladevideo= first video test, vill get rid of the flats when I have the time.


Good stuff everyone. I want to stress how much I appreciate the feedback you are giving me. Keep It coming. I will fix the most essential stuff as soon as I have time,
and I always appreciate positive feedback about my work. ;)

Originally Posted by Chclve

Thanks again for the feedback and positive comments (it warms my heart ).
I will try to get to it ASAP.

wasabi: I put planes of characters on one pic to give the viewer a sence of scale. it dosent look that good, but I dont really think it F***s up the picture either.

I get your intention but I think it could be done differently. You could try putting a 3D human model there (in the appropriate style of course) and assign a black material to it so you just see it's silhouette. When you texture it like you did it looks like you had intentions other than conveying scale and it looks weird, cause it looks like they're supposed to be part of the set but at the same time they're flat planes. Kinda mindfuckin'.

That said I think your vehicle design should communicate the scale without the need of exterior help. Something like a ladder attached to the side could sell it.

Originally Posted by Chclve

felipefrango: I think youtube is a great alternative, because you dont have to install anything. Having to install anything will turn some people away. Mabey it will get better when I set the movie standard to play in HD.

That's the point, as far as I know you can't do that. Plus, I think movies are only convenient to show off levels and environments, I don't see how a video turntable of a character or prop would do you any good since the whole point is to be able to inspect the model from any angle, statically. I did some research and I think something like this would be much more useful.

Originally Posted by felipefrango

I get your intention but I think it could be done differently. You could try putting a 3D human model there (in the appropriate style of course) and assign a black material to it so you just see it's silhouette. When you texture it like you did it looks like you had intentions other than conveying scale and it looks weird, cause it looks like they're supposed to be part of the set but at the same time they're flat planes. Kinda mindfuckin'.

That said I think your vehicle design should communicate the scale without the need of exterior help. Something like a ladder attached to the side could sell it.



That's the point, as far as I know you can't do that. Plus, I think movies are only convenient to show off levels and environments, I don't see how a video turntable of a character or prop would do you any good since the whole point is to be able to inspect the model from any angle, statically. I did some research and I think something like this would be much more useful.

Yeah I agree with you. I know its not a good solution, yours sound better, its just one picture, so ill probebly change it .

That is an awesome viewer! Will look into that fo sho!

I've got home and tested it myself, seem pretty easy to set up, you just copy the code from the example page and as long as everything is in the right folders you're set. Anyway let us know of any updates!

A tiny update. Set youtube videos to start in HD. Added Some descriptive text to each project.

Will try the turntable flash viewer next week, BUT it requires the person to install flash so Im not sure I will add it.

Ill try to fix the bigger things next week

Flash and Javascript are necessary to use YouTube anyway, so I don't think it's a problem.

Originally Posted by felipefrango

Flash and Javascript are necessary to use YouTube anyway, so I don't think it's a problem.

Aha! In that case I Will definitely try it

Out of curiosity though, how did you set the videos to start in HD? I thought this was only controllable from the viewer's end.

i pasted hd=1 in the link :P. You can use "play in hd" when you get the embedded link

Oh cool, just like that. I'll try to remember that, thanks.

Small update.
no more flats in baneblade video. No more marines in baneblade pic.

Looked into the flash turnaround thing, but its too much work for me to make it look good so ill skip it for now.

Working on a acog scope for our fps project. here's a pic

You have some really nice work in there. I would focus the portfolio on your best models. The subway environment does not look as good as the models. If you're looking for professional work, I would reduce the subway page to a few of the best images, or consider eliminating that page completely.

Specific crits on the subway:
- As ZackF pointed out, there is too much contrast in the diffuse textures. I would consider reworking those textures for the portfolio, even if it doesn't match your course work.

- The walls and floors have some distortion in them, like some verts were moved slightly. Maybe that is supposed to represent damage or decay? It sort of looks like a rendering error or bad UVs in some shots.

-The square aspect ratio of the screenshots looks out of place, almost old school Consider cropping them to the usual widescreen format.

For all pages, the videos should be at the bottom of the page, not the top. The videos are HD but the preview images are still low-res and make a terrible first impression.

Good luck!

Thanks for the response. I will fix some things on the subway (like straighten the verts and trying other colors) next week. I'll see what I manage.

An update on the site. Added a project with some props.

Moved the youtube videos down a notch. Now the first thing you see is a picture. Looks better, thanks for the crit.