StrangeFate

HIPOLY	Homeless Models.
Statue inspired on the Winged Victory. Done in modo in SubDs, the hair was sculpted in modo. Statue inspired on the Winged Victory. Done in modo in SubDs, the hair was sculpted in modo. A statue mixed with a futuristic Art Deco piece... had to be done quick. Subway Train WIP
LOWPOLY
07/2004 ~2000 triangles. Warhammer 40k Sororita sister of battle. 07/2004 Painted skin for the Sororita model. 05/04/2002 - 2692 triangles his was done for Dungeon Siege and was supposed to be hovering connected with bridges. By the time they had released the mod tools i had moved on.

Star Trek 2012

Star Trek was a heavily design driven project with no Art Direction until the last 1/3 of the project.

I was lead artist on the project with a new art team hired for it.
The environment team consisted almost exclusively of juniors without previous industry experience for most of the project's duration.

I managed up to ~15 artists, established quality standards, modularity, created art bibles and visual style guides for the game.
Trained artists to better understand our technology, the process of hi to lowpoly modeling, texturing, understanding of shape and form etc.

Since we only had sporadic access to concept artists during most of the production I found myself doing a lot of paint overs and sketches defining a lot of areas in the game, extrapolating from the styles that had been set in the new Star Trek reboot.

I created PSDs containing tiling versions of all the diffuse and specular maps for the different materials used which sped up texturing considerably for all artists and kept things visually consistent.
I managed to somewhat remove the need for skills from the equation when it came to texturing by creating blending layers in PS that would allow artists to ie. simply paint a straight line with a regular brush, but instead of a regular stroke, the blended layers would create a random chipped paint effect along the stroke.
Same for other texturing effects.

I also managed to do some in game art myself from time to time in the time that exists between 2 seconds.
I did some props, layout, and skyboxes.

Overall, it was an interesting project that allowed me to experience most art roles, at once.
I would have probably lost my mind (several times over) during the project would it not have been for some of the awesome artists (some juniors, some experienced) that stepped up at every occassion and made a nightmare feel like a walk on the beach (during a hurricane, but still so much better!).

I'll add more work from Trek work later.

I found myself spending a lot of my time doing quick paint overs and sketches, be it quick on paper or PS. All this was usually done on the fly as level designs changed and grew.
In this case I did a set of paint overs covering most of the room. Some were more finished than others depending how clear I felt things needed to be to get them done.
I then did all the textures and had a junior use them to create the final ingame art.
I found myself spendinga lot of my time doing quick paint overs and sketches, be it quick on paper or PS. All this was usually done on the fly as level designs changed grew. In this case I did a set of paint overs covering most of the room. Some were more finished than others depending how clear I felt things needed to be to get them done. I then did the textures and had a junior use them to create the final art.
While sketches and paint overs were great to illustrate ideas for other artists, they always seemed a bit slow and overkill for myself, given the time available.
I started using modo's sculpting to flesh out details and shapes on my or existing proxies really quick before doing a hipoly, which turned out to be an awesome approach I still use to this day.
This room was done during the last 2 weeks of production (there was still a lot of content being made at that point). I did a quick paintover for myself over an afternoon. The room is loaced inside a spherical space of the starbase.
I created most of the content myself, passing it off to juniors to add some missing pieces and unwrap some of the tiling parts.
The... pincers (?) were ment to open and close as the energy in the middle builds up, but I don't think that animation actually made it into the game.
I blocked out the enterprise bridge and did some of the consoles myself to set materials and standards for the rest.
I blocked out the enterprise bridge and did some of the consoles myself to set materials and standards for the rest.
With everything being done on the fly, I rarely had enough time to figure out a whole space.
I usually just had enough time to look at the space, figure out some color/accents breakdown in my head and then do some rough paint overs for the artists to work from.
When I wasn't too happy with my own crappy paint overs I would proxy out something I liked better myself, and sometimes would make the time to do the modeling and texturing too. As long as a proxy was in game, I could do the final art on the side in between other things.
When I wasn't too happy with my own crappy paint overs I would proxy out something I liked better myself, and sometimes would make the time to do the modeling and texturing too. As long as a proxy was in game, I could do the final art on the side in between other things.
When I wasn't too happy with my own crappy paint overs I would proxy out something I liked better myself, and sometimes would make the time to do the modeling and texturing too. As long as a proxy was in game, I could do the final art on the side in between other things.
Since I often design things from scratch in 3D or still fiddle with the final looks in 3D I'm used to model things out, even if I only bake the minimum needed to create the lowpoly and any variations I want to do with it.
WIP
The Starbase cafeteria was one of many spaces in the game concepted (one asset at a time) and built on the fly.
WIP
The Starbase cafeteria was one of many spaces in the game concepted (one asset at a time) and built on the fly.
Generic engineering prop. With some complex machinery or shapes it was sometime easier to just model it myself. I seem to have been doing SciFi for a decade now so I have a decent collection of pieces I can just stick into things with some pipes/cables around and voila... tech done.
First tries at coming up with Gorn trim textures. The style became more organic towards the end after we got an art director.
The new federation phaser. I'm not sure if there's an explanation of how it's triggered, since there's no trigger.
Was modeled after movie screenshots and a plastic toy, and tweaked it later when we got photos of the actual movie props.
The (not really a) dam was just a quick background piece. With the time left it was what seemed would make the largest impact on the background scene, making it all look less like proxies.
Was built/textured within 2-3 days. I was looking at Dams when I was making it but in the heat of things it didn't occur to me that I was looking at the wrong side of the dams, the one facing away from the water... either way, it's the visually more interesting side, and Vulcans are crazy aliens... and that really wouldn't be a dam anyway, and so on...
I think I did the basic texturing myself, but juniors did the baking and more detailed texturing... can't remember.
I also didn't mean for the noisy version (with the grates in the center) to be used so much, it was ment to be only used as an accent along the wall, adding something techy to an otherwise too human and plain looking wall but... when rushing, communication suffers.
We actually got a concept for this. For speed reasons (had to be done NOW!) I built and textured a straight modular section myself, then handed it over to juniors to do the myriad of different pieces needed (T sections, corners etc. not an enviable task).
We actually got a concept for this. For speed reasons (had to be done NOW!) I built and textured a straight modular section myself, then handed it over to juniors to do the myriad of different pieces needed (T sections, corners etc. not an enviable task).

