15/11/11 - Halo: Faith teaser trailer released!

It's been just 4 days since the release of the trailer and we've received almost 50,000 views. Check it out below. Personally I think the CG models and animation could have been better but I'm happy with the environments which I was souly responsible for. The budget was a mere $850.

If you want to see more, the clip below is a short trailer of "the making of". It also shows my environments more clearly and for longer.

20/10/11 - Motion Graphics

Been extremely busy lately, got some upcoming news about a 3D Book which I'm writing. Like my Facebook page to get an update when I release the news! I've been working on different things lately and one has just been launched. The trailer for an event of a friend of mine. The effects were entirely done by me including the sound effects. Music was created by Daniel Ciurlizza.

17/08/11 - Heading to LA.

In a few weeks some of the greatest CG matte painters and environment artists will converge on Los Angeles for the QuadSpinner Master Class. This is the pinnacle of Vue training and it's going to be a great experience to share stories with the guys going along. If you're going, send me an email so we can catch up!

15/07/11 - CityMaker Released.

Finally we may rejoice in the release of my Vue ProTool, CityMaker. You can grab a copy for just US$10 at Cornucopia3D. A huge thanks goes out to all those that helped finesse the product to the point it is now.

05/07/11 - CityMaker - A Vue Plugin

I'm back from XLan and what a huge weekend it was!. I can finally post the details about my upcoming pro-tool for Vue. It will likely be out next week!

CityMaker is designed as a low-cost solution to creating huge cities in a few clicks. It's not Greeble-for-Vue; you can use custom mesh and distribution. It is also not a replacement for full city simulators available. More details will be available when it is released shortly. For now, check out the images.

One of the presets shipping with CityMaker

The the same preset with the bitmap function enabled

Building prisms can be replaced with fully modeled buildings

Another preset of the CityMaker protool

The Santorini preset

The Vikings preset

A topdown view of what CityMaker does in Vue

28.06.11 - Heading to XLan NZ!

Come Thursday this week I'll be sitting with a glass of scotch and coke on the plane to XLan! in NZ. I'm heading over courtesy of Gamestah, stepping in for the '2ic' for the competition commentating.
It'll be a hectic weekend with late nights from Thursday night through till Sunday nights grand finals but it'll be a great time! When I get back I'll be posting some news about some upcoming work and products I have in the works!

15.06.11 - Realism In Vue (Book)

It's been a long time coming but finally we can rejoice in the arrival of Realism In Vue. This is the book that I was Editor-in-chief for. I have read it back to front and it is by FAR the best written training for aspiring Vue artists. Anyone who is serious about Vue should grab this.

14.06.11 - Halo: Faith (short film)

Well, for the next couple of months I'll be helping out with the production of Halo: Faith. It's slated for release this summer (Northern Hemisphere) on Machinima so keep your eyes peeled!
I'll be designing many of their backgrounds and full CG Environments for their post-production crew and will be working with guys from Weta Digital and Industrial Light and Magic

14.03.11 - Thor

Some of my skills will be shown inadvertently in the upcoming Thor movie. Late last year I was contacted by Dark Hoffman, a fantastic film industry matte painter who was seeking someone to help with the base of his paintings. Trying to get an "Everest" style mountain range from World Machine, I was able to point him in the right direction. I'm looking forward to checking the movie out!
For the moment i'm working on a showreel while future contracts sort themselves out. It'll be a busy year.

01.03.11 - Adaro, from Singapore.

What a busy few months. Thankfully had some time off over the holidays but now it's looking to the year ahead will be packed with projects. I've uploaded the corporate film which I was working on last year with Intense Animation Studio. It's all in Malaysian so fast forward to 1:37 if you like. That is where the environments start.

The environments were a massive challenge just due to the sheer size. Also being the only environment arstist in the building (so to speak, as I worked remotely), put all the responsibility on me. The Team were pleased with the result and so was Adaro. Personally i would have gone with a different compositing technique and colour corrections but this finish was the clients choice.

23.08.10 - Three weeks in Singapore.

I'm here in Singapore at Intense-Animation working with a bunch of crazy-cool guys. It's my last week and it's been a good three weeks but I'll be happy to head back home too. It's stupidly humid here and at 30+ Degrees it makes it near unbearable to be outside for an extended length of time. I have a lot of work here, totalling 10GB of just scene files! That's of course nothing in the big scheme of things. I'm looking forward to posting some stills when I can, might be some time before that happens though.

30.07.10 - Siggraph a success.

