Critique my failed art test
polycounter lvl 10
Hey guys, I recently completed an art test for a studio and they turned me down.
They said the modeling was up to par, but the texturing, not so much.
The test was to create a spiked barrier, under 700 tris and with a 512 diffuse, spec in the alpha and a 512 normal. and then fully integrate it into the udk
It was up to me to make the concept, and it ended up at 709 tris.
Its truck tailgates with wheel and axle backing.
the major issues they had was the blurry look and lack of depth in the rust,
a lack of grunge on the handle,
and the bad looking spikes (texture wise)
My problem with it is that I went a bit far with multiple objects, and if I stuck to a more solid barrier, I could have saved alot of tris in the tires and such.
I then could have used my texture space to a better extent.
What would you have done differently?
They said the modeling was up to par, but the texturing, not so much.
The test was to create a spiked barrier, under 700 tris and with a 512 diffuse, spec in the alpha and a 512 normal. and then fully integrate it into the udk
It was up to me to make the concept, and it ended up at 709 tris.
Its truck tailgates with wheel and axle backing.
the major issues they had was the blurry look and lack of depth in the rust,
a lack of grunge on the handle,
and the bad looking spikes (texture wise)
My problem with it is that I went a bit far with multiple objects, and if I stuck to a more solid barrier, I could have saved alot of tris in the tires and such.
I then could have used my texture space to a better extent.
What would you have done differently?
Replies
Can we see your texture sheets? Because that seems to be where the problem lies.
I think you made something too complicated for the limits you were given. Also it depends on what's the style of games the studio you tested at.
Truck tail gate, cool idea, way to rusted and noisy.
Spikes look like random sharp pieces of black metal, kinda boring.
Axels look weird, but the tires came out okay.
and I updated the renders.
they did look like crap.
Oh, and all of this is supposed to be very thrown together, without tools and scavenged.
and its a realistic game.
My first idea for spikes is old metal poles cut at an angle at the end. maybe some rail road ones just to have some shorter variation.
Your spikes should be sticking out the back a little bit, or they just look like they are taped on.
/D
I like the idea, the tires are great, nice use of the texture space,really tight. What I dont like is how you just slapped some rust on top of everything without thinking where would rust appear first. I would add more rust where the spikes are coming off and at the bottom of the panels and toned it down a bit at the rest of the space. Also this looks like a painted metal, but you dont show any chipped paint and worn edges, scratches. The spikes could use some stronger specular and worn edges to show off how sharp they are and perhaps some blood here and there. Just anything that would add more variety and will define the shapes a bit more. Just an opinion I hope it helps.
The texture doesn't look anywhere near as bad as it did previously. The tires and the concrete blocks are pretty good. The axel could probably be a bit more beat up.
I think this model's weakpoint is the texture on the metal panels (is that what it is?), and the spikes. The fact I don't even know if it's supposed to be metal speaks volumes. The best thing you could probably do is have a look at some of the tutorials doing the yards at the moment, such as racer's or PhillipK's. They go into the techniques involved in texturing metal, and how to avoid making metal look like stone.
- I would put the uvs of the axel and other small parts over the metal plate, no need to do unique unwraps of everything.
Theses changes would give you twice the texel density.I would've only unwrapped the front side of the tire. You unwrapped both sides, but you can't even see the rim from the back because it's being covered by the brake drum. You could've easily gotten away with only unwrapping one side and save some texture space.
I would've tried to come up with a better concept.
This is suppose to be a barrier, but I'm surprised the thing is standing on it's own. It looks like a strong gust of wind would easily knock it over.
Sorry you didn't pass your art test, dude...but hey...at least you got one!
Edit: Dammit...I type too slow.
The texture would probably be okay, if there was a little more contrast, a normal for the rust, even just crazybumped, and still better lighting.
Good luck next time!
@zacd- taped on spikes noted,
And @disanski- I agree with the rust everywhere bit.
It seem that I need to focus more on real life
more room for the eyes to rest too...
