Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Submission Title: Palace Dining Hall Submission Tier: d3t Rising Star Assessor: Dominic Shaw Environment Artist @ Firesprite Research + Development You have done some good research before starting the project and I like that you did concepts and colour pallets and there was some good reference each of the props that you intended to make. Creative Art You have done a really good job with this environment so you should be proud of yourself! There was good storytelling in the level dressing with the broken plates and chairs fallen over. It really is an interesting environment with good lighting. Technical Art The workflows that you have in this project are good with nice use of modular kits and the substance designer materials that you have made are really cool. You clearly understand game art workflows and from your documentation, I can tell that you are keeping optimization is mind which is awesome. To help improve the environment, you could add a planar reflection for the mirror to make it more realistic, this will make the level a little less optimized but I think that it will be worth it, you could LOD all of the assets to counter act this. You have done some nice baking on the roof panels but I think that you could have baked down more assets. The fireplace for example has really sharp corners so this could do with a high poly where you chamfer all the corners a few times and bake it down to a low poly version with less chamfers. I would try to do this on a lot of the assets and I think it will really help with the quality. Documentation You have done broken down the project well in the documentation and reflected on your work well. I noticed that you said that you wise you started sooner on the key assets, to help with the timing of assets, I think creating a time plan and asset list at the start of the project will help to manage the project. I use a program called ‘Trello’ which is great to manage your project. To answer the questions that you had in your documentation, the way that you have created your painting textures is spot on and the same way that I would have done it. It’s better to use the material instances that importing different meshes with different unwraps has that mean you will be adding several meshes, with several LOD, material slots and collision data which isn’t needed. I’m not much of a lighting artist so I’m afraid that I can’t be much help here, I think I would have struggled with the same thing that you did on the chandeliers as it’s a unique case that doesn’t happen often and I would have taken the same approach as you did. You did make the right call in not adding loads of point lights in one small space. Final Presentation The final images showed a really interesting environment with good focal points. You should be really proud with the final result of this environment, especially compared to your last rising star work. I think that you improved a lot over the last year!
• Assessor: Anthony O Donnell – Art Director @ d3t Title: Palace Dining Room Research and Development Thorough research was carried out and clear to see in the marked up moodboards. The mix of references for various purposes shows strong consideration for what was chosen. From the AC:Unity reference to establish an asset visual bar and also real world and tv set reference combined for additional detailing. Creative Art The scene captures the mood and tone of what was set out initially. One of the main items to sell the narrative being the blood spatter they look somewhat stylised compared to the rest of the scene. Some more reference of how blood splatters and what it’s like after a day (darker / drier) would have suited the scene more. Extra signs of disturbance such as pulled open / down curtains, dropped personal items, more table wear scattered around would convey that what happened was more chaotic as all the people scattered. A door open either side or ajar would also allude to a point of entry and or exit. This sense of direction through the space would have added more context for the observer. In terms of texture detailing the floor tiles had a generic roughness texture which did not incorporate grout in the tiling or variation of roughness due to edge wear. This would have improved the materials response to light. The scale of detail on wood grain varied across some assets. The dining chair horizontal section had the grain going vertically also. It was great to see the rough concept getting the idea down early. Technical Art The concept to blockout process was as expected and followed industry processes. Texel density was largely good and consistent. The only asset showing as 2X under via UE4’s mesh UV density was the candelabra. Very good result overall. The scene used distinct roughness / metallic values to define the chosen materials. Polygon distribution was generally good but some assets like the plates or curved surfaces in the fireplace could have been smoother relative to other assets of similar scales in the scene. Lighting wise there was some blotchy patches introduced in the light maps. Items like the chair could have used tileable or trim sheet textures as opposed to being uniquely baked. Material graphs were kept tidy and organised. Documentation The documentation is in depth and very well put together. The presentation of the document is very good. It goes through the steps of production in order and is concise. It’s clear to see how this research work has informed the final piece. Final Presentation The scene looks great and is consistently detailed. Care and attention was put into the correct areas for the visual bar. A very strong and competent piece of work. Great job. The final images and video are very good. One area for improvement would be pushing roughness maps further by having them include more information to describe contextual wear / dirt to add another layer of detail and believability to the scene.
• I think you managed to achieve the goals that you set out to achieve and the final renders are extremely good. They convey the opulent surrounding but with the nice twist of what has occurred adding to the scenes interest. I really like the rays steaming in through the window and the addition of the dust particle. The ceiling and fireplace are well observed and detailed. the scene comes together well with a high level of consistency. The way you have presented your work is of a very high standard and i was impressed with the inclusion of a video. A few areas you could improve on would be to not cram all your reference on one sheet but perhaps have different sheets for real world and game inspiration. Your concept isn't the strongest but it is good to see you are able to plan out in 2D what you are trying to achieve in 3D, thumbnails and quick sketches of ideas can really save you a lot of time so worth continuing to do. For improvement to the scene the central table could of been more damaged what if some had scrambled over it or jumped on it displacing some of the central flowers and knocking a swath of dinner ware to the floor. To sum up a really good effort well done.
• well presented project, modeling and texturing are great! Lighting could be better maybe a fire VFX in the fireplace would have been a nice addition, Good work :)