Siggraph LA is finally over! It was an intense week of 8am to 8pm for me and the E-On Software crew but it was well worth it! Met up with most of the people I planned to and even bumped into others that I never realised would be there. The list of people I met with is huge but they were from companies like Dreamworks Animation, Blizzard and CGSchool. I even scored a ticket to the Blur party which was cool. The next couple of months should be very interesting with work offers near the end of the year ramping up considerably. I'll be glad to get back home in a couple of days!

26.07.10 - Visual Effects.

The Last couple of weeks I've been lucky enough to land a couple of really high intensity, short term jobs doing visual effects intro clips. The first job took me 4 days to complete and was a contract to World Cyber Games and On3 Networks.
The clip was for the WCG NZ event that went off like a bomb in Auckland just 2 weeks ago. here is the clip:

The second job was just this past week, it was a Microsoft internal conference in Australia. They needed it done in less than two days. I only had one so I really pumped it out quickly. Here is the clip.

19.07.10 - Working in Singapore.

For the next couple of months I will be working for Intense Animation Studio. I am working as their environment artist (using Vue8.5) and will be working in house for 3 weeks during August. If you're situated in Singapore and would like to meet up while i'm over there then swing me an email and we'll catch up on a weekend.

17.07.10 - SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles.

E-On Software have published their schedule for Siggraph this year. I will be presenting on Thursday at 1:30pm. I will be based at the E-On Software booth for the entire event so if you are attending then cruise by there and say hi!
Below is the image that I will be presenting, along with how to create it in just 30 minutes!

29.05.10 - Procedural cliff faces.

I've developed some new procedural textures for cliff faces. Inspired by materials by Dax Pandhi from QuadSpinner "Rock-X" is based on the Voronoi fractal for the larger features they're composed of 3 bump channels (combined/blended into the final output) and an extracted channel for the displacement (optionary). Below you can see the material applied to a simple sphere.

The new procedural texture applied to a sphere

Standard cliff rock with thermal erosion

A harder rock surface with more pronounced erosion grooves

Very soft, multi-layered rock material, one that easily peels away.

10.05.10 - Canyon Environments

Over the last few weeks I've been creating environments for an animation. Getting scale and detail right can be a challenge, especially with just one piece of software. This is why I incoporate more than one piece of software.

What you can see below is the result of a a few different Vue fractal terrains, taken over to World Machine 2 for erosion and taken back into Vue for final rendering.
The second line of thumbnails are some of the outputs that can be generated from WM2, they are extremely powerful if you're trying to control the distribution of vegetation or materials. an example of this is having trees populate only in the valleys, or a sand material in the areas of deposition.

(Vue->WM2->Vue) Vue procedural textures.

Texture based on the flowmap in WM2.

World Machine 2 flowmap texture. These are great from a distance.

Vue Procedural Textures. These are far superior to WM2 textures for closeups.

Realtime images: Vue's terrain editor (left) and the erosion node in WM2 (right)

Texture based on the flowmap in WM2.

Flow distribution map. Shows fluvial erosion areas, usefull as a material distribution mask.

Deposition Map, shows areas where eroded rock/sand has settled.

Colourized flowmap for more controlled, colour-based distribution.

15/11/11 - Halo: Faith teaser trailer released!

It's been just 4 days since the release of the trailer and we've received almost 50,000 views. Check it out below. Personally I think the CG models and animation could have been better but I'm happy with the environments which I was souly responsible for. The budget was a mere $850.

If you want to see more, the clip below is a short trailer of "the making of". It also shows my environments more clearly and for longer.

20/10/11 - Motion Graphics

Been extremely busy lately, got some upcoming news about a 3D Book which I'm writing. Like my Facebook page to get an update when I release the news! I've been working on different things lately and one has just been launched. The trailer for an event of a friend of mine. The effects were entirely done by me including the sound effects. Music was created by Daniel Ciurlizza.

17/08/11 - Heading to LA.

In a few weeks some of the greatest CG matte painters and environment artists will converge on Los Angeles for the QuadSpinner Master Class. This is the pinnacle of Vue training and it's going to be a great experience to share stories with the guys going along. If you're going, send me an email so we can catch up!

15/07/11 - CityMaker Released.

Finally we may rejoice in the release of my Vue ProTool, CityMaker. You can grab a copy for just US$10 at Cornucopia3D. A huge thanks goes out to all those that helped finesse the product to the point it is now.

05/07/11 - CityMaker - A Vue Plugin

I'm back from XLan and what a huge weekend it was!. I can finally post the details about my upcoming pro-tool for Vue. It will likely be out next week!

CityMaker is designed as a low-cost solution to creating huge cities in a few clicks. It's not Greeble-for-Vue; you can use custom mesh and distribution. It is also not a replacement for full city simulators available. More details will be available when it is released shortly. For now, check out the images.

