BioBoss Head Armor

GI research project 'BioBot'
Head Armor W.I.P

Started working on the head of the 'Boss' character.

More info soon.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Tentacle Arm Units

progress of the cannon head

5. I've finished modeling and generating a UV layout for the Cannon head; now I'm making a first draft of the 'Diffuse' (color) and 'Normal' (bump) texture maps.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

total progress so far

4. Above picture shows the progress of the total character so far...; up next is to start on the final model of the head armor...to be continued.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

progress on the hammer head

3. I've finished modeling and generating a UV layout for the hammer head; now I'm making a first draft of the 'Diffuse' (color) and 'Normal' (bump) texture maps.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

G&I research project 'BioBot'

2. Doing a first draft making a base texture layout of color and normal detailing; next step in texturing is to make it dirty and scratchy which will be done after all modeling of the 'Boss' creature is done. I'm also working on the final model of the head piece of the tentacle arm (hammer).
(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

G&I research project 'BioBot'

1. Working on a final model of the tentacle arm units of the 'Boss' creature.
Trying to come up with smart ways of making a unit that is flexible in translation & rotation.
In total the 'Boss' arm will have 2 units that will make up the whole arm; to enhance efficiency in re-use of mesh and textures.
See previous post for more info on the 'Biobot' project.
(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

New G&I project entry: BioBot

G&I project 'BioBot'

Within a day I made a quick 3D mockup model of a 'Boss' creature for a fairly new project, within our G&I research center, named 'BioBot'. Which is targeted at using biofeedback to 'train' attention span of people with severe concentration disorders and such.

For the project we setup a team of three 3rd year students at the HKU to develop this game under guidance & supervision by colleague Micah Hrevocsik and myself.

The art & design vision of the game is tailored within the realm of the 'Moodbot' universe as you can see in the great concept design in above picture done by art intern Mariette Jacobs.

Engine Room Update

G&I research project 'Moodbot'

The Engine Room went through major polish iterations.

Under my supervision, art intern students: Marissa Engels (2D concept) and Tim Nelemans (3D modeling) are providing great support in realizing the steam engine.

Marissa did a great job in translating the 3D mockup into a visually appealing concept design which Tim is currently realizing in 3D as you can see in above picture. As a 3D art student Tim wanted to improve his modeling skills so I gave him this tricky and quite difficult task which he is doing very well.

Except the most difficult & daunting part is yet to come; making the UV layout and texturing.

To be continued.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

ZBrush Study

ZBrush Sketch

Re-topology mesh build from ZBrush Sketch

Trying to level up my character sculpting skills in ZBrush.
Sculpted only the basic shapes and forms that make up the face thus far without concerning about finer details. No reference from a real person was used, just started sculpting and see what I could come up with.
As a base I've used a low poly template I modeled a few years ago in Maya which was used for a game character.

Quickly added some skin tones and color to get a general feel of the character.
After that I've made a new low poly mesh in ZBrush from the HighRes sketch with correct & clean edge flow which can be easily subdivided several times in ZBrush to make the final very detailed version. In this way I can always project the HighRes details to the LowRes model Normal map for in-game purpose.
The LowRes mesh on the left has around 3000 triangles (1500 pologon faces).
(Screenshots taken from ZBrush & Maya viewport).

Wallpainting

Doing a wall-painting for my little 2 year old nephew on his bedroom wall.

He's crazy about anything with wheels or wings, so I'm painting a character from Pixar's animated film 'Cars'.

Maybe I'll do some little touch ups here and there but it is quite finished I think.
Its been years since I did some painting; it took me a while to get into the flow of mixing colors and the technique of painting with acrylics again.
The painting itself is quite straightforward; trying to get close to the original rendering.

(materials used: acrylic paint, 3 different sizes of brushes and water).

Develop a style

ZBrush sketch

Quick polypaint test on a ZBrush sketch I've made earlier (see older post of sept. 7).

