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Usually when im doing a 3d project on max i find my self doing the work and adding the maps that i want the piece to have and then if im satisfied i would usually leave it, though if i do notice problems i will try to resolve them to finish the piece off.
However recently i have been purchasing different books which shows me some of the great 3d artists out there at the moment. Like one book i have called digital art masters covers a wide range of digital artist, so isnt necessarily just confined to game art. but even so when looking at some of the work produced it just inspires you in your own work. i would start looking at a certain artist in this book and they would then give a brief description of how the produced a piece of their work.
in the case of pieces of work that is produced in max the artist may inform you on some of the effects they have used that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of, so then this leads you to start playing around with your own work even if its just testing things to see if it would work. tats what ive started to notice more about how ive been approaching my work. i know that I should never be satisfied with my work and that its best to always think of ways to imporove the piece.
i have found this attitude to be really helpful though as even with tampering with things that your testing, you can find things by accident. Like for instance i finished producing a treasure chest and even though i had added all the maps that i wanted and i was quite satisfied i still proceeded to test different effects on it and it was through this method that i discover how to create an ambient map over a bump map. It wasn't like i found some tutorial on the internet or some thing that i read about in a book, but was something i learnt simply from playing with the piece of work to see what worked. It just goes to show how even when yout think you have a piece of work that is finished, that you can improve on it if you have the tiime to play with it.