One of the presets shipping with CityMaker

The the same preset with the bitmap function enabled

Building prisms can be replaced with fully modeled buildings

Another preset of the CityMaker protool

The Santorini preset

The Vikings preset

A topdown view of what CityMaker does in Vue

28.06.11 - Heading to XLan NZ!

Come Thursday this week I'll be sitting with a glass of scotch and coke on the plane to XLan! in NZ. I'm heading over courtesy of Gamestah, stepping in for the '2ic' for the competition commentating.
It'll be a hectic weekend with late nights from Thursday night through till Sunday nights grand finals but it'll be a great time! When I get back I'll be posting some news about some upcoming work and products I have in the works!

15.06.11 - Realism In Vue (Book)

It's been a long time coming but finally we can rejoice in the arrival of Realism In Vue. This is the book that I was Editor-in-chief for. I have read it back to front and it is by FAR the best written training for aspiring Vue artists. Anyone who is serious about Vue should grab this.

14.06.11 - Halo: Faith (short film)

Well, for the next couple of months I'll be helping out with the production of Halo: Faith. It's slated for release this summer (Northern Hemisphere) on Machinima so keep your eyes peeled!
I'll be designing many of their backgrounds and full CG Environments for their post-production crew and will be working with guys from Weta Digital and Industrial Light and Magic

14.03.11 - Thor

Some of my skills will be shown inadvertently in the upcoming Thor movie. Late last year I was contacted by Dark Hoffman, a fantastic film industry matte painter who was seeking someone to help with the base of his paintings. Trying to get an "Everest" style mountain range from World Machine, I was able to point him in the right direction. I'm looking forward to checking the movie out!
For the moment i'm working on a showreel while future contracts sort themselves out. It'll be a busy year.

01.03.11 - Adaro, from Singapore.

What a busy few months. Thankfully had some time off over the holidays but now it's looking to the year ahead will be packed with projects. I've uploaded the corporate film which I was working on last year with Intense Animation Studio. It's all in Malaysian so fast forward to 1:37 if you like. That is where the environments start.

The environments were a massive challenge just due to the sheer size. Also being the only environment arstist in the building (so to speak, as I worked remotely), put all the responsibility on me. The Team were pleased with the result and so was Adaro. Personally i would have gone with a different compositing technique and colour corrections but this finish was the clients choice.

23.08.10 - Three weeks in Singapore.

I'm here in Singapore at Intense-Animation working with a bunch of crazy-cool guys. It's my last week and it's been a good three weeks but I'll be happy to head back home too. It's stupidly humid here and at 30+ Degrees it makes it near unbearable to be outside for an extended length of time. I have a lot of work here, totalling 10GB of just scene files! That's of course nothing in the big scheme of things. I'm looking forward to posting some stills when I can, might be some time before that happens though.

30.07.10 - Siggraph a success.

Siggraph LA is finally over! It was an intense week of 8am to 8pm for me and the E-On Software crew but it was well worth it! Met up with most of the people I planned to and even bumped into others that I never realised would be there. The list of people I met with is huge but they were from companies like Dreamworks Animation, Blizzard and CGSchool. I even scored a ticket to the Blur party which was cool. The next couple of months should be very interesting with work offers near the end of the year ramping up considerably. I'll be glad to get back home in a couple of days!

26.07.10 - Visual Effects.

The Last couple of weeks I've been lucky enough to land a couple of really high intensity, short term jobs doing visual effects intro clips. The first job took me 4 days to complete and was a contract to World Cyber Games and On3 Networks.
The clip was for the WCG NZ event that went off like a bomb in Auckland just 2 weeks ago. here is the clip:

The second job was just this past week, it was a Microsoft internal conference in Australia. They needed it done in less than two days. I only had one so I really pumped it out quickly. Here is the clip.

19.07.10 - Working in Singapore.

For the next couple of months I will be working for Intense Animation Studio. I am working as their environment artist (using Vue8.5) and will be working in house for 3 weeks during August. If you're situated in Singapore and would like to meet up while i'm over there then swing me an email and we'll catch up on a weekend.

17.07.10 - SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles.

E-On Software have published their schedule for Siggraph this year. I will be presenting on Thursday at 1:30pm. I will be based at the E-On Software booth for the entire event so if you are attending then cruise by there and say hi!
Below is the image that I will be presenting, along with how to create it in just 30 minutes!

29.05.10 - Procedural cliff faces.

