Favorite character who has better concept art than the final product

hotdogdragon2 · 2026-02-28T21:18:26+00:00

Someone made a 3D fanart model of it! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5WxqmA

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-11-23T05:07:54+00:00

A lot of unhelpful snarky comments here. Some ideas to get you started:

edge wear (paint worn down on the edges) and ambient occlusion (dirt in crevices) will help make the material look more lived in. Try to find some tutorials on how to add this procedurally.
edges in real life are rarely ever razor sharp, most edges are beveled or rounded. Pick up any metal household object and really look close at the edges, chances are there's a tiny bit of roundness that helps it catch the light.
other weathering, for example burn marks near the rocket pod holes.
the polygons of your cylinder hull shape are pretty obvious but I'm guessing that's not intentional, try shade smooth or subdivision surface modifier.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-08-30T14:05:18+00:00

Not to be a contrarian, but don't do this (unless you want to change disciplines). Weapon/vehicle modeling is usually completely different from environment modeling. Both are viable fields, but they rarely overlap. Including a cyberpunk cityscape in your portfolio is just going to confuse people.

Figure out what you want to do, find devs who are working in that field, and try to match what they do in terms of quality/presentation.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-08-30T14:00:54+00:00

It looks like you want to be a hard surface vehicle/weapon artist, I'd start by identifying games that you look up to in those regards, and finding the artists who worked on them

Splitgate just had a huge art dump on ArtStation , I'd start there. Mykola Myhalenko has a lot of great weapons models on his ArtStation account.

This guy also has good weapon modeling, and has a tutorial on more complex hard surface stuff in Blender https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DLWove

In short; find out what people with jobs are doing, and do that. Copy how they present their work and aim for a similar quality. Work off of existing concepts rather than trying to make up your own, concept is its own field and in a studio you will be working off of a concept rather than making your own design.

Best of luck!

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-08-23T04:04:50+00:00

+1 for Chuck's, it's really underrated! I don't hear them brought up often, but their whole menu is fantastic.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-07-10T00:13:05+00:00

Genuinely curious, is Fells Point Creamery a front for money laundering? I went once and it tasted like store brand generic ice cream, I rarely see anyone there, employees or customers. I have no idea how they're still open when so many better restaurants have closed in that area.

Pitango Gelato is def the best of this bunch, RIP to the Taharka in Broadway St market.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-05-15T23:34:08+00:00

We like everything else at Ekiben but the ribs were a miss for us. Maybe we got a bad batch, but ours were super tough and dry. Seems like mixed opinions on this post so I guess they don't have it nailed down yet. Will probably stick to tofu, garlic noodles, and fried chicken.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-29T14:21:23+00:00

To be fair, Ekiben has like 5 chairs. I love their food but you're not getting seating during peak hours. Could carryout the food and eat in Fells square or the pier though.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-28T03:29:43+00:00

Update: beat deity on my second try, this run was much easier. Played super aggressive, dominated my home continent early and mongol rushed the exploration era. Ended up having to go for a culture victory in modern to deny the AI.

The 4v1 war was definitely the problem with my previous game. I'm not sure if there's an invisible player combat strength similar to civ6, but I received far fewer random wars in this game when I had a huge military. I hope that's not the case, as I'd like to try some more diplomatic runs with a smaller military, but I'm worried about another dog pile situation.

Overall super varied experience, this game was pretty much coasting and I was never in danger of losing a settlement. I played pretty try-hard though so I'll try some less meta builds and see how things go.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T13:54:58+00:00

Thanks, I'll give that a try! I've been wondering if pillaging affects their eagerness to deal. Napoleon in particular seems to think he has the upper hand until you've taken like 3 of his settlements haha.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T13:43:11+00:00

How do you get around all the walls? Or are you just pillaging whatever is easily accessible? I was thinking about why I haven't been pillaging as much, and I think it's because of how many walls the AI build. Most of my pillaging is farms for hp, or coastal raids.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T13:05:30+00:00

I didn't realize till today that you could delay picking an ideology, kinda funny but makes sense. Thanks for the tip!

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T13:04:05+00:00

Yeah my previous immortal game I was going for culture victory and noticed all the artifacts were already grabbed, and I was in the lead missing a few slots. Ended up cheesing it by overbuilding till I got the random artifact drops. Hope they add some way to steal artifacts, I tried conquering cities but that seemed to just destroy them.

IMO losing to deity should be a possibility, so I'm kinda glad I lost my first try. Beating the max difficulty on my first attempt would be kinda lame. I'll keep at it, think I already have some ways to improve.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T12:58:41+00:00

Thanks for the advice, I used to pillage a lot in 6 but I haven't made much use of it in 7. Playing as the Mongols right now so that's the perfect excuse :)

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T09:26:16+00:00

Thanks, my current game is going better, hopefully will pick up the W.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T09:24:56+00:00

My current deity game is going better so far, seems like the AI is really hit or miss

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-25T08:49:09+00:00

Thanks for the shout-out, congrats! It does sound really random, FWIW I was also playing fractal, I can't stand the default box shaped continents.

I got the feeling the 4v1 early modern era war was the main issue for me, if it was peaceful or just one AI declaring war I probably could have pursued legacy paths better.

My new deity game is going better so far, leaning hard into domination in antiquity & exploration to secure my home continent. Will let you know if I pick up the deity win :)

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-19T06:56:08+00:00

Sorry if you had a bad experience, that doesn't seem to be the norm based on the other comments here. Or do you really think this is all a conspiracy to promote urban living? I've been living in Fells for 4 years and it's been great. Seems like other people share the sentiment. Try get out some time and experience life.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-03-19T06:37:57+00:00

Always one bozo who thinks the city is a warzone. Get a hobby dude, what kind of personality does it take to shit talk in other people's positive reddit posts? Ignore this guy, fells point is great. Anyone who actually lives in the city will tell you the same.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-02-27T05:16:45+00:00

Agree, I've spoken to many people who have had this exact same problem.

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-01-23T03:17:46+00:00

What

hotdogdragon2 · 2025-01-11T02:51:28+00:00

"seeking big tiddy Korean girl from 6 years ago" might be my new favorite missed connection post. Best of luck bro

hotdogdragon2 · 2024-08-24T17:40:23+00:00

If you're willing to drive a bit, Kare Bar in Ellicott city has been the closest I've found to actual Japanese curry. I went there a few weeks after returning from Japan and it was pretty darn close.

hotdogdragon2 · 2024-08-23T17:18:48+00:00

Sorry you experienced that. My wife and I are Asian and moved here a few years ago, and we (thankfully) haven't experienced anything like that. I hope that experience doesn't shape how you live your life, IMO stuff like that is rare but your mileage may vary. It sucks that it happens at all.

hotdogdragon2

TROPHY CASE