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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Friday, December 25, 2009

WIP : Forgotten Waterfall



Things have been a little slow with the holidays, but I did manage to make considerable progress on this environment set piece for VoZ.

About 9,000 tri's overall.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

WIP : Citadel of Deceit (texturing) - detail



Re-visiting a few works in project for Forever Interactive, including this one for the Citadel.

I've re-done some normal maps and added new ones.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

WIP : Orphanage texture




I'm in the process of re-compiling my demo reel and I've been going back over some old projects and adding some final touches.

I'm still considering this as a WIP since the game AoE has been placed on hiatus in favor of Visions of Zosomos. Once I get the final approval on the state of the Orphanage I'll move this into the finalized category. For now, I'll continue to adjust here and there, but for all intents and purposes it's a finished work.

This render has nearly all of the normal maps included in this pass and I've gone back and adjusted the texture on the window bars.
To enhance depth and sell the reality of the windows I've baked in the ambient occlusion contribution and added a customized reflectivity shader to the texture.
If you observe the windows in shadow, you'll notice that the texture does not get uniformly darker, but behaves a little more like a partially-reflective surface.

Friday, November 20, 2009

WIP : Forest of Decay





This is a large tree being created as an environment asset for the Visions of Zosomos game under development at Forever Interactive.

The above rendered turnaround of the tree shows bump, normal and diffuse maps.
Pictures of Mormon Tea were used as the basis of the foliage.
Small branches and leaf textures (and associated alpha maps) were created in Photoshop.

The tree bark texture was taken from reference photos and made tileable through Texture Maker.
Bump map was generated through Texture Maker and adjusted in Photoshop.

Sculpting of the hi-res model that served as the basis of the normal map was done in ZBrush 3.0




Concept art and find low-poly model comparison.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

WIP : Citadel of Deceit (texturing)



This is a work-in-progress snapshot of a texturing project I've been involved with for the Visions of Zosomos (VoZ) game at Forever Interactive.

The Max file (a portion of which is shown untextured in the lower of the two images above) was provided to me and I was given the task of texturing the Citadel complex.

This was very much a ground-up process, necessitating the laying out of UV's, texture research (to match the overall VoZ thematic composition and the Aztec/Mayan temple design) and creation (tileable textures along with dirt and bump maps).

Thursday, October 08, 2009

new gallery

I've collected some examples of my work with Forever Interactive into a small gallery hosted off of my portfolio site.

I've also updated the blog's sidebar links with a reference to this gallery as well.

WIP : Orphanage texture pass



A test render without normal maps showing the evolution of the texturing process for the Orphanage.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

WIP : texturing (3 of 3) of Orphanage components




untextured vs textured low-poly mesh for the Orphanage stairs

hi-poly sculpts were created in ZBrush.
normal maps and textures were created in 3DS Max.

Note: the progression is untextured mesh, normal map only and all maps applied to mesh

WIP : texturing (2 of 3) of Orphanage components





untextured vs textured low-poly mesh for the Orphanage concrete

hi-poly sculpts were created in ZBrush.
normal maps and textures were created in 3DS Max.

Note: the progression is untextured mesh, normal map only and all maps applied to mesh

WIP : texturing (1 of 3) of Orphanage components



untextured vs textured low-poly mesh for the Orphanage door

hi-poly sculpts were created in ZBrush.
normal maps and textures were created in 3DS Max.

Note: the progression is untextured mesh, normal map only and all maps applied to mesh

Monday, September 28, 2009

WIP : ZBrush sculpting




Now that the textures are coming together for the Orphanage, I've been spending some time lately on a bit of hard-surface sculpting in preparation for the normal maps.

The concrete is the current WIP, but I'm generally satisfied at its progress.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

WIP : Orphanage textures




This is a *very* preliminary render of three of the textures being utilized for the Orphanage. Just broad strokes here at the moment since they constitute a significant fraction of the model's surface.

Two of these (the facade and the concrete base) are tileable textures, so some additional considerations were required.
Preliminary touch-up work was done in Photoshop (cropping, balancing levels across the swatch, removing defects and mixing with additional source textures).
Tileable textures were then produced in Texture Maker and preliminary diffuse and bump maps were generated in Crazybump.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

gray box model (3) : Arena/HQ

Situated in the lower area of the New Haven game map (along with the Sanitarium), the Arena and HQ exists in a vast network of caves and tunnels.

As with the Marketplace, I developed a 3DS Max model based off the level map and scaled to the design document specs.