THE EGG ROOM 2010 - In game scene

The Egg room was done in late 2010.
It was part of a larger project with hallways and some rooms for which I had a total of 3 weeks* to get eveything done from scratch and in game.
(*aka. very long nights).

We wanted something that felt retro, 80s Alien movie being one of the references. Other than that it was up to me to figure out what to do visually and what type of spaces to do with the available time. I decided to fuse the 80s style with the retro Maschinen Krieger style.
As a basio rule, components would be macro instead of micro (computer parts etc) and they would all feel as if they were made out of different diesel engine parts.Just imagine a world where your desktop computer runs on diesel, as do door hydraulics and almost everything else.

Given the time limitations, pipes had to mostly do to give the room depth and layering.

I'll post some of the other stuff at another time.

AFRICAN ENVIRO - 2011	This was another quick demo done within 3 weeks. The setting given was African slum. I grabbed 2 other artists to help me with this and spent the first 2 days or so collecting reference, creating a quick art bible and art style guides to bring the other artists on the same page. Given the type of environment, I wanted to take as much advantage as possible of our material heightmap vertex blending to make things feel as organic, varied and 'settled' in the environment (if that makes sense) as possible... as there was only so much variation we could create with the time we had and the demo's gameplay area had to feel rather large.. Aside from the doors, some of the colorful building textures, trees, hanging cloth and clothes I did all the textures and most of their blending, some of the wall meshes, grass, post FX, final layout and terrain. Didn't texture misc props
A few of the blended textures A few of the blended textures A few of the blended textures A few of the blended textures A few of the blended textures Building textures. One of the artists created the panels as ahipoly and baked the AO and normals, I did diffuse maps. Building textures. One of the artists created the panels as ahipoly and baked the AO and normals, I did diffuse maps.
NEW YORK-ish ENVIRO PROPS - 2009
Ingame Testscene Ingame Testscene Ingame Testscene The doors are rather unfitting but i ran out of time! Ingame Testscene Ingame Testscene Ingame Testscene Ingame Testscene Ingame Testscene Wires and Textures Wires and Textures Hipoly Wires, Textures and hipoly Wires and textures	This is a small ingame testscene with a collection of facades, broken down by detail into foreground, middleground and background Buildings. Followed by some of the textured props and their hipoly parts. Most buildings didn't get a full hipoly version, only the detailed parts were modeled in hipoly. Note: The 1 pavement texture on the ground wasn't done by me.
JARFLY - 2009 (I think)
Modeled lowpoly, sculpted the hipoly out of it in modo (image based sculpting at that time = crappy res) and baked the results back into the lowpoly. Applied the base texture in PS and then added the rest directly in modo. As a bit of a reference addict I always walk around with a camera. The yellow leaves used throughout the demo were picked up from the street (I made it look casual) and then brought to work and photographed on top of a white background that I could easily remove to create an alpha. I shot different densities and configurations for future use. Bridge Textures I redid all the terrain textures from scratch and sculpted heightmaps for all of them in modo (learned a lot about patience), which then could be used for heightmap blending or to generate self occluding normalmaps. The resulting occlusion maps added a lot of depth to what was a mostly flat terrain. More modo heightmap sculpting and the resulting occlusion map in engine. I gave all the interiors the same treatment, the old wavy wallpaper walls inside the farm house looked especially nice. I did all the trees and vegetaion + layout working with the scene already established. Lots of tree instances in modo that were then exported in batches. The trees themselves were really cheap and simple. Given the foggy horror setting of the scene, they just needed to make good silhouettes most of the time.	An old but for me interesting side project we had at work. I actually had some time to try out new techniques, both for our engine and for my own worlflow The project itself was a side thing people randomly worked on during downtime. When I was on it myself I tried to rally the artists and make things feel more consistent. I used modo heavily for during the time on this project, sculpting heightmaps for textures and painting part of the diffuse maps right there too. I only have exterior stuff but I also did most of the interior textures for the farm house... which, you can't see here anyway.

