Back & Noob 3D Environment for Polycount

Hey all.

Sorry its been awhile but its been summer and all so not really been thinking about the blog much in all honesty.

I've been doing a fair amount of 3D stuff over the holidays and learnt a ton of stuff I'll be able to take into next year. Notably not a huge sum of knowledge compared to what alot of 3D artists out there know but I like to think I'm on the right track.

At the start of the holidays my main focus was primarily baking normal maps which also lead me to AO maps and then onto a better understanding of specular & gloss maps. Still feel alittle shakey on baking high poly mesh's onto low poly in 3DS Max but I'm capable enough to do simple geometry objects like crates, barrels etc. Have yet to try on a complex model which needs to be exploded but I'm sure I'll get around to that soon.

While practicing my baking skills I've come to understand alot more about unwrapping, being more optimal with the UV space and making sure seams are in the right places E.g not broken into a million pieces, hiding them from view if possible and  splitting smoothing groups for normals. Minimal to no stretching and normalizing sections to match has also helped to make my texturing look much better. I'm fairly happy thus far with what I've learned and looking forward to progressing alot more over the next year or so before I start considering internships.

Couple screenshots of a few things I made for practice.
 

Trying my hand at alittle level design. Simple 3DS Max render with water & lights.

 

Got the idea for this house after playing the new Van Helsing game from Neocore. 1.3k polys (2500ish tris) & 1024 diffuse only. 3DS Max render.

 This was a concept we we're given at the start of last year as a test which I never finished so thought I'd go back and do it. Made for a RTS game (think civilizations or similar).

Challenge ACCEPTED!...maybe

As the title suggested, I'm currently considering the Monthly Noob Challenge on the Poly Count forums as my next project. They say its for noobs but some of this months stuff is totally amazing, alteast compared to what I can do anyways. Never the less, I think this could be a good opportunity to experiment with what I've learned, build on it and learn new things with the feedback I would receive. This is primarily a environment contest but of course assets are apart of the environment so even if I can't rap my head around some crazy lighting effects and it looks horrible, atleast I've been able to practice asset modelling. Here's one of the concepts that alot, if not most people have voted for so far.

I've added some lines & silhouette's to help me understand the shapes and scaling if this concept is the chosen piece for the challenge.

Its pretty ruff ofcourse, just there for alittle guidance...after all, its called concept for a reason right?