Sunday 30 December 2012

Unity Jurassic Park walkthrough

I started a project in my freetime a while back remaking the Jurassic park game Trespasser using Unity3d engine.I haven't had huge amount of time to keep working on it recently but decided to do some quick optimizing of draw distance,billboarding and shadows to get it running smoother and put in a first person camera to take a look at the environment.Still a huge amount of work to do from adding more models and bump mapping to working on the puzzle elements.This is a quick walkthrough video I put together...

Sunday 16 December 2012

Speed Modelling

I'm starting a pretty big modelling project in a few days so decided to spent the afternoon modelling and rendering some really quick stuff,playing around and seeing what I come up with.Chose some random subjects and kept the time to an hour or less per scene.

Warhammer speed model (click images to enlarge).
Diamond Necklace model/concept.







Maya/Photoshop

Saturday 15 December 2012

Halo 4 Spartan Ops modelling part 1

Spartan ops is currently on hiatus over Christmas but I thought I'd post some screenshots of some of the scenes/elements I worked on from the first episode,once the entire series is done I will be cutting my shots together and putting together a new showreel. The full episode can be viewed here - Spartan Ops Episode 1
I modelled the large armoury command tower and some connecting stair platforms between levels.

The ceiling to floor tower appears in various shots throughout the series.

Quite a few elements here I modelled,including the driver that drills/bolts the suits on and the mech arms.

The hood piece containing the mech arm which lowers and puts on the Spartan helmets.

Final shot of the Spartan stepping out.


Tuesday 11 December 2012

3dsMax/Vray render

I pretty much finished my first proper 3dsmax/Vray scene,I could have spent ages adding in more details and objects but the project gave me a good overview of how to model,texture and light.I originally added some other pieces like curtains and blinds,pillows and other props but the scene just started to get cluttered.I have a good understanding of Max now but still think Maya is my preferred software simply because its what I learnt first and I find the tools a little more precise.

Colin Kaszynski 2012.3dsMax/Vray.

Click images to enlarge.

Speed concept/Illustration

Decided to do some quick concept modelling in 3dsmax/Vray just for fun,this is unfinished illustrative scene I put together in just under 2hrs. Still need to add some legs,detail the whole body and add some other props like a robot rattle and other toys as well as doing a proper lighting set up in Vray.

Robot baby concept.



Monday 3 December 2012

Making of Halo 4 Spartan Ops

Spartan Ops is now on its 5th episode.The company behind it 'Axis Animation' (best known for the Dead Island trailer) has released a 'Making of..' showing some of the production of the cgi mini series.I was lucky enough to work environment modelling on the series and its been really exciting waiting for weekly episodes to come out and looking out for my models/scenes.Earlier this year I got see some of the concepts and animatic's for shots I was working on,its been great seeing it from that early work to the final quality and it  was an amazing experience.With 5 more episodes to go there's lots more to come..

3dsMax / Vray Day 4

Small update on this scene,just adding more details like the table,cabinet and clock.Still need to add wall lights,cushions and curtains.Learning more of Max and Vray and getting used to the interface,I pretty much have all the basics now I need to finish the scene and maybe work on something a little more closer to my own style of work.


Friday 30 November 2012

3dsMax / Vray Day 3

Another few hours learning 3dsMax and adding details to my interior scene,built a chess board prop to add and some other pieces and took a look at a tutorial on creating fur.Playing around with Vray's materials and starting to get used to the program now,should have all the basics down by time this shots done.

Fairly basic but fun to build,should make a nice little detail for the interior
Wip.Starting to fill the shot,need to add centre table next.


Thursday 29 November 2012

3dsMax / Vray Day 2

Working on some more detailed modelling in 3dsMax,this is work in progress on a study/living room interior scene.I started modelling the chairs to get used to the modelling tools for something a little more complex and building up the scene gradually,still a lot of texture work to be done and playing around with Vray's lighting and rendering settings.One thing I've noticed about Max in comparison to Maya is that selecting objects feels a lot less precise,it's easy to just grab something by accident and move it.Looking around the tool bar I found there's multiple ways to grab objects but I miss the precision that Maya has and find Max's camera a little more sticky to move around scenes with.