The attached image documents this process.

gray box model (2) : Sanitarium

Here, I was given some latitude in creating this area as no definitive level map was available at the time. The design document gave an overall look and feel to this section and I based my gray models from that.

gray box model (1) : Marketplace

My first assignments were to produce gray box models for several areas on the game map : The Marketplace, The Sanitarium, The Courthouse and The Arena/HQ

This first post summarizes the work for The Marketplace.

update : web site

Some minor updates to the portfolio site, including my latest resume, bio and works in progress.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

WIP : Orphanage model (2)



Working off of Beu's concept art and turnarounds I developed the following model of the Orphanage.
Because of the size of the structure, it was broken down into several segments which will be imported separately into the Torque game engine.

The meshes shown represent a final tri count of just under 19,000.

WIP : Orphanage model


Work is continuing on the project over at Forever Interactive for the newly-retitled Aeon of Entropy.

I'm finally ready to begin posting my progress on my first cohesive modeling project for the game.

The Orphanage figures prominently into the back story and will be one of the featured playable areas in the forthcoming demo release.

The first post will detail the excellent concept work by my fellow team member Beau Brokop and the the interior level design I did based off of his turnarounds and information from the game design document.

Monday, July 06, 2009

employee spotlight

A wonderful bit of thanks from the folks I've been interning with over at Forever Interactive!

I was given the featured employee spot on their site for the month of June.

Here's a snapshot of the main page :

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

internship

While I'm waiting on the go-ahead for the Hasbro commercial renders, I figure I'd churn up the silence with some further updates.

About two weeks ago I began an 'internship' (though, this more has an open-source/shareware vibe to it) at an indie game company, Forever Interactive.

I'm part of the environment modeling team (I'm listed in the 'Zone Team' under the 'Team' tab) and at the moment working on developing building exteriors.

We're just moving out of the pre-dev phase, with most of the concept work out of the way. The focus has been on ironing out scale, getting the game mechanics working and getting up to speed on the new Torque 3d engine.

It's been a pretty sweet, but crazy ride so far. It's a scrum-based development cycle with each of the teams spread out over the country (part in Chicago, part in Texas). We're working in Max, so that's been an interesting learning curve.
This all brings me back to my days working on making levels for Quake.
But definitely good times.
I'll post when I have some actual renders, though that might not be for a while.

Friday, May 15, 2009

update

Well, it's been a month to the day since I last posted, so I figured I was a bit overdue for an update.

It's been a busy few weeks!
I started and completed a modeling/texturing/procedural animation freelance gig over at Calabash Animation. The project is still in progress, so I won't have any images to post until early June.

It was a great little job modeling candy for a Hasbro TV commercial.
Although the greatest learning experience came from interpreting and translating conceptual art for the project. It's always fun to step out of photorealism and loosen up with a different style. I'm definitely looking for more stylized projects in the future.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

WIP : lighthouse re-lighting (2)



Another rendering, this time without the use of Maya's portal light system in the main room.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

WIP : lighthouse re-lighting



The first image makes use of both Maya's natural lighting system as well as the Mental Ray portal light system. From the various banding artifacts on the stove (lower right-hand corner), it looks like this breaks down with direct sunlight.

The second image utilizes IES photometric data for the light profile of the overhead lantern point light.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

microphone 'in virtuo'



It will most likely have no part of the final animation, but I just happened to like this render.

WIP : wireless microphone



A microphone prop developed for a motion-graphics piece I'm setting up to animate.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

WIP : tank - minor update



A small progress update, this time showing a perspective of the tank from a reverse angle.

Monday, March 02, 2009

new project: sherman tank, modeling phase



I'm in the latter phases of the modeling stage of the project.
Most of the tank has been roughed out, just a few more items on the chassis that need to be completed before I move forward.

I'm striving to keep this as low-poly as I can while being true to the form of the vehicle. I've posted a wireframe model to illustrate my progress.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

quick update 2



These product promotional images were created for a client based on existing models.
They cages were re-textured (using a brushed-metal shader I had developed while working for Bending Light ) and re-rendered.

The above compositing work is for illustration purposes only and was designed to match an already existing packaging layout.

quick update



I've been working on some one-off freelance projects in the interim.
These renders are two versions of a client's logo based on 2d illustrations.

The chrome finish was the one ultimately selected and used for the basis of the short animation.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

update : revising and rebranding




It's been a couple of weeks since I last updated, so I thought it was time to give a heads up of what I've been up to since then.

With my portfolio site now live, I've been re-working my business card to be more thematically consistent with the design of 25HD.

I'm also in the initial stages of assembling a new demo reel to include new and updated material.

As this progresses, I'll make additional updates here.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

portfolio site : a little more tweaking

I've been tightening up a few things and making some aesthetic changes on the portfolio site since its launch, so swing on over if it's been a while.

Light's always on at 25-Hour Day.

Monday, January 12, 2009

25 hour day - digital portfolio launches!

It's been some time since I've updated this site, but I've been working hard on bringing my portfolio site online.

So, here it is, version 1.0!

As always, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.