Purpose in this stage is still to develop a stylized character style for a personal project.
I must say I'm quite happy with the results so far; its sketchy but it gives me a good indication of where a want to go with this next time I work on it.

ZBrush doodle

ZBrush sketch

First time since months that I finally have some spare time left to do some on the fly sketching with digital clay in ZBrush.

This is how far I got after 4 hours of doodling around; I tried to create a character head that is a mix between a seashell/bone kind of structure and a human face.
I started out with a simple rough shape of a human head and just let things happen from there on without thinking too much about what I'm exactly doing.
Eventhough I got some nice forms going...Its still a bit to scary to my taste.

Next time I work on it I'll try to emphasize the seashell shapes a bit more and replace the aggressive hornlike shapes with something more friendly.

Community HUB

G&I research project 'Moodbot'

Crunching away to get this section of the 'fishship' finished before christmas holidays.
It's meant as a sort of community HUB where the player can visit other player rooms.
The other rooms will be represented by doors which will be located on the branches.

Once the player clicks on one of them; he/she will go to another screen to scroll through the rooms and be able to visit them.

Opposed to other areas in earlier posts; the modeling of this section is quite advanced/polished already. All the extra vertices around the branches is meant for blending the textures to black by use of vertex colors as seen in example.
With this now done; I'm finished with mocking up the entire ship which was the goal before the ending of this year.
So next year januari; I can start fresh with polishing and adding detail to all the rooms.
Hopefully by then I can post some more pictures of lighting tests done in Unity.
(picture taken in Maya viewport).

Engine Room Mockup

G&I research project 'Moodbot'

Pretty busy this week with modeling a rough 3d mockup of the 'Engine Room' which is quite a challenge since it involves lots of 'boolean' operations in Maya to get the the window hole cutouts and such.

Something Maya isn't really good at so it created some headaches along the process.
The glass window frame is quite simple to do actually; they are 'beveled' edges which are then extruded to the prefered thickness. In later polish the frame will hopefully get some extra details like bolts. 

I roughly blocked out the engine itself too; it's kind of a simplified version of what you can find in huge old steamships to drive the propellers. It will need some design development before building the final model.

When finished it will look very dynamic with all the motion and steam vfx going on and such.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Water Depot Mockup

G&I research project 'Moodbot'

Setting up a 3d Mockup of the Water Depot area of the ship; where the big integrated tree is drawing water from.

Easy modeling job; except for the window frames which can be quite tricky because of the round shape of the tank. I solved it by first cutting out the window hole and draw a spline from the hole's edges which is a simple operation in Maya because there is a function to convert selected edges to a curve spline.

After that I duplicate and offset the spline to outline the width of the window frame, then select both splines and do a loft operation, when done all is left is extruding the mesh to generate the thickness of the window frame.

(screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Recreation Room Mockup

G&I research project 'Moodbot'

Setting up a 3d Mockup for the next room in the 'fish' ship; the 'Recreation Room', where all the bots can enjoy relaxation and special buts and bolts 'soup'. In this area of the ship; the integration of the the tree is quite visible. The big window hole next to the soup kettle; will be filled with multi-colored window glasses which will give the lighting of the room a special and colorful tone to it.

(screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Challenge Tree Mockup

G&I research project 'Moodbot'

This week I've started creating a first 3d mock-up of the 'Challenge Tree' where players can create or collect challenges for themselves. The challenges are represented by flower fruits which have 4 stages of growth.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Mood Journal Mockup

G&I research project 'Moodbot'

This week I've been working on a mock-up of an in-game 3D user interface (UI) called the 'Mood Journal' in which the players (patients) can give input on how they are feeling during the day. The meters are meant as the input devices and they eventually will each be attached to a robot arm coming from the central HUB (treetrunk).

The screen will display a graph of all the input during a defined period.
This device will be placed in all the player rooms.
(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Interface Mood Journal Brainstorm

G&I reasearch project 'Moodbot'

Brainstorming about the visual and functional look of the 'Mood Journal'; an in-game input device to capture players (patients) moods and feelings.

