Portfolio

It's been a while since I last posted, I finished Uni with a First Class Honours and scored a job at Sherringham Studios straight away so I've been doing a lot of celebrating and working.

I did have a portfolio set up when I was doing the Graduate Exhibition but I thought it was a bit rushed so I worked over the design and re-did all the renders for my scenes as well as all the asset presentation shots,

Canary Flythrough

Gradex has been and gone and I am extremely happy after receiving a Dreamspark Award for Excellence in the field of 3D Modelling for Canary Facility! Really proud after all the time I put into the piece, here's a fly-through that I had on loop at the exhibition.

UDK Flipbooks

Been busy writing my dissertation and finishing off all my modules but I wanted to try and bring Canary to life a bit ready for the Graduate Exhibition.. I've been looking through some of 3D Motives Flipbook tutorials and this is what I've come up with so far.

Details

Canary Facility is pretty much finished now and I'm extremely happy with how it turned out. It's the project I've put the most time and work into and I've learnt a lot across a range of skills and software, this will definitely be a top row piece on my 'folio.

Here's a few close-ups of some of the details I put into my scene.

Canary Update

Everything is now textured! Creating the digital camo for the Mech was especially fun.

I put this up on Polycount while I was working on my Dinosaur and got some really great feedback and criticisms, all of which I'm trying to address. Here's the latest update with some lighting/PP/material changes I've made.

I think the new hologram and monitors along with the halogen lights in the Mech room really push the scene from what it was before.

DinoDone.

Finished off my Velociraptor and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think the texture is perhaps unrealistic and slightly noisy around his head, but I was aiming for something very different from your average Dino!

Dino Animations

Rigging this guy caused all sorts of problems, most notably was him constantly pulling the superman pose every time the rig collapsed in on itself.. Been using the CAT rig to make all of these, I've definitely got a lot of work to do when it comes to realistic fluid animations.

Polypainting

Been polypainting this guy in ZBrush for the last day or so.. I started off with the basic colours that are 'traditional' for reptiles/dinosaurs but then tried something a bit more eccentric and vibrant to make him more unique.

VelociSculpt

Updated my sculpt a little on my Velociraptor before I start polypainting, nice break from a large amount of asset work.

Change of Pace

Actually going to force myself to take a break from this now as I feel confident enough in the scene and I think taking a few days off will give me a good fresh perspective when I come back to it. Time to texture my Dino!

GUI

Some more texture work! All of this so far has been hand-painted using, mainly, the techniques discussed in Racer445's tutorials as well as picking up some tips from other corners of the internet.

The GUI on the monitors was especially fun to make.. it's been a long time since I've done any graphic design wok.

Blueprints

Unfortunately don't have much time to work today and won't be able to carry on until tomorrow afternoon so I decided to work on some smaller assets rather than rush larger key pieces or get half way through something and try to pick it up again tomorrow..

Texture/Lighting Progress

Been another busy few days, pretty much working flat out on this project and absolutely loving it! I've never really delved much into the Sci-Fi scene but after all my research and looking around for inspiration I've got a great view of the genre!

Here's some texture and lighting updates from the last weeks worth of work:

Into UDK!

I feel a lot more confident with UDK now after using it recently for two other environments, I've also been going over a few different tutorials in my down-time to try and pick up a few tricks and tips.

I've been very busy creating all of the assets I need for my scene and adding normal detail with high-poly bakes and the use of nDo2.. it's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks getting it all ready, but here it is in-engine ready to be textured.

Canary Facility

Changed the name of the Environment to 'Canary Facility' rather than Mecha-Industry Armaments after a new set of logo designs was drawn up by a God named Tyler, played around with a modular wall panel design in Photoshop:

Mecha-Industry Armaments

The title of my dissertation is "The Use of Modular Design Within a Sci-Fi Environment" so I've started blocking out a scene re-using as much as I can where possible while still keeping it interesting.. I've put some of my references and influences below the 3ds Max shots too.

ZBrush Work

More time in ZBrush this year! I used it for all of my Egyptian Ruins scene but haven't used it since then so I was a little rusty.. especially with character work.

I'm really happy with how this turned out, it only took me a couple of days to reacquaint myself with the tools and get to this stage of the sculpt. I think I could have done some better work with the scales across the body though as they're just created with an alpha I made.

Dinosaurs

One of the other modules in this final semester involved picking a dinosaur and creating a game ready asset, rigged with animations, for it.. I'm working on a variation of the Velociraptor.. this is my base mesh ready to go into ZBrush.

nDo2

Not posted yet this year so here's one to start it off.. In my final semester of my final year at Stafford now and I've only really got one thing to focus on: My FYP.. I've been playing around with nDo2 while I sketch up some more ideas for my Final Year Project.. a Sci-Fi Environment!

Handheld

Well as it was a module to make a scene for a handheld device I had to test it out.. so with a bit of help I got it running pretty smoothly on my iPhone, which is great! Did a little mock-up presentation piece as well for the sake of it.

Throne Room: Christmas Update

I started a thread over at Polycount while I continued to try and fix up my Throne Room scene and got some really great feedback!

I've changed an awful lot as the destroyed bricks and tiles along with the huge amount of emissive lighting was making the scene far too busy. Most of the textures have been reworked and the emissive textures have been turned off in most cases bringing a lot more focus to key objects like the throne. I'm much happier with how the scene stands now.. one to prepare for the 'folio.

Environment #2: DONE!

Well the deadline is in a few hours so I'm going to have to call this one done and get some sleep.. I'm pretty happy with it turned out but I don't think it's as strong as my Egyptian Ruins piece. I'm going to come back to this one over Christmas and polish it up some more.

.. and some more ..

Finished texturing all of the assets for the Throne Room scene, everything's in engine I just need to start doing some shader, lighting and post-process work.. easy, right?

More Assets

I've been doing about an asset a day so far, depending on their size or importance, from unwrapping to doing the Diffuse, Normals and Speculars.. here's a couple of the most recent ones, I think they're a bit noisy in areas so I'll try to fix that with a second texture pass.

Vaulted Ceiling

Working on the vaulted ceiling.. think I'm gonna have to work on the saturation of the wall brick tile texture and the floor tiling texture as I think they may be a bit too yellow/orange in areas.. Although I'll make final calls once everything is in-engine together.

Floor Tiles

Updated the destroyed version of the floor tiles for the scene, the idea will be to mix these, or mesh paint (hence the extra triangles), in with the non-destroyed versions to give some variation.

Handheld Assets

With my Egyptian Tomb finished it's time to push on with my Throne Room scene, only a few weeks left now!