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.
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.
Some more polished photogrammetry assets, from Lighthouse Park and the Capilano River.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
Concept art for the initial view of Fludd’s city – every building is meant to be formed or grown out of giant trees.
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.