I've developed some new procedural textures for cliff faces. Inspired by materials by Dax Pandhi from QuadSpinner "Rock-X" is based on the Voronoi fractal for the larger features they're composed of 3 bump channels (combined/blended into the final output) and an extracted channel for the displacement (optionary). Below you can see the material applied to a simple sphere.

The new procedural texture applied to a sphere

Standard cliff rock with thermal erosion

A harder rock surface with more pronounced erosion grooves

Very soft, multi-layered rock material, one that easily peels away.

10.05.10 - Canyon Environments

Over the last few weeks I've been creating environments for an animation. Getting scale and detail right can be a challenge, especially with just one piece of software. This is why I incoporate more than one piece of software.

What you can see below is the result of a a few different Vue fractal terrains, taken over to World Machine 2 for erosion and taken back into Vue for final rendering.
The second line of thumbnails are some of the outputs that can be generated from WM2, they are extremely powerful if you're trying to control the distribution of vegetation or materials. an example of this is having trees populate only in the valleys, or a sand material in the areas of deposition.

(Vue->WM2->Vue) Vue procedural textures.

Texture based on the flowmap in WM2.

World Machine 2 flowmap texture. These are great from a distance.

Vue Procedural Textures. These are far superior to WM2 textures for closeups.

Realtime images: Vue's terrain editor (left) and the erosion node in WM2 (right)

Texture based on the flowmap in WM2.

Flow distribution map. Shows fluvial erosion areas, usefull as a material distribution mask.

Deposition Map, shows areas where eroded rock/sand has settled.

Colourized flowmap for more controlled, colour-based distribution.

15/11/11 - Halo: Faith teaser trailer released!

It's been just 4 days since the release of the trailer and we've received almost 50,000 views. Check it out below. Personally I think the CG models and animation could have been better but I'm happy with the environments which I was souly responsible for. The budget was a mere $850.

If you want to see more, the clip below is a short trailer of "the making of". It also shows my environments more clearly and for longer.

20/10/11 - Motion Graphics

Been extremely busy lately, got some upcoming news about a 3D Book which I'm writing. Like my Facebook page to get an update when I release the news! I've been working on different things lately and one has just been launched. The trailer for an event of a friend of mine. The effects were entirely done by me including the sound effects. Music was created by Daniel Ciurlizza.

17/08/11 - Heading to LA.

In a few weeks some of the greatest CG matte painters and environment artists will converge on Los Angeles for the QuadSpinner Master Class. This is the pinnacle of Vue training and it's going to be a great experience to share stories with the guys going along. If you're going, send me an email so we can catch up!

15/07/11 - CityMaker Released.

Finally we may rejoice in the release of my Vue ProTool, CityMaker. You can grab a copy for just US$10 at Cornucopia3D. A huge thanks goes out to all those that helped finesse the product to the point it is now.

05/07/11 - CityMaker - A Vue Plugin

I'm back from XLan and what a huge weekend it was!. I can finally post the details about my upcoming pro-tool for Vue. It will likely be out next week!

CityMaker is designed as a low-cost solution to creating huge cities in a few clicks. It's not Greeble-for-Vue; you can use custom mesh and distribution. It is also not a replacement for full city simulators available. More details will be available when it is released shortly. For now, check out the images.

One of the presets shipping with CityMaker

The the same preset with the bitmap function enabled

Building prisms can be replaced with fully modeled buildings

Another preset of the CityMaker protool

The Santorini preset

The Vikings preset

A topdown view of what CityMaker does in Vue

28.06.11 - Heading to XLan NZ!

Come Thursday this week I'll be sitting with a glass of scotch and coke on the plane to XLan! in NZ. I'm heading over courtesy of Gamestah, stepping in for the '2ic' for the competition commentating.
It'll be a hectic weekend with late nights from Thursday night through till Sunday nights grand finals but it'll be a great time! When I get back I'll be posting some news about some upcoming work and products I have in the works!

15.06.11 - Realism In Vue (Book)

It's been a long time coming but finally we can rejoice in the arrival of Realism In Vue. This is the book that I was Editor-in-chief for. I have read it back to front and it is by FAR the best written training for aspiring Vue artists. Anyone who is serious about Vue should grab this.

14.06.11 - Halo: Faith (short film)

Well, for the next couple of months I'll be helping out with the production of Halo: Faith. It's slated for release this summer (Northern Hemisphere) on Machinima so keep your eyes peeled!
I'll be designing many of their backgrounds and full CG Environments for their post-production crew and will be working with guys from Weta Digital and Industrial Light and Magic

14.03.11 - Thor

Some of my skills will be shown inadvertently in the upcoming Thor movie. Late last year I was contacted by Dark Hoffman, a fantastic film industry matte painter who was seeking someone to help with the base of his paintings. Trying to get an "Everest" style mountain range from World Machine, I was able to point him in the right direction. I'm looking forward to checking the movie out!
For the moment i'm working on a showreel while future contracts sort themselves out. It'll be a busy year.

