Supernova - Cinematic Trailer

Launch trailer for a cinematic I worked on for Axis.Supernova is brand new RTS/MOBA game.
I worked on a variety of elements from early blocking out of the environments through to modelling on the project and on the earlier teaser trailer.

Jurassic Park Aftermath - Environment Showcase

With Jurassic World coming out next week I decided to put together some of the environments from my project into one video,the runtime was a little long so this mostly just covers the most complete interior areas so far.

Aftermath - Messing about in Cryengine

Quick video I made just for fun,the project I've been playing about with in my free time is set just a few days/weeks after the events of Jurassic Park but decided to try altering it to appear like a lot longer had passed.

Environment experiment

Quick experiment in Cryengine,was looking into environment animation and how I could to create larger scale elements (like having the trees pushed out of the way).Ended up using custom wind zones and animating a path through the jungle,the effect was interesting but not as precise as I'd hoped.

Aftermath- Now in .gif form

View post on imgur.com

JP Aftermath - Photography Experiment

A while back saw a image post that used Grand Theft Auto 5's photo mode to take some really nice snapshots from the game world. Decided to give it a try in my own Jurassic Park map making use of the binocular asset for depth of field an a quick bit of Photoshop filtering.

Updated Showreel / Website

Showreel's been given a little bit of a makeover with some of my recent projects (more to come soon) and given my website a bit of an update,lots more to see in coming months - www.conceptcrash.com 

Grey Goo Launch Trailer

Another modelling/shading project I worked on recently was the trailer for 'Grey Goo',a brand new RTS game by Greybox and Petroglyph which is available on steam.The game has a full campaign/story mode with some great cutscenes by Axis animation,check out the trailer below.

Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare - Exo Zombies Trailer

Here's a  project I worked on a few months ago for Axis animation for Sledgehammer games reveal of Exo Zombies DLC for Call of Duty.I worked as modeller for props / environment as well as set dressing and some texture and shading on the project.Check out the trailer below...

 

Oculus Rift

If you haven't heard of Oculus rift (and managed to avoid videos of screaming YouTuber demo's) it's basically the latest attempt at virtual reality that's been hailed as the future of gaming / entertainment.
The hype started in 2012 on kickstarter pulling in well over 2 million in funding and releasing to date two "developers editions" or prototype headsets.I was pretty interested in getting one but held off until late last year when the last version Dev kit 2 was released and planned on using it with both my Jurassic park map in Cryengine (was never able) and experimenting in Unity with it.

First Impressions

Most of the articles you read / videos you watch of people trying it for the first time will be them saying mind blowing,amazing etc but in truth my first impression was ..its like sitting to close to a old TV screen .The barrier between seeing something believable and staring at pixels was never really broken for me,black images are sharper and more enveloping but white or lighter environments and fonts never appear that sharp and the image pixels always remain.

After a while I did adjust a little,the head tracking kicks in and you find yourself wanting to grab things on screen,duck or move but none of the demo's I tried really felt like a 'holodeck' type experience.Probably the best examples of the rift experience were the ones where you are seated like "Sightline:The chair" where you have time to adjust to the environment and just look around but when I tried anything movement based that's where the real issues hit me.

Motion sickness

It took about 4 demo's before I knew I was selling my rift.
Playing Team Fortress 2 which has a rift beta instantly made me break out in a sweat,feel dizzy and want to throw up all over my keyboard.After taking a break and adjusting the headset,reading up on possible issues I tried another demo and same effect.A few days passed and tried again but had the same feeling in any game that involved movement using the keyboard/mouse.
Apparently I'm not the only one who gets this effect and I tried adjusting to it over time but it never passed.To be honest I was gutted as I had a ton of ideas I wanted to get working in Unity and had managed to implement the actual Unity - Rift setup fairly quickly for a demo of my own work.

The future of gaming?

Rift might overcome the motion sickness issue but is has a long way to go in general,that issue aside it was interesting/impressive piece of hardware at times but its telling that of all the people I let try demo's of Oculus rift not one asked to try it again and most wanted to take it off after less than 5 minutes.
The hardware itself is bulky and while not heavy its also not exactly comfortable,the screen is too low resolution and on a basic level its not something I could see be used for long periods of gaming or watching movies.
It sounds like I've been very negative about Oculus but my lasting impression is that it's been a little over hyped and feels like a gimmick:a cool piece of tech that's limited by its hardware needs and doesn't serve much of a purpose outside of very occasional short experience's - it's miles ahead of a Kinect -Playsation Move in terms of that experience but would end up sharing the same space...under the desk or behind the monitor.

The rift could change if the right software came along and gave it a bigger purpose but as it is I would recommend a demo rather than a purchase if you're considering.

JP:Aftermath - Environments progress

Here's a bunch of progress/ general image shots covering recent work on the environments.The majority of the work was on adding the waterfall (still in the early stages),exploring particles and I also worked on adding the road and putting in a large tunnel.I expanded some of the surrounding area towards the main section of the park,began work on a small lake and I'm in early stages of adding the kitchen interior.

wip - since updated some of the rock textures

not exactly like the film but matching particle scales has been an issue

Tunnel entrance which runs through hillside,will be adding a lot to interior 

Tunnel exit,adding some vegetation variety into the map 

making this area a little less dense,the lake is just over the ridge.

very early stages of the kitchen,lots of props to add.

once everything's in place will add cube map reflections for the polished metals