'Player Room' lighting test

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Together with Collegue Wiebe Giebels, I've made a quick lighting test in Unity of the 'Player Room' 3d sketch. I've applied some quick textures on the model to get a general idea of the intended materials.

I must say it looks very promising already! In a way its kind of producing a concept in 3d.

Mocking the 'Player Room'

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

During production of the Bridge, I've started with building a quick and dirty mock-up (3d sketch) of the generic 'Player Room'. Idea is to generate an inside tree feeling.

(Screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Building the captain's bridge

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Still working on the 'Bridge' room; 3d modeling, applying UV's & putting textures on the model.

Textures are being developed by our art intern Denise Blaauwkamer (HKU student).

Again we make in between lighting tests in Unity to see how things work out visually.
For now I'm focusing on a 'first pass' polish since our aim is to build a fully working prototype by the end of oktober. If green-lighted by the outcome of crucial play-tests, hopefully we'll be working on a 'second-pass' polish of this room from begin januari 2013.
(screenshot taken from Maya viewport).

Mocking the Bridge

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Busy this week with the 3D mock-up of the first room (Captain's bridge) of the airship in Maya by blocking out the main shapes and elements. From this colleague Wiebe Giebels already could start to make some light-bake tests in the Unity engine...which I have to say looks very promising...can't wait to see the final end result.

Talking of which; after the mock-up now being done...I can start on the final model.

Develop a style

Zbrush sketch

Trying to come up with a stylized art-style for a character model which I want to use for a personal project.

Maybe I'll work this one out at a later stage.

Color picking

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Trying out some colors to get an idea of how it could look when players choose their preferences.
(Screenshots taken from Maya viewport)

Texturing the 'Moodbot'

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Almost done with finishing up the texturing!
After this....the model will be skinned to a 'rig' (skeleton system), animated and exported to the in-game engine (Unity 3D).
For the torso + head I'm using 1 diffuse texture map with a specular texture saved in the alpha channel (512 x 512 ) + 1 normal texture map (512 x512). The face (TV screen) is using a separate texture (128 x 128) which will be swapped ingame by different 'emotions' and 'TV' effects like jitters and such.
The wire of the lamp is also using a separate texture map; a 'stencil' map (64 x 64).
In the game, the color of the bot (blue in picture) can be customized by the player. Therefor I'm using 1 black and white mask texture (256 x 256) to mask of the areas which can not be affected (the grey metal).
The areas which can be colored is left white in the diffuse texture file so that it can be easily multiplied with a color in the Unity shader. It is way cheaper this way opposed to storing various color diffuse textures.
In total the character will have 6 shaders applied in the Unity engine:
A base metal (torso + head), a base glass (portal window), an illuminated glass (lamp), an illuminated skin (heart + heartchamber), an illuminated glass (TV screen) and an illuminated metal (lamp-wire).
(Screenshots taken from Maya viewport)

Modeling the 'MoodBot'

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Busy creating a final in-game (low-poly) 3d model of the little 'Moodbot' from the 3d sketch I've posted earlier (June 19th). I'm now in the process of creating coloring, texturing & detail. The model currently has around 2700 triangles (1600 faces). BTW, first time I'm using 'NDO2' plugin for Photoshop to create normal & specular maps for the detailing of the character...I have to say I'm quite pleased with the results!
We've decided to replace the battery with a heart...to make it stand out a bit more and to give the character something 'human'. In the game certain areas of the bot can be customized by the player to a number of preset colors.
Extra subdivisions to arms and legs will be applied later by animator Wiebe Giebels to make sure they bend sufficient when skinned to the skeleton.
(Screenshots taken from Maya viewport)

Brainstorming

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Defining the main chambers of the Airship with colleague Wiebe Giebels by doing brainstorm sessions on the white board. From this we can generate an asset list which will provide us a general idea of what the scope will be concerning art production.

