my work evaluation (lowpoly)

the brief for this unit was to show that we are able to model lowpoly objects to be used in a gaming environment, we also had to show that we are capable of writing a blog to document lessons and how we made are models. 

this is the finished environment piece i have been working on for the low polygon unit, my environmental is based on a Victorian living/dinning room with a haunted like feel, to achieve this feel i have used dim lighting which gives the shadows a ghostly like presence.

the models i have made are all to scale to make sure they look as realistic as possible  i found this out while watching a 3ds max architectural design modeling tutorial in which the tutor kept bringing up the fact that objects that are not in scale with there environment will look out of place, however there are some instances where having a object standing out from the environment is good such as if you want the player to take interest in the model.

i am happy with the result of my first two and a half months of modelling however i feel that i have a long way to go before i reach profession standard in the art of environment modeling, in fact the reason i chose to make a environment in the first place was to improve one of my weaker fields which is scaling. 

this is a model i found on turbo squid of a kitchen 

this is a model of a kitchen i found on the internet, as you can clearly see it is of high quality and looks very realistic however this is not a low polygon model it is a medium poly count model, the reason i have chosen this model over a lowpoly to compare my work to is because i want to compare my work to a model that has a advantage in polygons.

comparison:
the first models im going to compare between these two environments are the chairs, i think its clear that the professionals chairs are a little bit more detailed this is mainly to do with the higher poly count as the texture it self isnt that high resolution, one aspect i could take from this model is the way the light hits the surface of the wood, in the professional model the light is more spread out and blurs at eat end while on the other hand mine has only a slight glossy reflection. i could improve the way the light hits my models by looking up tutorials online about how to configure certain materials such as wood and darker metals such as iron.
the second models i will be comparing are the tables, as it stands the tables them self are not that different due to the face they both are chamfered and have a half reflective surface. i believe that even though the table is extremely low on polys it still shows a strong definition between the top of the table and its sides, as you can see from my image the top of the table is completely reflective like a polished surface while the sides only have a slight gloss showing they are made of a different wood.
the last thing i will be comparing is the lighting, i have gone for a dark creepy style of lighting, unlike the professionals model which is more fully lit.
personally i believe that my lighting doesn't give off the right feel, the reason for this is i want the light to be admitted from flames that will be placed in the fire place and on the top of the candle sticks, on the other hand the medium poly kitchen has almost flawless lighting with the exception the light bulbs are not glowing even though they are the light source.
changes i would make:
the first thing i would change about my model is the carpet, the carpet is a little pixilated due to the uv map being too small, this can be fixed by simply increasing the size of the map and using a more detailed/ high resolution texture.
the second object that needs altering is the painting, the problem with this object is it stands out to much in the environment because of its lighter color of texture, this is easy to fix with a simple texture change and a little chamfering around the edge of the frame.