3D GAME | LAUNCH TRAILER

A look at the real-time 3D assets, textures, and materials I have generated for the game.

3D SHORT

STUDENT FILM. UNIKIL 

I directed a short student film during my senior year in college. I had the chance and privilege to lead a team of 6 people. I have designed, lit and rendered all of the shots as well as setup the 3d pipeline. As for the characters, environments, texture work, rigs, and concept designs, it is fair to say that pretty much everybody has stepped out of their original responsibility and contributed to all aspects of the creation. The film was originally over 5 minutes long but never made it past the 3d animatic stage because of time constraints. This is an edited down version of the the original trailer.

The opening shot is a dolly that establishes the mood and setting.

Same location, different shot with altered lighting and mood...

The dolly gradually reveals amid the ruins, what appears to be the location of an ancient battlefield. A good old warm vs cool color scheme is used in order to detach the background from the foreground.

 The story narrates the quest of a father and a son to bring their loved one back from the dead. The characters were never finalized, I relied a lot on the lighting to try and hide the rough spots, not to mention the almost complete lack of proper texture work.

And yes... It's not the most original story in the history of film making to say the least, but what it gave us in return, is a well established narrative arc against which to challenge and refine our skill set.

I modeled and retopo the character to optimize the normal maps. An extra month would have made a world of a difference. The father in the original concept was supposed to have a moustache, a hat, among other props, but sadly I didn't even have time to give him some hair cards. The characters were left visibly unfinished...

...As a result the texture work you see here did not appear in the film. The characters had almost no texture work applied to them and were shot unfinished. The trailer really suffered from it. Directing the project, lighting and rendering every shot, on top of creating the characters proved too much, and something had to give.

The main character swipes the screen with his torch light and drives the viewer towards the center of attention.

 The environments allowed for some really great shots. The scenes were built to world scale. To give you  an idea of how expansive this particular shot is, consider that tiny center blue dot in the middle to be about the size of one human being. The clockwise rotation of the shot represents the passage of time, one of the story main thematic.

Please enjoy it for what it is : An honest attempt !

 Credits: Wonjin Kim, Cody S. Laine, Marisa Gonzales, Ricardo Tena Jr, Jennifer Gilliland, Roberto Joaquin Rodriguez, Salim El Harizi.

GAME RELEASE - CRITICAL ACCLAIM!

I couldn't resist editing all of the amazing reviews into one place. Try it out !
Download the game for free now and see what the fuss is all about !
This is not a ball game.  : https://itunes.apple.com/app/this-is-not-a-ball-game./id488908318?ls=1&mt=8

3D GAME - BEHIND THE SCENES

Excited by the overwhelming praise the game's visuals attracted, I thought I would post a few screenshots and talk briefly about the art and a few key concepts behind its realization. I was responsible for developing the visual look, 3D assets, illustrations, logo, textures, rigs, animations, and assembling it all in Unity 3D. I also directed the efforts of two talented artists, Laura Franke and Tan Tantakosol in generating a large part of the UI elements and in-game cut-outs.

All screenshots are in-engine.

Strong emphasis was put onto lighting and atmosphere.

The logo and identity was inspired by a famous painting by  Belgian painter Magritte. Art Nouveau  inspired motifs enforced continuity throughout the wide variety of artistic elements.

The exterior scene mirrors the look and feel of its interior. 

A cool vs warm color palette was used in order to keep the player's attention on the center stage.

Different levels required different lighting scenarios and additional texture work.

Colliders, and triggers

In order to reproduce the feel of a traditional film response (25fps), I manually remapped the values of the light maps in Photoshop by altering the gamma curve. This in turn, deepened the shadows and increased contrast in a visually pleasing manner.

Posters give you something to watch during loading time and help build intrigue.

Reminds you of anything?

The main menu is set against an animated environment.

The camera moves in a set of cinematic angle

Atmospheric components such as fog lights and halos in conjunction with a wide angle camera lens give the impression that the scene is much bigger than it actually is.

Let's end this post with an in-depth tour of the game's mechanics and core concept with Absurd interactive CEO Sean Hart.