m1kclark's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Photorealistic Kitchen!]

Excellent. Just excellent.

Your work in textures is so far beyond my skills that I cannot make any useful comments, except to say the mapping, interpolation, and resolution are perfect for the model. The label, the woodgrain, the steel look like real materials, which justifies the 10 hours you spent.

The geometries, meanwhile, are all nice and smooth; there are no "telltale" signs that its CG, and the object design is really nice. I actually applaud you for that dishtowel! Did you use a Wave modifier, or did you hand-model the folds with SubSurf modifier, or did you use another technique?

The one and only thing that I would give a 4/5 on is the lighting. It is *almost* there, but there are some strange things going on. For example, the wine glasses aren't casting a shadow on the countertop. Also the shadow of the wine bottle clearly shows that you have 3-4 lights arranged in a horizontal line; the light from a big window like that would cast one broad, soft shadow instead of those multiple shadows. The soft shadows looks perfect elsewhere, it's just on the wine bottle that the shadows are weird. The last lighting problem is that the apples, the wood of the window, and the glass vials (on the left) all seem to be lit from the front, while the drawers under the countertop are not. It makes the apples look a little like they are glowing compared to the bottom of the image (I would check Materials for the Emit setting on those apples).

I hope my comments were as constructive as you were looking for. Cheers!

DoloresC responds:

Thank you! Your comment is very constructive! :) And yes, I was looking for one like this! Thank to that I can open my project once again and study mistakes or check why there is good setting and bad looking :)

About textures - thank you. If you need help, try searching some done textures in net and suit them into your model. It will help u in the beginning to understand how it exacly works :) then just low the opacity of it and try to draw it. After sometime you will do it alone automatically :)

Dishtowel - it's just simple simulation of the cloth. Of course was done thousand time before we made it like this :)

Lightning - hmm. that's very interesting thing, because there is only one light. And the light is behind the window. There is no light inside! So shadows should be correct like in real world.

About shadow under glasses - tbh I was suprised when I put the same glass (I've got reference in the kitchen) in the middle of the day on the table and there was no shadow under it O.o I searched through the internet and finally read that not every glass casts shadow. It depends on it's thickness! More shdow - more thickness.

Hmm, you are right about glowing apples. But there was no emit O.o hmm, i think maybe plate and window are a little bit too glossy and because of that we've got optical illusion that apple is glowing and in real it's just reflection? Hmm...

Thank you! <3

[Slick Snowman]

I love the style of the gemetries, the textures, and the colors, and I'm really into how expressive the character is. Awesome!

[Microscope]

I said this elsewhere, but I want to emphasize how important it is: Bevel your edges to make them more realistic. Excellent otherwise.

mematron responds:

Beveled edges is a personal choice, not some some 3D modeling axiom. It's realistic. That's why it's identifiable. I'm taking a painterly approach to this so some parts are tight while others, loose. Still, some are lost and found.

The end result is hyper-real like this http://www.mematron.com

If I wanted real then I would have uploaded a picture of the real microscope.

[Coffee Shop 2]

Excellent design and artistic concept. I have two technical comments:

1) Bevel your edges. I have literally said this dozens of times to 3D artists on NG, so it's not personal, but the infinitely-sharp edges on a perfect cube created in 3D software is one of the first give-aways that it isn't realistic.

2) Along the same lines, you have to make sure any curved surfaces have a LOT of edges and vertices, or you can see that the curved surface is really a polygon. That's another realism-killer. I'm looking specifically at the mid-right, where the display window curves toward the back wall. In full-size, it's obvious that it's made of 7 segments; increase that to 20 and it won't be noticeable.

But it's good stuff, and I'm glad to see all your posts.

mematron responds:

This is conceptual art. It's more than acceptable for the cast and crew.

[Country salon - view 1]

It's wonderful! The lighting, the textures, the ambiance, and even the image design and placement - they are all excellent and really suggest that this is a real room that people would use.

There's only one thing, tiny but huge, keeping it from being "brilliant". Bevel your edges. It'll really add to the realism on the tables and chairs. In Blender (I LOVE BLENDER), it's fastest to (1) go into Edit mode, (2) select points, (3) hit the W key and click on "Bevel", (4) choose a subdivision, (5) choose how deep the bevel goes, and perhaps (6) wait for it to do the calculation. If your table is 10 wide and 10 long, then the bevel should be about 0.02-0.05 deep. You'll have to play around with subdivision, though: lower subdivisions look terrible without smoothing, but smoothing can cause problems with flat surfaces; meanwhile higher subdivisions can take a long time and can create unpredictable mesh points and criss-crossed edges.

The only other way I've found to bevel something is to start with a tiny UV sphere and basically extrude it to make the flat surfaces. This gives you exquisite control of the mesh and the level of detail. But it also means literally redesigning EVERY mesh object, so it probably isn't worth the time here in this almost-perfect image. In the future, however, it might be a useful trick.

Happy modeling, and I hope to see more of your stuff!

DoloresC responds:

Wow! I love so much creative critique! Awesome! THANK YOU!
Unfortunately I didn't model it :) I just textured it, gave light and rendered! But I'm now learning modeling so I will know what to look more precisely!:P
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are awesome critique! :D
I hope to have more so awesome critique like that in other renders so I can improve myself more!:)

[My new project Spoiler ....]

Make the eyebrows look like moss. Otherwise, NIIIIICE

[RX-7]

That's really awesome. The lighting, textures, and shading are really nice. The only nitpicky things I see are that the headlights are too reflective (given that their behind a glass cover) and the reflections on the door are a little wonky. What I think happened is that you have enough polygons for a smooth surface (Blender subsurf FTW) when it is rendered as an object, but the reflections (which have a higher sensitivity to differences in curvature) need more polygons to look smooth.

Perhaps this is crass, but just as a learning endeavor, could you possibly send me the .blend file? I have no intention of using your stuff explicitly, but I want to see the structure and design.

[Bricks N Blocks]

I'm a big fan of this image. I have no technical comments (which is rare: usually I can't shut up) but I love the experimentation with reflective surfaces and deformations in the reflections on the floor. The red, green, and blue lights are a bit stark, but because you use them to emphasize the different relationships between reflective surfaces, it made sense as a design choice. For the same reason, I feel like the image is dark, but that if you lightened it at all then the more detailed reflections would be lost. Lastly, all the objects are realistically rendered, the overall lighting style is good, and I like the focus and delivery of your image.

In short, well done!