@tanka- I just handed off a upk, no real presentation.
and now that I look at it, the metal was just a bunch of black and white blobs.
I'll work on that.
@delerium and autopsysoldier- agreed with texture space usage, I guess I was trying to rush, need to plan out more.
@achillesian- It has rebar stuck out of the concrete, like someone jammed it down on top of rubble. I'll try to get a clearer idea shown from now on.
A quick shot at at fixing some texturing bits:
I dont think I'll redo this, but it doesnt hurt to fix it up a bit right?
edit: @cw, thanks, and good point.
Your high poly mes on your concrete blocks have obvious flaws in the mesh which translated into the normal,a cleaner high poly mesh would have helped and prevented it from rendering. Now those strange artifacts will show up in game because of the normal.It also shows up on the Ambient occlusion bake.
I think you chose a poor choice for the rust metal,its too dark and blurry,with better selection in base texture and better UV layout you would have gotten more of a crisper looking texture.
On those outwar indentations on the metal plate it has rust detail that goes over the flat surface as well as the indentation. It looks unrealistic,just like if a scratch on a piece of metal went around a corner. As it stands it looks like you just overlayed a texture photo of rust without taking into aacount how it will affect the surface.
The spec is boring and serves no purpose,in fact it looks like you just converted the diffuse to black and white,the spec map should be used to add details on your model too see that doesnt show up on the diffuse,use color as well,everything that has a specularity has color in it since it is a reflection of the things around,you could have also used the spec to hightlight the edges of the metal and make your surface detail pop out.
what exactly do you mean by highlighting the edges of the metal?
the corners, like the outward extrusions?
and about the spec,
My method is to take the diffuse, which I keep in layers,
and then go into each layer and adjust the brightness, saturation, and hue.
I didnt add alot to the spec, and I needed this packed into the alpha, so it was desaturated
I did add a little grunge to the spec, to break up constant specular values.
but what should I be adding to the spec? extra variation and such?
like stuff that doesnt even show up in the diffuse?
how do you guys go about your specular? differently? or am I being too delicate?
But the main issues I'd see is how the stuff used for this barrier probably has been weathered for some time.
The metal plates are better now, I like the color better.
The tires look like they are a bit weathered on the sides but the tread looks like it'd be a brand new unused tire, there's not a sign of dirt in there.
The stones are very one colored, almost like there's only a mid grey bucket fill on them.
I think you can separate the different materials better both in diffuse, but most of all in the specular. You have chosen some great piece in that aspect as you've got 3 different main materials to work with
I don't know if the assignment required you to use real time lighting only? And if so, maybe you were allowed to use vertex colors.
I ask because I think there's no real interaction between objects now.. Which is not strange since there is no ambient occlusion or anything where they are in contact with each other. It may not be a nice idea to bake that into the textures since then you've taken away a lot of possibilities of creating variations (and at least I would take that as a negative point probably if judging such an art test).
Last of all it looks like the pixel density is varied over the different areas? The spikes look more lowres, and the concrete more hires. If they are the same then it's a problem of blurriness in the texture itself.
Anyhow, I probably forgot what I read before writing this so I probably repeated some feedback
Keep up the work! it's definitely an improvement now and it doesn't look bad at all, could just with a little extra spice look even better I think
I'll definately use your advice, especially the vertex painting and seperating out the materials.
Your tuts should help
and thanks again to delirium, really good advice.
and JO420- I'll get kicking on it tomorrow,
night.
its 4:40am here and time for bed.
I need to get out of that 'no remakes' state of mind anyways.
Thanks all
The top is yours and bottom is the paint over,spot the subtle difference? When i work on a texture i add a very subtle bit of light information to the edges of metal surfaces where light might hit the surface.,usually the color at that location but much lighter. This tiny and mind you,very subtle addition helps the details pop out much more. Also in corvers and edges of metal where bumps and nicks will occur i typically paint that as well to give a worn look to the metal and to make the photoreference look more maturally applied to the surface so it does not look like just a flar overlay.
