Further tests in rotating, blending and combining multiple Gaussian splats together – this example blends 3 splats scanned in various locations around Bowen Island.
Gaussian Splats 2
Category: float_left
Megascans Retexture 1
Megascans have become so ubiquitous in CG that some of the most used assets are now very easy to spot! This is a tool to automatically generate layered material masks in substance, and allow scanned assets to be easily repurposed for different biomes.
City render 1
Creating this city block took around 3mins, with plenty of scope for optimisation. The buildings in particular need more rules for practicality – such as not placing a wall right in front of a door…
Circus Maximus 2
The VP environment was primarily used for the track-level fight scenes – and apparently had a very high percentage of ICVFX finals (‘In Camera VFX’ shots requiring little or no cleanup in compositing).
Omashu 2
Opimisation and shader work (particularly on the vegetation) for the Omashu Palace environment. See the ‘techart‘ section for more information on the technique. Main build done by Dimension Studios.
Anga Qela
As the environments got bigger and more complex (especially in the later episodes), we started to hit the limit of what Unreal 4 was capable of. Both hardware, software and virtual production techniques have improved significantly since the shoot, so if produced today it likely more shots would make it to final. This environment was taken over in post by Image Engine.
Diorama demo 3
For the second part of our talk I created a more realistic environment layout demo, inspired by an area of the Sunshine Coast. The assets are a combination of my own library and packs from ‘NatureManufacture’, who were kind enough to help us prepare for Siggraph.
Realtime hemlock
Coming from Europe, one of the best ways to learn North American trees has been to model them. This is a Western Hemlock created in ‘Plantfactory’. The base is made from 3 photoscans merged together.
Realtime rocks
Some more polished photogrammetry assets, from Lighthouse Park and the Capilano River.
JL Red Sky
The full scene had over 400,000 instances, and in some aerial shots almost all of them were visible – so we had to use every optimization technique we could think of to keep the scenes interactive.
JL Power Lines
One of the great things about using a game engine is getting a lot of additional functionality for free. At the very end of the project, it was noted that none of the utility poles had cables, so I wrote a tool in blueprint to procedurally create a plausible network of simulated softbody wires.
MPC – Ad Astra 1
Ad Astra – 2019
A large part of MPC’s work on the show was creating planetary views from space. Terragen is an ideal tool for this, and we made heavy use of it throughout the show.
This shot is a Terragen base by me, with further matte painting by Tadaomi Kawasaki.
Leap year landscape
The view from the top of the castle tower. As with the rest of the film, there have been some VERY major liberties taken with the geography of Ireland…
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MPC Elysium
Elysium – 2012
While Image Engine and WhiskeyTree did the bulk of the work on this show, MPC was awarded the shuttle crash sequence. This is the most substantial matte painting, based on a Vue render. Around this time I was made HoD of 3DDMP and Environments as MPC Vancouver.
Neverland forest city 3
Concept art for the initial view of Fludd’s city – every building is meant to be formed or grown out of giant trees.
I
Human body marketing still
Main marketing and publicity image. Needed to be 6K, so I up-resed the textures used for the bones and muscles on the hero human model, as well as scattering the smaller rocks. I then painted over the final renders, adding detail to the rock surfaces, as well as the background and dust.