01.03.11 - Adaro, from Singapore.

What a busy few months. Thankfully had some time off over the holidays but now it's looking to the year ahead will be packed with projects. I've uploaded the corporate film which I was working on last year with Intense Animation Studio. It's all in Malaysian so fast forward to 1:37 if you like. That is where the environments start.

The environments were a massive challenge just due to the sheer size. Also being the only environment arstist in the building (so to speak, as I worked remotely), put all the responsibility on me. The Team were pleased with the result and so was Adaro. Personally i would have gone with a different compositing technique and colour corrections but this finish was the clients choice.

23.08.10 - Three weeks in Singapore.

I'm here in Singapore at Intense-Animation working with a bunch of crazy-cool guys. It's my last week and it's been a good three weeks but I'll be happy to head back home too. It's stupidly humid here and at 30+ Degrees it makes it near unbearable to be outside for an extended length of time. I have a lot of work here, totalling 10GB of just scene files! That's of course nothing in the big scheme of things. I'm looking forward to posting some stills when I can, might be some time before that happens though.

30.07.10 - Siggraph a success.

Siggraph LA is finally over! It was an intense week of 8am to 8pm for me and the E-On Software crew but it was well worth it! Met up with most of the people I planned to and even bumped into others that I never realised would be there. The list of people I met with is huge but they were from companies like Dreamworks Animation, Blizzard and CGSchool. I even scored a ticket to the Blur party which was cool. The next couple of months should be very interesting with work offers near the end of the year ramping up considerably. I'll be glad to get back home in a couple of days!

26.07.10 - Visual Effects.

The Last couple of weeks I've been lucky enough to land a couple of really high intensity, short term jobs doing visual effects intro clips. The first job took me 4 days to complete and was a contract to World Cyber Games and On3 Networks.
The clip was for the WCG NZ event that went off like a bomb in Auckland just 2 weeks ago. here is the clip:

The second job was just this past week, it was a Microsoft internal conference in Australia. They needed it done in less than two days. I only had one so I really pumped it out quickly. Here is the clip.

19.07.10 - Working in Singapore.

For the next couple of months I will be working for Intense Animation Studio. I am working as their environment artist (using Vue8.5) and will be working in house for 3 weeks during August. If you're situated in Singapore and would like to meet up while i'm over there then swing me an email and we'll catch up on a weekend.

17.07.10 - SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles.

E-On Software have published their schedule for Siggraph this year. I will be presenting on Thursday at 1:30pm. I will be based at the E-On Software booth for the entire event so if you are attending then cruise by there and say hi!
Below is the image that I will be presenting, along with how to create it in just 30 minutes!

29.05.10 - Procedural cliff faces.

I've developed some new procedural textures for cliff faces. Inspired by materials by Dax Pandhi from QuadSpinner "Rock-X" is based on the Voronoi fractal for the larger features they're composed of 3 bump channels (combined/blended into the final output) and an extracted channel for the displacement (optionary). Below you can see the material applied to a simple sphere.

The new procedural texture applied to a sphere

Standard cliff rock with thermal erosion

A harder rock surface with more pronounced erosion grooves

Very soft, multi-layered rock material, one that easily peels away.

10.05.10 - Canyon Environments

Over the last few weeks I've been creating environments for an animation. Getting scale and detail right can be a challenge, especially with just one piece of software. This is why I incoporate more than one piece of software.

What you can see below is the result of a a few different Vue fractal terrains, taken over to World Machine 2 for erosion and taken back into Vue for final rendering.
The second line of thumbnails are some of the outputs that can be generated from WM2, they are extremely powerful if you're trying to control the distribution of vegetation or materials. an example of this is having trees populate only in the valleys, or a sand material in the areas of deposition.

(Vue->WM2->Vue) Vue procedural textures.

Texture based on the flowmap in WM2.

World Machine 2 flowmap texture. These are great from a distance.

Vue Procedural Textures. These are far superior to WM2 textures for closeups.

Realtime images: Vue's terrain editor (left) and the erosion node in WM2 (right)

Texture based on the flowmap in WM2.

Flow distribution map. Shows fluvial erosion areas, usefull as a material distribution mask.

Deposition Map, shows areas where eroded rock/sand has settled.

Colourized flowmap for more controlled, colour-based distribution.