E3 came and went, but it was spectacular showing the first trailer for Marvel's Avengers! I'm really proud of what we've accomplished. Been working on this for some time and its been quite the ride! In addition to the trailer, the E3 booth was pretty damn cool! It was modeled after an Avengers helicarrier and had replica costumes on display.
A rough sketch of an MMA/Wrestling Bear! Sorta random, but I really do love watching MMA/WWE fights as the characters are just as intriguing as the fights themselves!
As with this guy below, he started off as just a sketch but I would love to continue working on him; tweaking his proportions, put him into a pose and perhaps do some a sim for his towel/shorts. if you have the eye, you can totally tell his outfit is inspired by WWE's Samoa joe. :)
Had an itch to do something "fashionable". The design is inspired by a Christian Dior dress from a Spring 09 show. The shapes and patterns are beautiful and once I saw it, I knew I wanted to re-create it in 3d! This was originally for the MD Apparel Creation Contest, but life got in the way and I couldn't finish in time! doh!
Blocking out in in zbrush with additional work done on helmet. Not entirely sure where this is heading as I've been looking at a lot of weird fantasy / space Opera stuff. Fun times.
Back in March, I was fortunate to have the guys over at 3D Total reached out to me. I ended up doing a little interview with them that you can check out below!
Back in November I put together two-part video tutorial about creating Hair textures within Zbrush. I really enjoy creating the diffuse & alpha textures with fibermesh so I thought a breakdown would be worth the share.
Part 1 is a timelapse (audio) example of going through the full process of creating Fibermesh Hair from a primitive plane to exporting into Photoshop. Starting with the Fibermesh settings, lighting and the BPR Renderer we go over the creating dynamic Fibermesh Hair.
Part 2 is a timelapse (no audio) example of repurposing a finished Fibermesh Hair asset and modifying/editing it into an entirely new asset. By duplicating and modifying existing subtools we can easily create an entirely new texture in a very short amount of time.
For the past 6 weeks I was very fortunate to be able to attend Scott Eaton’s Portraiture & Facial Anatomy class. Without a doubt, it was the best anatomy classes I’ve ever taken. Here’s a small collection of some of the exercises that I put together.
Personal work from 2016, that I finally got around to finishing. Awhile back I found a collection of beautiful sari’s and I thought would be fun to design one in 3D. Real-time asset rendered in Marmoset 3.
I am super stoked that ROTTR is out and available on PS4; and celebrated in a 20th year celebration edition! It was really fun working on all the DLC goodies that have come out this past year and yeah, its pretty awesome that all the PS4 peoples can finally play!
Thought it would be fun to also throw up one of the last Lara’s costumes I worked on post-launch for the PS4 20th year celebration edition. A recreation/throwback of Lara’s classic Home outfit from the original Tomb Raider 1. Super Retro and fun.
Some images of a personal project that I’ve been working on in my free time. Awhile back I found a collection of beautiful designer bridal sari’s that I thought would be really fun to make in 3D. The general costume design of the dresses are always decorative and fun, plus the look of the materials and the drapery of the fabric are really inspiring.
I’ve been sitting on these models for quite awhile as I had them finished early on in the year. It was more recently that I decided to make a game-mesh outta them and throw them into Marmoset for presentation. Look forward to finishing this one.
A few months back I did a QA with Digital Tutors ( aka: Pluralslight ) about the ROTTR, character work, and general industry questions. It was really cool to be able to talk with some of the dudes at Digital Tutors. I used to purchase their DVD's and get them snail-mail to me (streaming services wasn’t a thing yet ; ) back in collage when I was trying to learn the 3D’s graphics.
Some new images got released on DEADENDTHRILLS that showcases some of the work that our team accomplished on Rise of the Tomb Raider; and it look's so gooood.... These amazing screenshots are taken by Duncan Harris and are directly captured from the game. No enhancements through Photoshop or other external tools. Some really amazing stuff.
I finally manged to pull together some images of some of the stuff I worked on. You can check it out on my portfolio site with image descriptions. All the Lara costumes can also be found via the ROTTR Gear Up Guides. I am really proud of the work our team did on ROTTR, as it was definitely a collaborative effort among studio's full of smart people. Needless to say, it was very rewarding seeing it all come together. Go see the all the things over at my artstaion!
Since joining Crystal Dynamics, I’ve been working hard on Lara’s next adventure. Its been a helluva project with an amazing team. I am really stoked about the work we did and the game has gotten acclaim reviews.
When I was brought on to the character team I started with the development of our enemies and friendly NPCs. From there I rolled onto working on animals, and then continued with secondary characters and Lara’s outfits. I look foreword to posting some art and updating my portfolio when I have the time; in the meanwhile, here's the trailer!
After crunching long on a project, I’ve been getting out more and taking advantage of the benefits of the bay area. San Francisco has a vibrant game community, (GDC every year) as there are plenty of local events happening throughout the year. I was lucky enough to check out Day of the Devs, as its a FREE ( I love free! ) event hosted by iam8bit & doublefine. Enclosed in a most radical venue, there were a number of indie games being demo’ed. Just gotta walk up to a booth, pick up a controller and play. I think this was the third or so time this has gone down. Really fun event and I cant wait to check out next years lineup.
While the lines grew long and my patience in short supply, I did get an opportunity to check out some very cool games! Highly recommended!
As were getting close to launch, developers around the office have been putting together some “behind the scenes” posts for Rise of the Tomb Raider. I wrote an article up a few weeks back outlining the process for hair card creation and workflow, most notably on the bear I worked on! Click below to read the full dev blog!
I had the luxury two weeks back to cruise down to Los Angeles and spend some time at the ever hectic, hype fueled Electronic Entertainment expo event. Otherwise known as E3, because I guess that sounds more cool. But really, for all the hype E3 is pretty cool. Its a magical time for video games.
This was my third time walking around the LA Convention Center and this years experience was way more exciting due to seeing Rise of the Tomb Raider plastered on billboards around the convention center. Joining the Crystal Dynamics team last year, I’ve been working away on Lara Croft’s next adventure. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work on such an amazing project with some amazing people. When you’re working on a new game its always exciting to show off what you’ve been working on to the public. You get to see the reactions and feel the hype for a game that you’ve been crunching on night and day. At the Microsoft Press Conference, the first gameplay reveal was shown, and behind closed doors an extended 15 minute demo was shown. Check it out below!
Other than the tomb raider excitement, there was plenty of other shangigings to be had at E3. Running around with my coworkers we spent alot of time walking the show floor, grabbing free swag and checking out games from from all around the convention center. We got to try on Project Morpheus, and partake in some radical VR adventures. Its amazing how far along VR tech has come in the last few years.. Additionally, another highlight was seeing some of the new IPs being revealed. Behind closed doors we saw some really cool stuff from Guerilla Games, Team Ico, Square Enix, ect.
After the games, the rest of the event though consisted of Mexican food, drinking lots of tequila, cruising around downtown, dealing with nefarious Uber drivers and loosing my backpack at a retro bar/arcade.
Call me a noob, but my computing experiences just reached a whole new level with the addition of windows tabs via QTTaBar.
I really dig finding free software and tools that can change my workflow and QTTabBar is no exception . I’ve been using it a bit now and it operates just like Firefox or Chrome, allowing for a one window, multi tabbed windows experience. Needless to say, its completely changed my file management workflow and has kept me way more productive. I can’t stress enough how much of a time saver this has been when digging through multiple directories and managing multiple projects.