Wip. Still need to finish the chairs and add other furniture and texture details.

Wednesday 21 November 2012

3dsMax / Vray Day 1

Finally decided was time to get learning some 3dsmax and Vray,I've been putting it off for a while but figured would be a good thing to add to my skills so watched some quick tutorials and jumped into playing about.The biggest challenge switching from Maya to Max is for sure learning the different tool names,rather than watching hours of tutorials I goggled the ones I needed and got right to it,this is the first scene I modelled in Max,learning the tools and a little about Vray (still need work on UV mapping and materials).
Starting a more complex scene soon as I have free time to get into the details of Max modelling,its a slower process than Maya but I'm looking forward to trying some of the plugins and extra tools Max offers.

Pretty basic and not too many detailed objects but taught me all the basics in an afternoon.

Sunday 11 November 2012

New website & updates...

I spent the last few days designing and building myself a new website,there still a few bugs here and there but its on-line now http://www.conceptcrash.com/ .I will be adding some new videos,renders and all new showreel in the coming weeks as projects come out and I can share more information.Also looking forward to sharing some work in progress shots from the various projects here on my blog,will be updating the most complete work to the news section of my website.

Friday 9 November 2012

Latest work: Halo 4

A few months back I worked on a very cool project,after a long wait it's finally been released.Halo 4!.I worked modelling environments and props on the 'Spartan ops' cinematic mini series.Each week for ten weeks a CGI short movie kicks of new downloadable game content for the Xbox game starting this week with Episode 1: Departure. I'm in the process of updating my website so eventually I will collect together the scenes I worked on and post some more detailed information (as well as updates on a few more upcoming projects) but for now here's the first episode,the majority of my work on this episode starts from around the 3:50 mark.

 

Thursday 1 November 2012

Unity 3D: Trespasser environment flythrough

A while back I started a fun little project in my spare time recreating the environment from the game Jurassic park Trespasser,this is a work in progress flythrough of the game map so far.The video is a little long as there was tons to cover,it was created in Maya and Unity3D.
The frame rate is a little jumpy due to compression but check it out in full HD if you can..

Sunday 21 October 2012

Unity3d:Trespasser wip

Some new work in progress images from my remake of the Jurassic park:Trespasser game environment,set on site B from the lost world movie. I'm currently working on adding vegetation and also making a start on getting the dinosaur AI working and building up the detail on this whenever I have any free time.

The second mono rail station leading into the mountains.
Click images to enlarge.

The bamboo guest lodge,adding more trees and plants.

The cable car platform that leads from the visitor centre to the guest lodge.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Jurassic Park:Game remake preview

Working on getting a flythrough of the entire level done at the moment but decided to make a short preview style trailer.Modelling was done in Maya and the game is built in UnityPro.For progress shots click on the "Jurassic park" tags below.

Sunday 30 September 2012

Random re-render: Sci-Fi hallway

Since I got my new pc I've been going over some old work and checking them out,rendering is insanely fast compared to my laptop so I decided to re-render some work at higher quality for when I update my website in the coming months.Long render times meant I had to hold back on adding in details to a lot of scenes because I knew I just couldn't get them rendered when they were finished.This is I scene I built earlier this summer,the render on my laptop took well over 12 hours..on my new pc at higher quality it took under 10 mins.I still have to try out my PC in over-clocked mode to and see how that compares.

Click to enlarge.



Friday 28 September 2012

Unity fantasy world update

Finally found some time to update this project,originally this environment was built fairly quickly using Maya and Unity 3D but my old laptop didn't run it very smoothly.I got a new rendering rig from pc specialist last month and made some changes and updated the map.You can still see in the later sections where the environment isn't finished and its missing a lot of bump maps but this was one of my first Unity environments I built just for fun and a challenge.
Check it out in HD if you can...

