http://www.thejonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/ just a quick link to sift through if you ever feel like, not saying your site is bad its just some general helpful info about portfolios.
And seriously, if you're a "character artist" no company is going to give a crap as to whether you can model a fire hydrant or some prop. Theyre going to focus on the characters. Of course you'll need some modeling skill for accesories like armor, guns, etc. but props aren't really needed for a primarily character portfolio. It just drags is down...
And thanks bro
Nah I rarely use images for hard surface pieces I hand painted almost all of it. using one subtle metal pic over the entire thing, and of course images for the concrete base. It's really hard not to use images for concrete or stone lol. If you want, send me the obj and textures for that little post box assetto billyheb@aol.com and I'll record myself texturing it
itd be better to explain that way but might as well have a little write up.
1. Start off with ambient occlusion you baked from a high poly, or got from your normal map using its blue channel. (bake is prefered)Set your AO to multiply.
2. Next, put down your base colors, in the case of the subway, blue for the metal and gray for the concrete.
3. Next, duplicate your AO and colorize it to make it a more red orange color. Set the blending mode to normal and use the blend if functions to get rid of the AO on flat surfaces, focus it more towards indented edges. Set the opcaity to about 25 and use a mask to get rid of the dirt and make it look more natural.
4a. Add all different kinds of dirt and wear. The first dirt idid was kindof an oily kind, I used a scrape brush to do the base then used the smudge tool with a standard brush with a dark almost black brownish color. Opacity about 50.
4b. The next wear i added to the metal paint was sun damage. And sun damage makes the paint lose its color, so I made a hue/sat adjustment layer and inverted the mask so nothing showed. Then i gradually added the desaturation back into the texture.
4c. Next comes rust. I did the rust by creating a layer and filling it with an organ color. Then I ran a couple of sponge filters on it to give it some variation. Add a mask, invert it, and then using a grunge brush bring it back into the texture. Make sure that where you're applying it makes sense.
4d. Next I added dust to the signs only, and this was just again a funky brush using a desaturated yellowish color at a low opacity until it looked right. For the queen sign I didnt do any dust, but I did that oily dirt technique.
5. Add tags, text and stickers, this really makes the texture more fun and interesting to look at. I just got some tag images from cgtextures.com and cut them out and place them in the texture, of course the placement has to be logical. And using a mask, I took away some edges a little bit with grunge brushes. You can see how important they are. The text was of course created with the text tool, and again worn away.
6. Next you have to create a base texture, and this doesnt have to be this step, you can do this whenever. And the base can be a pic, or you can hand paint it like i did. Which is basically stamping and masking grunge brushes and lowering opacities until you get what you like. Underlay that under the paint.
7. Add a mask to the paint, and using a scrape brush, take away paint to reveal the base metal. Keep to edges with this, and make sure theyre varied and make sense.
8. Add a metal overlay over the entire thing, mess around with blending modes a lot until you get something you like. This step is optional.
9. The concrete was all images. One fully opaque base image with not a lot of surface detail, then a very noisy dirty overlay of concrete.
So yeah I'll do a sepreate post for the spec map lol, and this isnt a set order, you can do them whenever, just make sure you do them all lol
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