My New Site

After a couple of weeks killing myself trying to code my own site like a moron i finally threw in the towl and purchased some themes from press75 for my new site.

My portfolio site

My new Blog

Character Sculpt Flashback

I was going sorting through my files the today when i discovered that i had these images uploaded but never posted. So here they are.

San Francisco GDC 2010

For the Entire photo collection of the trip to San Francisco click HERE.

Winnipeg to Vancouver

Our first lay over was in the city Vancouver and after a 4 hour flight i was more than ready to eat which became twice as complicated because back at the Winnipeg airport our group had gained a new party member whom was traveling to Japan and therefore had to be at the opposite side of the airport which drastically limited our option for places to eat. However we didn’t figure this out until after wondering around for half and hour. This eventually brought us to a restaurant called “White Spot” where i had a bacon cheddar bigger burger (6 oz., 100% pure beef patty with hickory smoked bacon, aged cheddar cheese, lettuce & tomato). I didn’t know it then but i suspected that this burger would end up being the most delicious of all burgers eaten during this trip. It was.

The Bacon Chedder Bigger Burger in all of it's glory

Vancouver to San Francisco

It was only a two hour flight that went much better because this time i purchased the Zombie Survival Guide to read for the duration of my flight. Good book.

Cody and if i remember correctly Miumi

San Francisco Highlights

Walking down O’Farrel I believe this was taken the same day a crazy person attacked Matt on Market Street. Matt used some kind of Jedi mind trick to convince the crazy to go away.

Lense Flare

Mama’s on Washington Square

We waited outside for approximately 30 – 40 minutes before being let inside but it was worth it in the end as you can clearly see but you can never taste.

Buttermil Batter Pancakes

Boulange de Market

Which apparently means nothing more than nonsense according to Seb the french connection.  Regardless of their name they’re a baker that makes delicious breakfast and i was delighted with my almond covered croissant.

The price of delicious is 2.75

GDC (Game Developers Conference)

The Expo Pass sucked and the Main Conference Pass was too expensive and as they say “beggars can’t be choosers” but we made the best of our time, the career pavilion was cool but that isn’t enough to make me want to come back on it’s own but it was a lot of fun. I purchased d’artiste Character Modeling 3 and EXPOSÉ 7 along with DIGITAL ART MASTERS volume 4. The most expensive purchase of my entire trip.

Taking a short well deserved break

SUSHI ROCK

No trip is complete without sushi and there’s really nothing else to say other than great food, service and location.

Me and Seb rolling out of Sushi Rock

San Francisco to Denver

Final day: Woke up early and caught a shuttle van from the Hilton to the airport at 4:30 in the morning. We had spent the night before drinking rum and watching Jack Ass 2. During the take off i snapped this picture.

Leaving San Francisco

Denver Layover

After 6 days in San Francisco we were all anxious to get home. Little did i realized that it was in the Denver Colorado airport while in line at a domino’s pizza that i would finally find some Mr. Pibb. I ordered a personal cheese and peperoni pizza with a medium sized Mr Pibb, i walked to my table were i found Tevor waiting. I placed my plastic tray down on the table, talking my seat in anticipation of my vary first taste. I had spent the entire week searching San Francisco for some Mr Pibb all my efforts being fruitless until now. I went in to take the sip….SPRITE! I said out loud to Trevor. I was so close.

The first ever documented case of someone trying to sleep at an airport this way

Home.

We took a smaller plane home that ended up being delayed because of some electrical problem with the plane that obviously needed to be fixed before we could be cleared to take off. When i cleared customs i was pleased to find that my phone was dead making it a pain in the ass to call home for a ride. Luckily Cody saved the day and i didn’t have to take the bus home.

Manitoba

The End.

Game Character: Finished

I finally got around to posting this.

Programs: Maya 2010, Zbrush 3.5, Topogun, Xnormals, and Photoshop cs4

She is roughly 13,000 tri’s and if my memory serves me correctly that also includes the pistol which accounts for 1,000 tris.

Her hair was redone at the last minutes using maya’s paint effects on a 2d canvas; because there is no means of using layers i had used the uv layout image and filled the uv spaces with white and the rest black. I did this so i had a reference for where to paint the hair to make the process somewhat faster. However i was left with some white haloing on the edges of her hair which i later reduced as much as i could. Im not really happy with the results but at the time i was a greater improvement from what i had and i think the biggest reason why im not happy with the hair was because of the way i approached the layering of poly planes to make her hair in the first place.

Beretta M92 Normal Map

Normal Map + Ambient Occlusion Map / 0 headaches = WIN to the power of 🙂

I thought i would post this because for the first time ever i pulled a good normal map from a high-rez model with absolutely no headaches, everything worked and even worked well. Im pretty impressed with the amount of detail  that the normal map was able to fake with such a low poly model.

UV/ Retopology Game Character

At this point im practically done the UV layout for my characters body and now all that’s left is the head or at least i think so, keeping in mind that i may need to make adjustments based on the results i get when i finally pull the normal’s from the hi-rez sculpt.

I spent a total of 8.5 hours doing the UV layout and i wasn’t really expecting it to take so bloody long but i guess that’s what i get for not sculpting a perfectly symmetrical character. Needless to say i still need to make her some hair then retopologize her grenades and her brick of C-4 plastic explosive.

The current poly count is about 600 tri’s shy of 10,000 plus a roughly estimated 400 tri’s for hair, not the most impressive poly count ever but i’m pretty confident that i was as efficient as i could be with this particular model.

Cockroach Zbrush Sculpt: WIP

In spite of finding myself being rather busy with school and work i took on a little side project a few months back for a motion picture being made by a former classmate. I will be responsible for modeling, texturing, rigging, and animating a cockroach that i have named “Skippy” Skippy the cockroach. Skippy has to die unfortunately but on the bright side his various incarnations show up throughout the film. I would also like to point out that my reason for being pretty vague about the story is because i don’t want get sued not that i’ve signed a contract or anything i just want to pretend if only for a moment…

The sculpting process is more or less done with the exception of a few piece like the antenna’s and weird anal feeler thingy’s that creep me the hell out. Next i’ll have to retopologize the zbrush mesh with my new favourite program Topogun! did i mention that i love it? Hell i even bought it with legal tender no less!

Leave a comment, Skippy loves comments 😉

Topogun how i love thee

I have now begun working on retopologizing my zbrush sculpt with Topogun (the first piece of software i have purchased in a long time, butterflies in my stomach)

I had originally started this process with the trial version of Nexus but when i saw how Topogun overlays your new mesh nicely over the highpoly version i was like “Fuck this im buying Topogun” And so i did and i’ve never looked back.

Not much else to say other than i love you Topogun for making life so amazing 🙂

Car Shot Up

Nothing really special here just some particles made in Fusion 6. I tried to account for the momentum in the sparks generated by the car moving by having the sparks kind of skate after they hit the ground.

Camera track provided by Matt B.

Green Screen Key

So after some effortless keying and some laborious roto in Fusion I can now say im just about done with the keying phase of this project which also involves placing her in a 3d background.

Interestingly enough after going on an extensive tirade over how bad the actresses shooting was and overall acting ability I have to say that I am very surprised to find my self being rather excited about this project. I even went as far as to roto some individual hair strands that blow in the wind, well simulated wind it was really just a fan, but yeah i got hardcore.

If all goes well i shall have her comp’d into a parkade rooftop scene with a couple of projection mapped buildings in the foreground  that I will call “hero buildings” because they deserve special attention and for buildings in the background i will simply use an image because i’m pretty sure i can get away with it.

The original footage was provided by HollywoodCameraWork.com