Presenting work (test demo reel) - Page 2 - Simply Maya User Community

# 16 25-11-2010 , 11:47 PM

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Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK

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My sister said she could stare at it for hours user added image

Perhaps I should work on more of a mattes reel then.

I thought the part J Birn wrote about writing specific skills inside of software, rather than just write a block list of software you have used was good. Earlier when I was adding titles to my reel I did just that:blush: :shakehead

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# 17 26-11-2010 , 07:39 AM

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It's a good site that one, I like how he made all the lighting challenge scenes available it's helped me a lot. As well his book is great, I read it when I first started with maya because david had it lying around, and I'm so glad I did because it's one of the best books written in cg.

That thing about software skills is really important, that's why it's nice to see scene breakdowns when you have more complicated scenes including compositing. I'll see if I can find the breakdown david made for the wine pour test because it's stuff like that a lot of show reels lack and it's an excellent way of showing off a broad understanding.

We even spoke about making a tutorial on how to make a showreel, after we looked for a lightwave instructor we got flooded with reels and I tell you I saw some really scary things. And people lie about their software skills all the time, it really annoys me because it's very obvious so I don't get why.

But go for a matte painting reel, maybe you could even have two reels and make one for modeling as well or keep just a single model. I watched the apache tutorial yesterday, and what makes it outstanding is the fact that he placed it in an environment and lit and animated it. A sequence like that would be enough for a showreel on its own, your helicopter model is good so if I were you I'd drop the other models all together and try to make something really nice with that. It's those kind of things that will catch your eye, and I think the industry likes people who understand all fields of an app to a certain extent because that makes it easier to fit you in to a production pipeline.

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# 18 26-11-2010 , 11:49 AM

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I had been working on an animation for the helicopter. I got a sort of mock up of an animation but the background was just a jpeg, and I wasnt all that pleased with it. It was co-inciding with me thinking about mattes and I was thinking I should make one to use as a scene for it. I see what you mean. I watched a modelling and texturing showreel on youtube the other day. I think it had 3 different 'models/scenes'. But they were staggering. Every single one. How the guy had got so many polys on screen at the same time. Really awe inspiring. And not just the modelling, the texturing was gorgeous too.

Is there anywhere on 3d render that tells you the start date of the next challenge? I couldnt see it anywhere...?

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# 19 26-11-2010 , 01:18 PM

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That's a really good idea Ben, if you use matte paintings in combination with the helicopter to build the set you'd show off some great skills. Like with your challenge entry, work towards that and you should get a reel that flows really nicely. It would tie all your skills together and you'd get a red line in the whole thing. And then you could do a breakdown of the scene to show all the different elements present.

The lighting challenges are on cgtalk under mini challenges. They always have one running, and it's fun to read through the old threads for the comments and to see how many great different entries you get from a scene. You should join one might get you back into lighting user added image

It fits in better with matte painting than modeling I think.

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