Demo Reel

#1

Hi guys,
wanted to share with you my interior visualization demo reel that I made. This is where I stand after two and a half years of tutorials and practice scenes. Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks:)
Andrej

[VIMEO]170392476[/VIMEO]

#2

Just my thoughts, non meant as insult.

The overall quality of your works is quite nice. Pretty sure each and every piece could be improved, but hey, everything in the world could :]. So for now i’d focus on presentation as imho that part is the weakest thing from your real.

The fonts used in the video are amateurish. They don’t give the vibe of professionalism. Take a look at the family where life begins and love never ends sign. Use any of the fonts used in that phrase (except love) and you should be golden (or at least better than what you have now).
If you want you can leave the intro wall and font as they kinda go well’ish together, but you’ll have to recheck if that will fit well with your new fonts.

The other thing that was off (for me at least) is that you showed 7 or 9 pictures at the start, but I’m pretty sure that some of those weren’t shown full screen. Not sure if people you are sending this reel to will play with pause button. And if that piece is not worth a full screen then why is it in the reel to begin with.

Also I would go with a more static reel. The effects are all over the place, try trimming them down. For transitions just use a good old effectless transition to next photo. Definitely get rid or rework the bubbles with fonts. Maybe put them into a single picture as they are distracting and I have to rewind if I want to look at picture.

Overall all good and nice, but I would go with a more pictures directly to face, little to no effects, nice fonts reel. Sadly I don’t have any examples and those are just suggestions so just think about it and try moving some things around. :slight_smile:

#3

Hi Kazkas.
Thank you for taking the time to write a critique. It means a lot as it is quite difficult to get an honest opinion sometimes.

I’ve done some research before making the demo reel and most of the architectural visualization demo reel that I watched were quite boring to be honest. So I decided to make it a bit more dynamic, just so the person watching it doesn’t turn it off after 12 seconds. Maybe I have overdone it with the effects and transitions:)

In the beginning (after the brick wall is removed) I wanted to create sort of the feeling that the person watching the demo reel is moving through my 3d world (3d space) where some of my work flies by, until you hit the bedroom photo (which is my best work so far IMO) and at that moment the music slows down and the camera slowly stops at that image.

To be honest, I know the demo reel could be better as I don’t really have any experience with after effects and will need more time to learn it’s functions. But hey, learning is fun, so hopefully you will like my next one better:)

Thank you again for your comment:)
Andrej

#4

Hi Andrej,

I would echo what Kazkas said, the work (meaning the stills) are great but the presentation doesn’t do them justice.

You also want to identify exactly what part of the work you did (Design, Modeling, Lighting, Rendering?). If you modeled everything I recommend a wireframe render with clean flowing geometry. I think a pass by pass or layer by layer breakdown is a bit overkill here.

Here’s where I would go from here. I’d choose the 3-4 scenes you’re most proud of and that show the most range (night/day, minimalist/classic etc.) and work on making them look a bit less CG. Try adding some dust and variation in your textures. I would make the intro titles really simple and make one or two fly through animations for each scene. Nothing complicated or long. I would then edit a simple montage cutting or fading from one fly through to the other.

Remember that what you’re trying to showcase is the CG/ArchViz work not your editing. If the images are not good enough the editing won’t save them.

If the rendering of short animations is too much for your computer to handle I recommend you use Google’s Zync Cloud rendering. I used them to render my reel and highly recommend them. Sign up through here and you’ll get an initial $300 credit and possibly another $500 if you fill the form in the page. It should be more than enough to render your reel.

https://cloudplatformonline.com/RenderMore_Homepage.html

Daniel

#5

Hi Daniel,
thank you so much for you advice. Will definetely try to move in the direction you mentioned - making the model more realistic and less cg, adding dust and imperfections to textures. I think a lot of cg feeling comes from excesive photoshoping and curve correction;)
Rendering fly-throughs is out of the question for my computer at the moment, will check out the google services you mentioned.
Really appreciate the comment, thank you.
Andrej