Drake Equation / Christmas Card

# 1 24-12-2012 , 08:47 PM

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Well really I would like to know if this is 'adequate' for a high school student, or whether I should be picking up the pace.

I made these both in the past few weeks with some spare time, not quite happy with either, so critique is welcome.

All work is original. Modeled with Maya. Rendered with Mental Ray. And a little post production with gimp on both.

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# 2 27-12-2012 , 08:13 PM

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Who's to say whats "adequate" for a high school student? There are adults who've paid for courses that have trouble producing similar quality work. Question is, are you happy with it and did it help you grow as an artist?

My only real crit with the winter scene is that there seems to be some gamma issues, everything is quite washed out. That's one of the hurdles created by using the mr physical sky and I ended up writing a script to help me deal with that.

The outer space image seems to have a bit too much sharpening applied. I think it could use some subtle planetary glow/halo, right now the two masses seem pasted onto the starscape background.

It never hurts to step up your game, nah I'm lying, it's probably going to be frustrating and you're going to want to punch your monitor at some point but that's part of the fun! user added image

- Genny
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# 3 27-12-2012 , 08:33 PM

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Thanks for responding.

Yeah, the scene does look really flushed out, I wasn't happy with it but I had to print it for my mom on time.

And the sharpness is an issue, I used it though because my computer has very little ram, and was having trouble with +2k images, often crashing, so I used a smaller than needed image, and gave it a bit more depth with sharpness. Definitely not ideal though.

I've never really felt my art was good though, you see people creating these masterpieces, and when I try to do something similar my computer crashes during modeling or rendering. It's over ten years old now. But even then, sometimes it seems like that's just an excuse, I could render out each fraction of the image on separate layers and compost them, but it's just so much work.

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# 4 28-12-2012 , 09:44 PM

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Well I wouldn't worry about what other people are doing, there are always going to be jaw dropping stuff out there, and we're our own worst critics a lot of the times, you just have to keep at it. I don't know the specs of your machine, I know there are machines you can build for under $700 for Maya purposes. Are you batch rendering or doing it in the render view?

- Genny
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# 5 28-12-2012 , 11:50 PM

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I typically use batch rendering now, as render view crashes too easily, although sometimes I use it when previewing a scene (I save a copy of the file, close Maya, and reopen the copy for a preview render to avoid Maya deleting the scene during a crash).

700 dollars is a little too high for now, but I plan on getting a better machine this summer before college.

The largest reason I ask if the work its adequate though, is because for two or so years I skipped school, failed my classes, and suffered through major depression, and as a result my transcript is lacking (15 credits freshmen year, only 21 halfway through senior). The college I would like to attend has higher academic standards than I can meet. However, if a student has demonstrated exceptional talent in an area, consideration will be given to raise their chances. I didn't put as much time in as I would have liked over the past few years, but I was curious if it'd offer me a glimpse of hope.

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Drake Equation / Christmas Card

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