Hello Everyone.
I am an Environment Artist/ World Builder currently studying Video game art at Full Sail University and in my final months of study. As my time here at school comes to a close I must begin to compile my Demo real and Portfolio and polish up some of my work in order to help me demonstrate my skills to a potential employer. I will hopefully be able use the Polycount community to help me gain useful feedback and critiques on my environments and continue to improve the overall quality of my work.

I thought I would post up my current environmental project and get some feedback. This is a scene of a Cliffside Palace Entrance and I am still blocking out assets and will be bringing them into UDK soon.

If you would like to look at my Main Reference.
http://i1243.photobucket.com/albums/...rth-castle.jpg

My First Blockout pass


Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.

At this point in time most of the assets are a first pass and i am almost ready to set it up again in UDK and begin texturing.







Wall, Door, Pillar, and Floor pieces

I love how its coming! and the attention to detail.

Thanks Morgan, glad you like it so far.

MMMM MAYA ANTI ALIASING SO GUUUD

please have it in UDK,i like your details though, looks nice

Man , i'm really loving those screenshot .. all those object are hipoly ? and you are planning
to sclupt them ,?

Originally Posted by Jungsik

MMMM MAYA ANTI ALIASING SO GUUUD

please have it in UDK,i like your details though, looks nice

Thanks Jungsik, and i plan to have them in UDK within the coming days.

Originally Posted by ayoub44

Man , i'm really loving those screenshot .. all those object are hipoly ? and you are planning
to sclupt them ,?

Thanks ayoub... These meshes are more of a medium poly and will be giving me my base meshes to sculpt on, and so then to answer your second question, Yes i am also planning on sculpting most if not all of them.

modeling looking good so far, looking forward to seeing the next steps you take.

So I've got a bit of an update.
i Brought it into UDK and reassembled the scene, plus begun the extension of other mountains in the distance and did some basic lighting setup.


-Main Shot

-Alternate Main shot

Some Other shots:




Looking out from the palace:




a side note, the sky itself is still udks basic night sky with some minor tweaks.
As always any comments are much appreciated.

I can`t see anything. They look like thumbnails...

There they should be fixed now.

Hey everyone,
I've got a new update of my project. I have mostly been texturing lately and have a decent base diffuse on most of the assets, some still have a basic grey as a place holder for the not so pleasing blue and whit checkers. I plan to have the last few done by tomorrow night.

So heres some shots of the environment currently, hope you like...








I also extended the area down to the end of the stairs and closed it off in different ways.


As always any feedback or critique on my models, textures, or design are more than welcome. Thanks

Love it friend! Will you be adding the mossy green as shown in your concept picture?

this is really nice. What about the faces on the stone pillars by the waterfall?? Are you planning on doing those or did you redesign??

I have not entirely ruled out adding some plant life to break it up but at the moment I'm using the reference more for basic layout and feel, And attempting to create a more interesting architectural style and color palette than that of the initial reference.

Originally Posted by Hondamoo

this is really nice. What about the faces on the stone pillars by the waterfall?? Are you planning on doing those or did you redesign??

ahh those epic faces! yes i did originally want to do them, but went in favor of a redesign to fit more with the developing style, but may add another more interesting piece to replace the one in between the waterfall to bring some more visual interest to that area.

The floor pieces look a little bit weird to me, they look too rounded... or pillowy. Are they baked down to planes, or are they geometry like in the blockout. If they are geo, then the smoothing is def throwing it off.

Looking really cool! How many meshes are you using?

m4dcow The floor pieces look a little bit weird to me, they look too rounded... or pillowy. Are they baked down to planes, or are they geometry like in the blockout. If they are geo, then the smoothing is def throwing it off.

At the moment i do have actual geometry there and i defiantly see what you mean, I'll take a look at the smoothing on it and the lighting effecting it and see if i can find a nicer look, thanks for pointing it out though.

Wonkey Looking really cool! How many meshes are you using?

thanks Wonkey,
I have 33 assets that are geometry, that includes the water and rocks. 26 of them are Structural pieces.

Just curious, but did you bake all that detail down into normal maps... or are you actually using all the geo still? I can't tell too well from your latest images, except it does look like all your floor tiles are geo and not a normal map.

A small update, finished getting base textures on all my assets, and got some basic effects in my water.

Originally Posted by oobersli

Just curious, but did you bake all that detail down into normal maps... or are you actually using all the geo still? I can't tell too well from your latest images, except it does look like all your floor tiles are geo and not a normal map.

Thanks for asking oobersli,
At the moment all the actual separate pieces are for the most part modeled but with what i think is fairly clean geometry. i could show you shots of specific pieces with wireframes and polycounts and such, but you are correct that none have normal maps at the moment. I've been focusing on diffuses at the moment.

Awesome work. If you're interested in modelling for a Fallout mod, drop me a PM.

ah ok, well i'm going to try and not sound negative but I would really work on optimizing your scene then if i were you. Clean or not, if those ground tiles are actual geo, an employer is going to question why you thought it was a good idea when normal mapping can fake it with much more efficiency. The same goes for the rest of the scene.

If say you wanted to go for a peice that showed off modeling without textures, yes I could maybe see it being beneficial, but when our main goal today is to be optimized and efficient as possible, you can't always afford to model out every brick or tile.

As for your diffuse textures, if you could show what type of stone youre going for, that would help. You have a bunch of stuff that looks like color marble, and tiled in a way that doesn't look like its made for the piece of geo. the scene texturing overall feels very tiled and generic. nothing in there draws attention of being interesting or unique. In part because you're using so much geo and tiling that geo all over the place.



taking a look at your reference, you've strayed off from it quite a bit. By modeling your ground tiles, they're uniform.. where as the reference has irregular stones *something you could do easy within a texture*. The stairs have cracks, are uneven, as well with the pillars.

the detail you have on the arches and walls don't resemble anything recognizable, where as the concept feels like ancient ruins with gold inlaid detail.

maybe try and make a high poly and sculpt one of those pillars from the concept rather than trying to make it with a bunch of boxes and geo? Portfolio/demo piece or not, if you accept the rate your going you're just using your time on a piece that could raise questions from employers and hurt your chances of a job in an industry saturated with tons of others looking for employment.

Oobersli hit it on the head, you have a lot of detail that could be done with flat faces/normal maps leaving room to use those pollies in more important areas.