These days, I find myself sometimes making the spec map first, or at the same time as the diffuse. Especially for metal, all the spec info is actually more important than the diffuse. Much of the time, when I add the stuff from the spec into the diffuse there isn't much change as the spec overrides the diffuse for the most part when light hits it. The diffuse acts more like a backup for when there is no light.
I need more time to work on.. my career. I guess
but Ive redone the concept,
Tried to hit on some of the points you guys had regarding more obvious construction.
@673 tris and 512 maps.
Thanks PredatorGSR, Tried out the grungy spec on the paint on the tailgates, really nice tip!
And Jo420, Thanks for that, I highlighted the edges just a bit, and it really helps it pop! thanks for the paintover as well.
Any crits would be more than welcome!
oh, and texture maps:
I really tried to consolidate the texture maps, new sculpts and such so more things work tiled and over each other. everything is at the same texel density, at least I think so
Maybe make the tire worn down it looks kinda new right now.
http://vimeo.com/11100774
Very nice improvement,the visual quality has already gone up quite a bit.
There are a few more things you can improve upon.
1.on the plate on the UV layout left of the wheel,you have rust which runs across the whole plate including the raised sections. When you have details which run over parts which are different heights it gives the look of just pasting a picture under the ambient occlusion which gives the texture a flat appearence.
What i like to do is when i make the base texture i always take another part of the texture from another area of the photo and then i add a mask to it and paintbucket it black. Then over the raised areas i paint over it with the other part of the base photo for the raises bits,then it breaks up the continuity of the base photo running equally across all the details,just doing that can make it look less flat. See attached paintover.
2 If you have the polys in the budget add a few more iterations to that wheel and try to make it look more rounded and real,at the moment it looks like standard unedited geometry.
3. play around with overlays,at the moment the rusty metal looks too much like unalterd base photo reference, try to find overlays to add more detail. Sometimes i will paste a photo i intende to use as an overlay and roll the mouse wheel scrolling through the various layer styles seeing if any of them give me a cool look that i want.
4. Same problem with the rust dripping,i would recommend sampling the color from the rust,make a layer with the color as either a overly or multiply then add a mask and subtly paint more of the color dripping down. When rust drips it doesnt just stopp abruptly,its has this gradient like look to the drippage where is fades almost to nothing at the point where its furthest away from the major rusty area.
4. On the areas where the spikes come out,you painted complete black where the holes are,try to avoid this,darken it in photoshop but dont paint pure black,you have normals in the area which supports the details in the diffuse. Let the normals do their job and give you that darkness through shadows.
Aside from that good job.
-Alune- I tried to make the bevels stick out a bit more,
JO420- Thanks again for the awesome advice.
I added some geometry to the tire, but its ending up at 713 tris,
I added the rust drippings and separated the raised bits.
The holes are not black any more, and I added some overlays like you suggested.
-Delerium- Thanks!
-r-fletch-r- Flattened the tire for you.
-roostermap- good tut, I know the techniques by racer, but it was very informative nonetheless.
-Bloodmoon- The tire should look a bit more used now,
The threads should be vanishing or else the tire just looks a bit dirty not worn.
Bloodmoon- I took a look at smoothing out the tire, but I would still like to keep my chunky mud tire,
Personally appealing, I guess
Haikai- I originally spent an entire day concepting Ideas, and coming up with an interesting Design, and then changing it as ideas came in.
it ended up with an interesting silhouette, but nobody knew what it was.
now, I spent a day concepting new Ideas, but with focusing on reality and instant recognition with how its put together.
I guess Im not so good of a concept artist that I could combine the two, but its for practice, right?
thanks for the comment!
Compared to the first did you spend the same amount of time on it?
If so it might not hurt to send the updated one back and just say you took their feedback and re-did the piece. Some places like that sort of thing, some don't. But it is worth a shot.
I'd send it back into to them just because you never know. They might like the initiative you're taking, and you might have been right on the edge of getting the job. Even if you still don't get it, as long as you present it to them humbly and without expectations, I don't see how it could hurt your chances of getting a job with them in the future.
And thanks for all of the help, much appreciated