Sunday 9 September 2012

Exploring Cryengine...

Found some spare time to play about in Cryengine 3,was having some trouble getting the layer textures working but turned out to a minor glitch with the version I had downloaded.Decided to import model from Jurassic park game project I was making for Unity and test out some the lighting and tools,still just learning the basics and discovering the menus. Wouldn't say the layout of Cryengine is the most intuitive to learn and it seems to crash far to often.

Click to enlarge images

Bamboo hotel,built for Unity engine originally / missing bump and spec maps.

Sunday 19 August 2012

Coming soon...

I haven't been updating a lot over the last month or two,it's been a bit crazy with some major stuff going on but there's some very big updates coming in the near future.First off I finished off a major project,cant say a lot at the moment but it was some very cool/hard work,also done lots of modelling for another project and should be able to show off some images off that soon.Major change was updating to a totally new computer,invested some serious cash getting a whole new setup that can render nice and fast.One of the first things I wanted to try out was Cryengine 3 so been playing about in that whenever I've had any spare time,just learning the basics of importing,lighting and environments.This is the first thing I put together,just a really quick import of a model built for my Jurassic park Unity project that I used to play around with some of Cryengine's features.

The monorail station I built for Unity engine


Friday 6 July 2012

Sketchbook

Not very often I get a chance to draw these days but in little time I had decided to mess about in Photoshop,I don't really use it much for drawing as I prefer Corel painter IX as its more natural feeling.Decided to try some loose / random drawings of landscapes to make a change from the usual portraits I would normally do...

Random scribblings,each took between 20-30 mins

Went a bit overkill with the bright bloom on this one.

Did a quick picture of person  in painter when I got annoyed at Photoshop.

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Mudbox speed sketches

Grabbed a spare 30mins to jump into Mudbox and play around with some head sculpts,I still need to spend a solid day on a single model but its nice change to do some quick work with Wacom tablet.

Random concept sort of thing,might go back and keep working on this.20mins.

Basic face sculpting,overused the smooth tool a bit though.10mins.

Thursday 24 May 2012

Speed modelling

Found 15mins to do a bit of speed modelling warm up in Maya,I've been checking out some concept environments and rather than spend a few days working on one thought I would try throwing together some loose and rough 3d sketches instead.

Would have added a panelled ceiling and finished the stairs if I had time.

Speed model,15 mins,Maya 2012.

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Trespasser: Project update

Over the last few weeks I've been working on a bigger project,modelling and texturing so work on my Trespasser game project has came to a halt.Hopefully when I have free time I can return to it and get it moving again,the plan is to get a fully working AI test into the game which means rigging and animating a Raptor as well as scripting its behaviour.This will most likely be included in the first demo version when this section of the environment is finished.

The last stage I worked on was getting progressing through the environment and
adding features like waterfalls.This area still needs vegetation added.

Sunday 20 May 2012

Environment work

A couple of months ago I done some work on a game project,these are some rough versions of a dock environment built for Unity engine.The models are work in progress base versions to be polished as the map comes together,built in Maya.

Work in progress on layout of the map.Screenshot's from in editor.

Above screenshot showing the shipping yard layout.

Friday 18 May 2012

Rant : CGI sucks!



Back in the early 90s CGI was something of a novelty.Dinosaurs,metal skinned men and tentacles were expensive to create but audiences wanted more and that's exactly what they got,the boom in cgi began and inevitably the backlash.
Check out any forum or comment section on films and you will come across people bashing computer effects and putting physical effects on a pedestal.The main culprits for criticism are the blockbusters,cgi fests that if created using physical fx today would probably be laughed out of cinemas,films like Independence Day (1996) actually used varied techniques to produce there action scenes but more often than not films have now taken to giving a cgi gloss to ever fx scene in an attempt to hide the seams.
Personally I think there a place for  both CGI and practal fx but the the idea that cgi is somehow less valid because its digital it what annoys me.Scattered through the vast majority of cinema releases are visual effects that mostly go unnoticed,from minor edits on reflections,composting of crowds to full replacements of actors.So I thought I would pick out a couple of examples of CG from the last few years where digital fx may have gone ignored or enhanced the films.
(MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD)

Children of Men (2006)

This fantastic sci-fi drama never quite reached the audience it deserved but seeing it the first time i was blown away by the standard of fx,the film featured brilliantly complex realtime shots,composting and a almost perfect CG moment.

