Plane Bakes with High to Low Poly Conventions

Did a very simplistic tutorial. Something that would show the benefits on how Normal maps works using a high poly to a low poly plane. Of course this was very begginers. I did learn that I should keep tutorials to 15 minutes, max 30 or break it up. This tutorial should have probably be broken into two sections, one in creating the High poly objects and another one in bring it in Substance. I would like to do more Intermediate tutorials but for the time being I am happy to stick to Begginers tutorials with an air or making more Intermediate in the near future. Feel free to write any comments for sugestions on how to make better tutorials.

Before After Convent Land

I am doing a 4D app with Phoria at the moment, before and after in the land of Abbotsford Convent.

Might do some tree and bushes cards but after we do some testing and implementing 🙂

COSMOline Infographics

Did some animations for AR for Plattar

I did not texture/model the machine however 🙂 This is just to show how the infographics animate around the model in 3D

Retreat FEB 2018

Wanted to give a bump on talking a bit more about what Paco has been going through in the past four or so months.

I have been incredibly busy all for the right reasons! And I wanted to give a summary of different things that I have been working lately:

Since coming back from Spain in 2017 I…

• Did render compositions for Library State of Victoria
• Did a VR Road environment for Vic Roads
• Worked on a VR Interactive Documentary called: A thin black line
• Worked in an AR project for a Foam and Shaving company
• Did a fantastic 4 week project making a Xmas AR experience for City of Melbourne
• Worked on an VR project for A shoe store in Paris
• Did two experimental AR projects for HM Group
• Did a virtual table set for Provincial and Plattar
• Doing an AR Architecture app for Crown Casino
• And while in between I have done a Game Jam and also worked on my side project with my team on Time Frame

So I must say it has been a beautiful year and I hope I can give out more updates to keep you up to date.

Hoddle and Swan St P turn VR

Worked on a couple of weeks for a VR project at Snobal. I Mainly did the roads, linework, Curves and Islands. Most work was done in 3ds Max and Unity. Pre-existing project with new changes to the layout.

Conservatory

Time Frame ~ Character Concepts

MilkFish

Mansion

ENV thumbnail

Quiet, but Busy

In the last few months we have been working on a small game with a couple of programmers and a sound Designer.
And I’d like to show some early progress!

All I can say its a game based around the 1930s in an alternative world, and that we are using a cell shaded style inspired by the traveling posters from 1920. I am however pretty excited and hopefully I can show more of the game soon.

armChair

Context Modeling

Mansion Concept

Medieval Lion Tower Door

Paco Casares

 

Lion Doors

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, as a texture artist

Today is a very big date as the game that I contributed back in 2014~2015 is released today and I can finally disclose that I worked on Zelda, Twilight Princess HD as a re-texturer and environment modeller at Tantalus

For the full featured and detailed trailer, click here: https://youtu.be/-CfW2hpHoNI

It has been a fantastic experience, and very unique workflow as well on how to re-create texture that already exist, and also on how to improve a game that was highly acclaimed back in 2006. I worked mainly on recreating the textures for the temples and enlarging the textures with a fantastic team of texture artists. Mainly did work for Arbiter’s Grounds with Dylan Beazley. I also re-made textures for Temple of Time, City in the Sky, Twilight Palace, Re-skinned some of the props such as the Compass and Weapons, And cleaning and up-rezed a lof of the characters, enemies and bosses.

The following screenshots contain my texture work:

This are captured from the trailer.

 

These are all game screenshots. And the work I did, I did not do the original textures (as they were from the 2006 game) Some of the textures were incredibly small to fit in a gamecube disk. So a lot of love went into it 🙂

Gnomon Live Australia

The first Gnomon Live Outside the US! I shall use this post to edit, add details.

The opening speech was a general introduction and emphasised more on talking about how Star wars made an impact on artists, Some din’t mean much, others when young made somewhat a bigger impact. some made a much bigger impact (Blizzard art director) Cleary defined how episode 1 to 3 art books made him consider more his current Role.

On Saturday morning I will see the Jonathan Berube Demo.

Daily SpitPaint

Punishment of the gods ~30minutes, Inspired by St Vincent

How to use a custom thumbnail in Marmoset Toolbag

Easy step instructions on adding a custom watermark in Marmoset!

(more…)

Little update since a while ago

I have been incredibly and crazy busy lately. I must say however that things are going incredibly well. As a summary since the inception of 2015, we outsourced work for a AAA game tittle mainly focusing on doing textural work for an old game to make it new. Did some self training on Substance Painter and Designer. I’ll say it now and I’ll say it again. Incredible. Amazing. No words on how effective these programs are. They make texturing in several maps a breeze. Where designer focuses more on creating a node based texturing system for several maps, Painter focuses more on procedural masking and material assigning in 3d view. While texturing with these guys, I am doing a small tower (in working progress) to show my skills.

In all news, I also got some new work for an Architecture Firm! Its interesting because I shall learn a tonne of 3ds Max while on the job.

Testing out Marmoset Viever

Updating the website

What’s going on! It has been a while that I have touched my website, and I would love to come back stronger than ever! I am updating the site with a fresh brand new WordPress theme that has the same and whistles as the one before, but with a new bang! The site now looks incredible on mobile phones and ipad devices too as it features retina display capacities and responsive layout.

