So, we had the glammies yesterday [an end of year showy thing], got to meet a couple guys from industry, which was cool, and also I won the category of "Best Cg Artist", apparently it was pretty close, but in the end won it for - in the words of the dude from Blitz Games - my "mundaine" assets XD


Liam Grice - 2010/11 Showreel from Liam Grice on Vimeo.
2011 Showreel, produced in the 3rd year of university.

Liam Grice

Now begging for work


email : liamgrice@gmail.com
blog : liamgrice.blogspot.com
website : liamgrice.webs.com

 

 Free time = ^

Got nominated for the glammies, epic, one for best cg artist, and our game was nominated for best 3rd year project, double epic. Hope it goes well, if not, a rats arse may not even be given, as long as people get to see my stuff, im impartial to the outcome :D

Proof of concept Trailer for DFK Racing, the game weve been working on for the past few months. Cool's's

As well as the character, vehicle and asset/level bits, i'm responsible for the games frontend stuffs - the HUD, menu, labels, icons etc etc, to basically give it a higher level of professionalism, and make it feel like "our" game.

I had a play about with scaleform, built 3 menu systems that didnt work [they just didnt want to communicate with the udk at all] but in the end, found out how they transfer data between each other, thus these ^.

99% of the code work, however, goes to Dann, for making blank buttons actually do things [i managed to get it to load up our level when you hit start, but im completely out of my depth with anything else. Learned a hell of a lot from watching him sort it out though] In the video hes linked the character/vehicle selection buttons to actually select them and save them, so when you choose start, the game loads with whichever character/vehicle you have selected, neat.

The bottom lil bit is what ive been doing this morning, I can't even begin to think when the last time I vectored something was, good fun anyway. Its a basic template for the manual, in-game display of controls, and a lil poster we'll print for the end of year show.

It's nice to see everything coming together, never thought i'd be as chilled out as I am now, still a fair bit to do, but we nailed a lot very early on, so now its just a case of polishing everything. Cant wait for the exhibition.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ48xOiYKxo&feature=channel_video_title

 

Set up a shiny render of Christ, [is sick everywhere] rendering an unfinished lowpoly characters in "HD" resolution just doesnt seem logical. Give me a month and i'd make a high poly scuplt, then render that.

^ This is non-sensical, ah well, has to be done apparently.

For our business module, we are required to build a website, here is mine
Tried making it fancy, covered from top to tip in grunge, then decided against it. This showcases my work, and nothing else. I don't think potential employers really care what font my name is in, or if a dancing brick introduces my work, so I went for a simple, clean, "here is my work, look at it" approach.

Its not fully functional, but I'm working on a photoshop work flow to format my work automatically and upload it in a blink, it should be easy enough, however, I'll worry about that when my work is "good" enough to display, it would be a completely pointless exercise spending hours rendering/formatting/coding stuff that is not going to be used. Measure twice, cut once etc

anyway here's the earl:

www.liamgrice.webs.com

I also doubt ill be purchasing a host name any time soon, ".webs" is hardly an annoyance to type up/add to contact information etc, so I'm relatively satisfied as of this moment.
Cheers

 

Some character progress, nothing exciting.... *is excited*

I found some free mo-caps, some were just bizzarre...^^

 from now on, these are my deformation tests, so full of win

Still a tiny issue here and there with the skinning, quite suprised it came out like it did to be honest o_o

 

Spent yesterday vomiting assets, here are the results. Made a flag, with dynamic cloth, a Vegas style arrow sign, the bulbs turn on and off intermittently, and a banner, the texture page holds five different banners, so all that is needed for a different one is to move the uv's down [as demonstrated at the bottom]
I think from now on I'll try to post everything I can in the game engine viewer, seems nicer that way, much better representation of what it's to look like.

