Jurassic Park - Visitor Center 360°

A quick 360° test importing an old model of the Jurassic park visitor center rotunda into Unreal 4 and using 'Nvidia Ansel' to convert the scene into a 360 image. The original model didn't use baked lighting but I created some quick lightmaps for the Unreal version.

 

The Amityville horror begins..

Modelling for animation 4#

Another character I modelled but ultimately wasn't used in animation I don't think,this is the second version of the puppy dog I built as the first was slightly less stylised model with a more proportionate head/body.It still needed a little additional work adding a collar but thought I would put it into the scene and do a render of it to see how it turned out.

Quick shot I set up and rendered in Mental ray.

Modelled in Maya,click to enlarge.

Modelling for animation / Environment

Here's a look at some of the environment I modelled/textured and lit for the animation project,the street set was a 1950's american style suburb and I tried to give it a middle america / town feel with wide roads which could be later filled with period cars,water tower and picket fences.As it was for an animation project I also tried to separate the houses by using different colours on the woodwork so each characters house would be more identifiable.

The first house I worked on for the scene was for the animations
love interest. Maya fur and paint fx were used for the vegetation.

Maya screengrab looking out from the porch onto the street.

Modelling for animation 2#

Second character I modelled for the animation project,this time I had to make different versions of the same person-a young and slightly older woman.The animation was set in the 50's so I tried to go for a bit of that look in the characters clothes and body,initially I over exaggerated the curves on the woman but toned them down a little for the final version.

The younger version of the model un-rigged model.

Slightly older version.

Jurassic park : Aftermath - Modelling

So about a month ago I spent the afternoon playing about in Cryengine 3 and after building a quick environment I was hooked.I decided to bite the bullet and in my spare time over the last three weeks learn the program in more depth and rather than randomly doing tutorials jumped head first into a project.I had been playing with making a Jurassic park game in Unity engine off and on for close to a year so that was my starting point and rather than rebuilding what I had already worked on I returned to the environment of the first film.

I started modelling in Maya and up first was the visitor centre,the model was an interesting challenge as the interior and exterior are pretty unrelated and there's limited information in the film about layout.It's built fairly (but not exact) to the film with the scale differences being tackled later in Cryengine.

The exterior and interior wall/roof height is vastly different in the film.

Click images to enlarge

Next up was the interior,although in the film it appears pretty simple the set itself is pretty much filled with curves,everything from the walls to the bannisters flow and the aim was to keep it relatively low polygon and clean for the game engine.

My main focus was the ground floor and basic layout,you can see the 1st floor still requires extra work.

I added some basic debris but will fill in the missing props later.

The 3rd larger environment model was the raptor enclosure,fairly quick to model as it uses a lot of repeats and mirrors and is a solid blocky structure built to withstand the jungle.

The basic set,lights are to be added later to the side walls.

And finally the Jurassic park ford Explorer.In terms of reference it was the easiest to get images for and too iconic not to include,again I kept the model low poly and worked out the texturing in photoshop.

The base model,the doors at this point are separates so it can later be a usable in game.

Basic texturing,still need to add explorer logo / dirtmaps and interior.

There was lots of other modelling also to be done,electric fences and smaller props such as lights,roadtracks and the Jurassic park gates at this point I began importing into the engine and setting up the basics of the environment...

Machine render

Extra detail render of the side of my turbine machine model,high poly speed model.First renders can be seen HERE .

Sci-fi concept render

Rendering out my sci-fi /spaceship corridor has been pretty slow but managed to get a fairly clean render done,still need to run a smoother render and clean up some elements for the final shot.

HighPoly concept speed model.Colin Kaszynski 2012.

Machine-model & render

Some renders of speed model I built earlier this week,the object was clean but high poly,inspired by a couple of images I saw of machinery modelling.Click and check out full size to see the detail better,I still have to experiment with rendering styles an ambient pass and shaders materials.

Speed model in Maya 2012.

Close-up of front section.

