Looking for some critical feedback on Star Wars maps

[Maveritchell]

Thanks, and I hope I didn't come across as too whiny there - I'm a little frustrated for having spent as much time on these as I have and getting basically nil community response (from the game's community). There's a little (undue) spillover here.

I would call your style more architectural rather than cartoonish, and that works well for the ships.

This sort've gets closer to where I feel my weakest abilities lie. "Architectural" is a good adjective, and like you mention, it works fine in a deckplan. The issue comes when I try to work on exterior stuff. E.g.



When I move to more natural settings - and this is a personal weakness of mine in 3D modeling as well - I have a hard time working with the fluidity of more organic objects (trees, rocks, statues, etc.) and naturally capturing how lighting/shading works on them. In the above images, making rocks gave me fits - I ended up having to find specific rock images to use as reference (which is fine for one or two, but if I want to make several variations it becomes an exercise in silliness). I had similar issues with trees, to the point where I ended up making only one "type" of tree. A lot of this is because I lean so heavily on a schematic-type drawing, and I don't know what the best way to meld that style with some of the more organic components of maps is.

The other big thing is that I find myself leaning heavily on real textures for natural floors/terrain. I don't know if there's a better way to integrate that "natural" ground in with my style, which uses a prominent (and obviously unrealistic) border. You can see the issue in the above map as well - I'm really light on the foliage and the terrain can feel barren.