Next Adventure

So about a month ago I was made redundant from Sega Studios Australia. I'm currently in the process of relocating back to Canberra to work on updating this blog with some new content.

A story from the lay off is here

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/02/confirmed-sega-studios-australia-makes-37-of-its-staff-redundant

Pretty sad ending to the job, after six and a half years, but that kind of thing happens in the current economy.

Looking forward to new things!

London Olympics 2012

Yay, they've finally announced the game I'm working on as well as the re-branding of the studio.

Here's a few links

Kotaku's story on the announcement
Sega Studio Australia new website

Hopefully I'll be able to post some more examples of shaders that I've been working on for this project soon.

Eye Shader Update

Here is an update of the Eye Shader work. This video was captured out of the 3DSMax viewport and built using Shader FX.

Something from Medieval 2

I found this going through some files. It's an animation that I did for Medieval 2 Total War. The main pendulum was key framed and the rope was simulated using Havok Reactor. The simulation data was then baked down onto bones in order for it to work in the game engine. The same technique was used for all the walls, towers and siege engine destruction animations.

Higher quality water shader videos

I've uploaded some higher quality version of those water shader videos. You can download them using the following links.

• White-water
• Water

White-water Shader

This shader was built off the other water shader. Except refraction and caustics were removed. A White-water texture was then added to the shader. The RGB channels of the texture are then displayed on the mesh when the artist paints the appropriate vertex colours. Each white water channel can have it's speeds changed independently of each other.

Water Shader

Real-time water shader I developed using Shader FX for some water R&D

Eye Shader

Here is the end result of my Eye shader creation. Again I've done the textures pretty quickly so I can test the tech. I'll re-post some updated screen shots when I get a character artist to pretty it up.

I'll have to post up some video of this shader in action. The lighting on the Iris comes out very nice in my opinion.

Skin Shader

Here's some work on the Skin shader I've been working on. I didn't do any of the actual art here, just the shader creation. The model and textures were built by Chi Han an artist I"m working with here. I've just finished documenting the shader for graphic programmers to implement. Also trying to get some resources so we can see just how good we can make this shader look with some more final touches on the art.

We haven't used sub surface scattering on this as it sounds like it'll be way too expensive for what we'll be using it for.

The shader though is able to blend between dry and wet skin ( 2 different specular maps). We can also animate facial wrinkles with it by mask blending in another normal map.

Re-Inspired

Hi,

So I've been re-inspired to update my blog site. I've also been enthralled with a program I've discovered during my prototyping on this project: Shader FX - such an awesome tool. Allows you to create Shader's and preview them in the 3ds Max view port in real-time. I've also been looking at a way of using that to enhance the cloth realism. Also happy to say I'm getting some really good results. Although it still remains to be seen as to whether it'll be worth the cost at putting such a Shader in the game.

So I'm going to try and keep this site moving now, get some momentum and post some of my newer work up. I'm thinking samples of work in progress might be a good start.

Ciao