Sci-fi progress #2

Couple more stills of high poly sci-fi hall concept,modelled in Maya.The scenes running a bit slow on my laptop so rendering the scenes going to be a pain and I'm holding back on adding props.

Sci-fi hall progress

Speed modelling in Maya,high poly environment concept.

Colin Kaszynski 2012.

High-poly Sci-fi concept

Speed model work in progress of a sci-fi scene I'm working on,going for a really smooth look and not worrying about poly count to much,makes a change from worrying about what game engines can handle.

Random modelling

Work in Progress of quick model generator, inspired by some random googling this is mostly just a warm up for some major modelling projects.

Galleon Model

I built this model earlier this year just for fun / practice but never had time to to finish it proper,was playing around in Maya for a bit and thought I would try adding some ncloth sails today.The ship took a couple of hours to build,sails were added in 5 Min's,the body lacks a lot of detail still,I had planned on building quite elaborate hull details.

Speed Model : Bedroom

After a week of UV mapping I needed a change so decided to do some speed modelling again and make a change from doing sci-fi / fantasy environments.This is a one hour model - render scene,done in Maya 2012.

Click to view in HD.

Renders a little rough round the edges and textures need work.

Speed challenge 2#

An hour in Maya,this was inspired by some concept
art I saw for the game Fable 3.

It probably took longer to render these images on my laptop
than it took to build them..I need a new computer.

Speed Model Challenge 1#

Thought I would try something new over the next week or two,after playing about in Mudbox in my free time and Maya being for work I wanted to get back to some fun modelling,the challenge is I have a maximum of an hour to model something..anything..long as it's clean model.

40 Min's in Maya modelling,probably more time
thinking on what to do than actual building.

I was going for a quirky game style building,not too cartoonish.

Unity 3D 3

I decided to give Unity3d 3 another go,the last time i used it i thought the quality of lighting and rendering was disappointing but after seeing the program version had updated and there are now lots of add-ons,scripts i wanted to check out if anything had changed.The first time I tried Unity my goal was importing Maya models in the hope that the game engine could be used for real time renders,this time i decided to look at it as a game engine and how complex scenes could be as well as how well the lighting would work.
I managed to import a pretty large scale model i built a while back in Maya with minimal fuss (the vertex limit is somewhere around 65,000) and set about lighting it.The main lighting was directional light and a couple of point lights to add some glow,Unity Pro also features image effects which you drag onto the camera,so i set up an anti-aliasing effect and some bloom.The results are pretty decent actually,it took around 20mins to put the scene together and although theres some slow down external lighting works fine.

Bloom image effects applied to camera

In-game render after 20 mins work.

                                     
The next scene I tried was  internal lighting and this is where the limitations of the engine showed again,there are 2 lighting options,deferred and forward.Deferred lighting means you can have soft real time shadows on point lights and forward means you cant,clearly you need shadows so its got to be deferred.Until you see the quality of the shadows.By turning on deferred every edge,shadow and line flickers and pixelates,you can spend hours tweaking settings,adding image effects and blurs but the quality just doesn't cut it.

Deffered lighting causes pixelated shadows in Unity

From a distance the scene looks fine,but edges become choppy

Forward lighting of the same scene is more clear but shadows are gone.

               
Unity is a great program and I'm sure a few version's down the line it will be even better but right now its still limited to certain projects,outdoors scenes and casual games for mobile wont notice the problems but for bigger projects theres better programs.Next up I try Shiva3D...

Random Render Of The Day

Some very quick textured/ renders of the buggy vehicle from my university VFX / game concept project,the models are pretty low poly and  took about 45mins max to make in Maya.I haven't UV mapped them yet but thought I would try some simple shaders.

Mech Buggy Sci-Fi game concept,Maya model.Colin Kaszynski 2011.

Click Images to enlarge.Colin Kaszynski 2011.

Random Render Of The Day

Quick/unfinished concept model I built some time ago,I was going to add a character crouching behind the dumpster and destruction in the background.The scene was good practice for my final university project,modelled in Maya in about 6 hours.

Concept robot/city scene.Colin Kaszynski 2011.