Children of men pulls all sort of digital,compositing and camera tricks to create
its future world.The birth scene features a fully cgi baby.



Splice (2009)

For those who haven't seen it "Splice" basic concept is a genetically created mix of human and animal DNA,the result is a strange tentacled pod creature that develops over the course of the film and to become a humanoid woman.The creature "Dren" is shown onscreen in various forms each using a variety of fx to bring her/it to life.

Dren's brilliant evolution in Splice holds the film together.



Moon (2009)

The most obvious fx to point out in moon would be the interaction between Sam Rockwell and.. Sam Rockwell or the exterior shots of the Lunar surface.But fx are also used to help bring to life the space stations computer GERTY,in the larger scope of things these shots may go ignored but Cinesite's subtle CG served the story perfectly.




Friday 27 April 2012

Random render of the day

Took a 10 Min break to do some random rendering of an speed model from a few months ago,playing about with lighting and shader's just to experiment...


Friday 20 April 2012

Trespasser : Landscaping II

More updates on level progress,adding plants and vegetation by hand to keep the polycount in check and game running smooth.When the levels finished I will optimise everything within Unity3D,one of the strengths of the program is that it only takes a few minutes to build the game meaning you can jump in and play a standalone .exe version or webplayer version and check it for problems.

Click images to enlarge

The path to the monorail,I'm working my way through
the level adding foliage and smaller objects.

Tuesday 17 April 2012

Trespasser: Landscaping

Spent a few hours working on my Jurassic park game today,mostly adding landscape detailing like rocks and plants and working on textures.The area is coming together slowly ready for some animation tests later this week hopefully.

Shots taken in the program on medium settings.

Overhead of the beach construction site

Sunday 8 April 2012

Jurassic park:Gameplay

I thought I'd add some information on this project since I've had some questions and have only really been showing screenshots here on my blog.
This project started just over a month ago and I've been working about an hour or two a day on the project,its a solo project and the aim was originally to create something for my portfolio and also something Jurassic park based.So far after about 30 hours work the modelling of the first level is almost finished and I'm now adding trees,vegetation and painting the landscape as well as getting the technical stuff sorted like collisions and sounds.I'm using Unity to make the game,for one reason..Cryengine doesn't run well on my laptop,simple as that.
So what about the gameplay?..I've been looking into how dinosaur AI could be done since before the project started and checking out potential prefab sets that could be used in the game,as with the original Trespasser my game isn't intended to be a dinosaur shooter,I'm more interested in creating something closer to survival and exploration game.

Check out the construction site for an idea of scale.

Friday 6 April 2012

Trespasser:The beach 2#

Click to enlarge.

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Trespasser: Low poly props

Adding some more models into my Jurassic park game project,low poly digger and construction site lights and cabin.The digger was built fairly quickly and still needs some texture work and extra detail to the front section,built in Maya.

Click to enlarge images.Shot from in the game engine,terrain is unfinished.

Digger prop needs additional work and bump mapping.

Monday 2 April 2012

Low-poly concepts/props

Images from a game I worked on last year,these are various simple sci-fi gun turrets add-ons for ships and space stations,the concepts were kept low poly for use in Heroengine.

Sunday 1 April 2012

Trespasser:The beach

Work in progress putting together the beach environment for my Jurassic park game remake,sadly not using Cryengine but making the most of Unity3D to get the game looking decent.

Will add smoke particles to the final scene.