I still have a few things to do with the new template, as id like to recreate a template to show my works, logo, change the css for the colours (I am not a big fan of white screens to show off work) and recreate the works page while uploading the new stuff I have been doing in the last few months.

Talking about the last few months. Id like to put up work I have done this week. I made a 3d model for a client. And a wall decal. My next plans are to make a 3d building of the 17th century. Hope you guys are being well, and I’d like to pay more attention to my site from now on to share my works and findings.

Work updates

While I am enjoying the gorgeous and fun adventures in Spain, I have done some more modeling stuff. The first image is a set of taps low poly game ready. These have Spec, Normals and Diffusion with AO baked on. Triangles on image.
Next is a open diorama apartment, I hope I can use this bugger here to display the furniture pieces. I would really like to put this scene in sketchfab so I can show my modeling skills and techniques. Last, its another platforming rock, I am prepping up a University Project, and beautifying it so I can show case my modeling skills. Its looking amazing, but, I do not want to put screenshots until, well, until I have done most of the improvements. I am focusing and redoing most of the rocks, plants and environmental pieces. Over and out 😉

 

 

Zbrush new Zremesher!

So, when you just think how amazing and good Zbrush is with all its whistles and bells, they just get better!
I have been playing around with its new 4R6 feature: Zremesher, its the new Qremesher, but improved vastly.

I have been studying out-doors at rocks, and rocks can be quiet hard to make. So I have been doing these rocks here, and used them to experiment Zremesher.

I wanted to polish the platforms made by Estelle at the university project (brave bones), and use this opportunity to learn to do rocks.

I have been wanting to expose Basel bones for a while, and I will when I take the game assets in the project and I give it a new brush polish.

 

After the sculpt, I did some Zremeshing experiments. However, when doing remeshing several times, I found the final shape does change a little bit, so I did divide the mesh again, and did some projection so put the low div nearer to its high mesh.

The conversion from high poly to having a re meshed platform was fantastic, but after posting this on a FB page ( Lunchcrunch) a good fellow recommend it me to use decimation master, and how boy I was pleased with the results. I have only experimented with decimation master, but again, it made my job from great to even greater but making it 20% of its zremeshed topology.

If going back, I would maybe make the shape 512 or so triangles instead of 264, but, in a world where we have to constantly look for ways to making assets cheaper to run. It makes more sense to have more assets to cover the triangulation with smaller assets (put some rocks or grass on top) to hide the triangulated mesh. That has a small cull, so it fades away after the camera being 20 metres or so away from the camera.

Textured and placed in Unity with Difusion, Normals and Specularity. All done using dDo. An Amazing Photoshop plugging used for High to Low Poly texturing.

With all these self discovering techniques, I have also been learning UV Layout, a program that makes UVS prety good and pretty fast! With dDo, UVLayout and now Zremesher, I am willing to focus more time on the sculpt and the shape of the object. And to make assets faster!

 

With the massive amount of platforms I want to make, does it seem illogical to do it this way? Yes at first. I was thinking: wow, I got to retopologize, do the uvs and texture by hand? for each of the assets? If I have learned the bad way in the last few weeks, its the following. An asset when made, most people will look at it for just 0.3 to 3 seconds. At times just 5 or 10 seconds if they are artists them selves. Is it worth spending more than 3-4 hours for a single asset? depends on the importance in the game or environment, and depends of its purpose. Now with dDo I can save a preset, and I press a button, textures done. With Zremesher and decimation master, press a button, Done. And with Uv Layout, its like a puzzle origami game. Pick edges, drop, and expand. I can focus on the art looking like art. And I can focus on giving the assets its actual purpose!

For some more reading, check out what I mean by reading this Naughty Dog article

 

 

 

 

3heads

A quick architectural study

Castle Concept

A quick concept for the thread escape contest.

dDo and Toolbag Test

 

In the last two days I had a play with dDo and nDo2. I must say I am very happy with what it can do! Its a very automatic process however, and many users suggest to use this as a base or just to learn how materials work.
I modelled a wall rock two weeks ago and I decided to experiment with dDo, I am very happy with the results. It automaticly places details depending on both the OS Normals, Normals and Occlusion and what kind of material is it, hence why dDo recommends highly to make a colour map, to mask the areas of different materials by using colour. By just using the OS Normals, Normals, and Occlusion it spit 4 maps automatic with the press of a button.

Here is where dDo can be checked out:
http://quixel.se/ddo/

This video, even do its very long, its worth checking out, because it explains very carefully how dDo is used:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hncqbwkGbM4

And last, a little screenshot using Marmoset Toolbag, another delight to check out!

 

And the Maps that it spit out! With a wireframe.

 

 

Handplane Tool

Handplane tool. Posting this to make sure I check it out later 🙂

Web Changes

In the next week or so, some big changes are going to take place to the page, and it will have a strong under construction feel.
I want to have a shorter banner than before.
A simpler banner and a less detailed background (maybe even just a gradient or just dark grey).
An overhaul on what works to display, and how to display them.
Freshen up the works I have done. And display the works after pressing on the link in its own HTML 5 Page with full screen images.

Vertex

If you have not downloaded this juicy and amazing 300 page PDF yet, you should, like now! Specially if you are into making 2d and 3d digital art 🙂
It contains amazing tutorials and how to do’s in many different department and areas, for free. Catch it before its too late!
Vertex