Zbrush sketches

Some doodles to learn Zbrush.

Mocking the airfish

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Started creating a quick and dirty 3D mockup of the airship in Maya, using 'nurbs' splines.

To generate the basic shape of the ship; I've used about 9 cross section splines from head to tail, which I then 'loft' into a polygon model without deleting the history. This way you can still adjust / iterate the shape of the ship with ease.

Master of Disaster

AGD research project 'Ramp Meester '

Finalizing the last bits and pieces for this applied game prototype:

Busy in Photoshop with creating a title screen for a crisis management game-app prototype.

btw found a great tutorial which aided me in creating the 3d text effect if anyone want to know how I did it:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects-tutorials/create-a-spectacular-grass-text-effect-in-photoshop/

Choose wisely

AGD research project 'Ramp Meester'

Ingame screenshot of the applied game prototype 'Ramp Meester'.

Currently finalizing art for it.

It is meant for Iphone or Ipad.

Fishy airship spacing

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

Work in progress of the airship floorplan design in Photoshop; trying to fit in round about 20 rooms in total. This will serve as a guideline when production of the mockup starts in 3D.

Moody bot

AGD research project 'Moodbot'

First quick and dirty 3D in-game character concept of a 'Moodbot' created in Maya.
Today I prefer to conceptualize the little fellow in 3D instead of using paper and pencil.
This Model will serve as an art direction for the final model.
As reference we drew inspiration from the wonderful and brilliant point and click adventure puzzle game 'Machinarium'

Styrofoam mayhem

click picture to view album

I've put together a picasa album of the charity decor building work I've been doing for 'Stichting Musicalgroep Urk' (christian musical foundation)

Decor building nerve centre

SMGU project 'Rabboeni'

In the basement doing crunchtime!

Gol got ya!

SMGU project 'Rabboeni'

Final assembly of Golgotha Rock.

Back in the days at Lost Boys Games

My first entry in the games industry more then 11 years ago; working my ass of at Lost Boys Games (now Guerrilla Games)

Until this day one of the most fun and educational game projects I've worked on.

To bad this project was canceled half way. Still looks good though; would not be a bad match for a handheld like PSP or Vita....

Zbrushing Hexapus

AGD research project 'Project Dream'

Fiddling around with colors in Zbrush

Wet & jelly

Octopus WaterDrop UV Animation Test (WIP)

This video shows a work in progress example of a simple UV texture animated waterdrop effect for 'next-gen' video(in)game purpose (prototype apllied game for Healthcare).

This to show how some simple use of UV scrolling tileable textures can have great results.

The video is a realtime capture from the 'maya' viewport.

Technical info

For the waterdrop effect:

- I've used 2 basic (tileable) textures in separate shaders of which both use a diffuse-map, normal-map and a specular map

- The Octopus has 2 UV sets; one for the base texturing and the other for the waterdrop effect.

- The Octopus is a low res ingame 3d model (around 5000 triangles)

- At end of development this will be implemented in a 'Unity' game environment.

Sumo Rolling

Helped-out good friend and colleague Timo Visser by creating a 3D version of a game character he designed for his game-concept named 'Sumo Roll'. Which is a funny little top down wrestling game made in 'GameMaker'.

The 3D character was meant as a testcase for an action adventure version of the game, which hopefully someday Timo will manage to actually build and release.
The test objective was to see if we could translate the crisp and stylized look of the 2d style into 3D.

The character has around 4400 triangles and currently using 2 basic materials; 1 for the generic texture (512 x 512) and 1 for the face (128 x 128) which will swap various 'expression' textures during the game.
(Screenshots taken from Maya viewport)

Lisa 'Dream' character

AGD research project 'Dream'

Zbrush tryout of Lisa's head; to find a style direction.

Learning Zbrush

Zbrush sketch

One of my first experiences with digital clay.

Started hacking away in Zbrush to find out what various brushes can do.
Too bad it turned out to be something disturbing :(