XCOM: Enemy Unknown

I am proud to announce that the game I am Character Lead on is announced!

We are featured on the cover of Game Informer Magazine's February issue.  Have a look at the cover reveal here:

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/01/05/february-cover-revealed-xcom-enemy-unknown.aspx

Stay tuned...

nice panel

while retopologizing some stuff today at work, i watched/listened to this panel from blizzcon 2011 on the making of the diablo 3 cinematic.  this was a pretty excellent panel and i recommend you check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-skQwvbuYU

friends! the blog is not dead!

i know i have neglected to post up here lately but i am busy as hell!  deadlines at work and in life are taking over.  i promise i will post some work and thoughts soonish.

things i will post about:

more peter updates
texturing pipelines for production
high poly burnout
managing crunch to avoid project burnout
crunch/family balance
the future!

stay tuned...

interesting discovery that makes a lot of sense

been working on peter's hair a bunch recently and something struck me that i've been doing the past 2 nights.  i've switched my move and scale gizmos to operate only in screen space.  now, i know that you can adjust the move gizmo to have that little box where the 3 axis meet, but i'm talking about switching the damn thing into screen mode and that's it!  now, what happens with screen manipulation mode is you have to spend more time rotating around the model to get your proper move position and angle.  think about it.  what happens when you're rotating more?  light is passing over your model more and you are forced to focus more on the form of the model while you're getting your gizmo position and angle right.  this is great because no model is great without strong form.  i have noticed an improvement in my form because i can't use a predictive gizmo.  i am forced to rotate much more to get my gizmo oriented properly.

food for thought.

another long time inbetween posts

hello there friends.  it has been a while between postings.  that's not to say this guy hasn't been doing any art, it is just the art i am doing is for work and i cannot show it as of yet.  lets just say things are busy and i have been working a bit more than maybe i'd like, but don't we all...

in the coming weeks i will take some pictures of my recent figure drawings.  i help put together a small bi-weekly figure drawing session at my work and i've recently had some pretty good drawings come from it.

i am still plugging away at peter.  i am afraid the deadline i've set for myself to have him done by the end of august will probably prove unrealistic due to things at work, but it happens.  i will try to work through him as quickly as i can so i can get to some new work.

sorry for the lack of picture.  hopefully when i can show what i am working on at work, i'll have a rather large blog dump for you.  stay tuned...

long time there, bloggo

got peter's hair massed out using wrap it tonight.  i haven't blogged in a while.  been busy with kid and what not. also been doing manlier things than modeling.  built a new roof on my shed,  began design work on a workbench, and have begun tooling out my wallet.

lunchtime shader work

peter with some updates

peter has been updated with a new rig that will allow for better morphs.  here's the new head model w/ UVs and the prototype skin shader that i am working up.

the above image is the new UV layout for peter.  this will allow maximum resolution on the face area.

this is a skin shader that i am working on in mental ray.  you can see the red checkers blend out into skin.  the idea is that i will create a procedural skin shader that blends into the actual UV mapped one.  i will start with the procedural one as the base of the texture so they will seamlessly blend together.  this is just experimental as of right now.

this image has the mr sss fast skin + shader that i downloaded from zap's.  it has reflection built into the shader.  it looks cool, but i prefer the classic mr sss fast skin.

this is the mr sss fast skin shader on peter.  i am currently working on the shader when i don't feel like sculpting, like tonight!

just for reference

http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/WileyAuthoringforTessellation.pdf

http://wenku.baidu.com/view/95dcafbafd0a79563c1e7225.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

The right stuff

I wish I could post an image of what I'm working on at work because I am trying out a new (to me) process for hard surface modeling and I'm really happy with how the piece is turning out not only in quality but in speed.  I took the concept and made a super quick 20 min control mesh made in max and imported into zbrush and started sculpting out hard surface forms completely focusing on form, proportion, and shape balance, worked it up in zb and decimated and brought into max for the retopo and detailing phase.  I do not have to worry about how the shapes should flow together while also worrying about topology.  I can just retopologize and detail on top of a nearly fully realized mesh.  granted I may not save time on this model, but the next one will definitely go quicker now that I have some experience with this.  definitely shaping up to be my best model yet.