I have accepted an offer to go work for Media Design School in Auckland, New Zealand!  More to come as I get information about when I move and when I start!

I have some very big news coming soon.  Waiting for final confirmation and then I will post here what is going on.

I am also still at work on the Dash 9.  Getting further along.  The good news with high poly is that it makes great normal maps.  The bad news is that it takes much longer to generate.

I am still doing tests with the poly budget I would like to see and how to integrate the interior and exterior into one cohesive model.  This may be more poly prohibitive than I would like, but if you don’t test, you don’t get anywhere with it.

MORE COMING SOON I PROMISE!!!

This is a flip phone idea for a project I am working on.  I thought it would be cool to have all the emoticons right at your thumb tips.

Here is some koi fish I made for Star Trek: Elite Force 2.  These were the fish swimming in the ponds at Starfleet Acadamy.  I also made most of the plants and did a bit on the skybox.  I started the object and another artist came in and finished it.  I was actually working on a different project at the time and was asked to get that piece going.  I am glad someone was able to actually give it more time than I was allowed. Mine was ok, the other artists work was amazing.

The fish are animated with a space warp that allows it to follow the purple wave on the left.  The placement of the additional fish are set up as instances, so the animation information is translated to all the fish.  The other win for me using this spacewarp binding is that as you move the fish around, they take on the aspect of the wave.  There was no extra animation information set up other than moving the fins up and down with vertex animation.

Test to see if embedding works

The animation on this vehicle was set up in a variety of ways.  The clamshell coupler shroud was set up with keyframes and allowed me to control the timing of the opening and extension of the coupler. The doors were simple vertex animations, and rotational animations on the steps. 

The pantograph was a bit more tricky in that I had to use IK solvers to get the head of the pantograph to remain level, as well as having the arm work properly like an elbow.  Royal Winchester, our technical art director was very helpful, teaching me the  IK solver ins and outs.

ICE Animations

Testing to see if I am able to attach video to a post

I am still working away on the Dash 9. I have not been spending as much time as I would like working on this model, however I am getting closer to getting it done.

As I said before, I have another project in the works as well as this one and I am still hunting for work. The hunting part is taking most of my time.

I hope to be updating here soon with the progress on the loc as well as some of the other project news as soon as I am able to talk about it!

Wish me luck