BEFORE AND AFTERS

I set quality standards and made the first art style guides to define the look, feel and architectural style of the main areas.
By the end of development i had done about 40% of all the world textures in the game and around 25-30% of the architecture.

This image shows Dark Sector before and after I took over environments. The lower half of the screenshot shows Dark Sector as it was coming along (not my work).
The upper half (minus the car, lamps, tree and manhole) was what I managed to do withing a month, the time available to make an art style guide. The screenshot itself was taken at a later time, when stencil shadows were replaced by lightmaps etc.
I laid down the quality standards and techniques used, trained the other artists on how use them and helped them as best as I could within the time left to gain a better grasp for building architecture and creating interesting areas.
We couldn't affort making a custom texture for every building but I still wanted a rich amount of trims and decorations.
With the help of the programmers to write the basic shaders, this is what we ended up with.
An encounter before meeting me.
The encounter after a week of work.
The gameplay didn't have to change, the spaces, paths etc remain exactly the same in the new layout.
Also, all pieces are modular so the bridge, walls, industrial buildings etc can be expanded and reused.
After a week in the game engine.
The architectural geometry is all done from scratch plus, reusing doors/windows/props I had already done.
Not all textures in this encounter were done by me.
Did the train wagon too

TEXTURES

For textures and some of the custom skins (where it made sense), I painted heightmaps with stones and the larger details that the engine would combine with the normalmaps during preprocessing, giving the final normalmap a much deeper and correct feel.

Random textures applied to buildings to show the depth of the painted normalmaps. The same heightmaps can be used to create self occluding normalmaps, which are the latest cool technology to have in games!
Random textures applied to buildings to show the depth of the painted normalmaps. The same heightmaps can be used to create self occluding normalmaps, which are the latest cool technology to have in games!
Random textures applied to buildings to show the depth of the painted normalmaps. The same heightmaps can be used to create self occluding normalmaps, which are the latest cool technology to have in games!
Random textures applied to buildings to show the depth of the painted normalmaps. The same heightmaps can be used to create self occluding normalmaps, which are the latest cool technology to have in games!

One of the few areas I could afford to spend some time into
For most textures i painted additional bumpmaps/heightmaps enhancing the depth of cracks, damage and other details. The engine would then merge these painted maps with the normalmaps during pre-processing.
These details were made so that they could double as balcony supports on other buildings.
A torch that had fire in the game, used for puzzle gameplay.
Centerpiece fountain
A victim of the frequent design changes.
I love doing doors... I'm not quite sure why but i believe it's because they're a simple contained surface waiting to be detailed that commonly gets a respectable amount of texture space.
Ingame
Some of the door Textures.
Dark Sector had crouching and standing cover which required simple boxy objects with proper heights.
Textures
Some random architecture (models and textures) I did for Darksector inside a test scene in the editor.
A Private school yard
Set of Lego wall pieces
Set of Lego wall pieces
Set of Lego wall pieces
Set of Lego wall pieces

Ingame
The low poly went through too many hands before it was given to me to make the hipoly and final lowpoly of whatever i could come up with.
It was supposed to feel like a locomotive. Didn't have time to detail the lower side of it, but it wasn't seen in the cinematic anyway.
A small palm sized drone
The hero's small stealth ship, and my first ever hipoly model.
They were broken down into metal panels that I could combine to form any required shape and intersection.
They were broken down into metal panels that I could combine to form any required shape and intersection.
The different pannels that made up the catwalks
Your average SciFi computer/server thing.
Your average SciFi computer/server thing, ingame
Pannels used to build floors etc.
Personal computers didn't get very personal in the future.

Around 2000, DarkSector was to be an MMO.
Around 2003, a Singleplayer SciFi game.These are some of the models I did back then.