Long time no blog blah blah, been too busy to even think about showing things to the internet.
Current stage, Vehicle and Character roughly 80/90% done, can have a chill and just polish now

Ill break down the progress of each:



Character, roughly 90% done, needs some nice spec/gloss/emissive maps on there, got hold of a good sss shader for the udk but it crashed, will sort it out later, and just general polishing of the diffuse, I need to try to get rid of the mirroring [where obvious]
Its all skinned [to a decent enough level] so its going to be easy enough to port over into the game, again, a little touch up of polish here and there.
EDIT: Credit for the bulk of the tats goes to Francois http://inkedspilled.wordpress.com/



Vehicle, roughly 85%ish done, sorted diffuse, for the most part. Its all "skinned", meaning the suspension etc reacts correctly in game. Same applies for this with a good polish and some decent spec maps. Got emissive working for headlights/brakes.
Sweet

Will upload in game Vids soon, screengrabs really arent doing it justice.
Cheers

I've been playing around with the DirectX shaders in max, found some realllyy really nice things to faff around with. Anyway, here are some viewport captures

Decided to re-do the head, I felt he was straying too far away from the concept, so I sorted that. hopefully when the eyes get in there, and the face paint etc, it should be spot on, the concept still doesnt work 100% in 3d, but this is about as close as it will get, regarding proportions etc.


Ive been working on his armour and accessories that i'd been ignoring the arms, so these guys got a makeover, sculpted, then re-topologized. Think it came out great, re-topologizing is a nice "art" tool, you think more about the flow of the model without having the reposition every vert.
So heres the sculpt, with the new wire underneath, cant wait to see what the normal looks like on it, but I need to add some more details, big steroid-y veins etc XD...

too much time on warcraft, some time drawing..not a heck of a lot of time on actual work..

Moar images from my zbrushing's, man I love zbrush, cannot express it with words....no wait...no not that much, but its pretty kick-ass. Recent discovery is the UV tool...omf....you PAINT to make uv's, PAINT.. it took me literally 10-15 seconds to map the head, nothing comes close.
nom nom nom

ohhhhhh

Punk Racer Character - ZbrushWIP from Liam Grice on Vimeo.

Character for a racing game project. Havent used zbrush in a while, nice to get back into it.

Mudbox project, view the top one in HD for nicer nice-ness :D

Mudbox Project from Liam Grice on Vimeo.

Mudbox and 3dsmax in 3 weeks = this.

Mudbox Project - Posed from Liam Grice on Vimeo.

Haven't blogged in a while, I think it's down to when I do 3D work, i'm a little fussy with what I post [mainly because its a lengthy progress of looking at something ugly and messy, before having something near finished and something that I'm relatively pleased with, to show] but anyway, here she is thus far. These are just viewport captures, I think if you can make it look good there, then it will look good in anything.

Pre-Production is on pause for a cheeky 3 week mudbox/zbrush project.
The brief advises us to choose something simple and stylised, nothing real, and something that has already been designed. It also states that we should set aside the first day/evening to choose and research the chosen character....Well...I'd rather spend said time designing my own. So yeah..here she is, robot hand+feet super original chick, anyway, hopefully should be able to mix this up when I get to sculpting this, on to the turnarounds! :D

The final design of my Racer, decided to tone down his armour because it would be difficult for him to drive in. I wanted to include some tattoos aswell so this was a better way to show them off, gonna go ahead and cover his entire body in them.
Oh the bottom picture [clicky], its a progress gif from the body shape to the final image

Some of the throwaway stuff before I started designing my choice, these look more like punk characters than a racer/punk/future guy so none of these were used, useful exercise to get a feel for a character though.

Some more development on...the..guy face man. Want to get an interesting silhouette on him so i drew...silhouettes of him. Also...since this silhouette idea seems to have caught the interest of a few people [not my idea anyway, thank conceptartists across the globe for that]
if you dont know what to do with them next...then here is a clue

Just reviewing the brief for this project, nothing too exciting. This is more of a quick reference for me to lookup, I spend more time on the internet than looking at the briefs.

"Your Production Folder should include:

• Initial research
• Design & Development:
• Source material for textures, lighting, etc
• Model Pack
• Final Colour pre-viz Artwork/Macquettes
• Production Tasks Breakdown, Technical Requirements, Schedule & Charts, Roles & Budgets
• Production Values"

I have been doodling today so i'll get those up later.

Thus far, on a percentage level of completion of where I am [vehicle and character]
I am something along the lines of:

Character:
Research and Source Material Gathering: 40%
Concept and development: 60%
Model pack and Turnaround: 20%
Final Pre-vis: 0%

Vehicle:
Research and Source Material Gathering: 80%
Concept and development: 50%
Model pack and Turnaround: 10%
Final Pre-vis: 20%

Obviously I cant continue onto pre-vis before i've decided on the character/vehicle etc, but aside from that I'm just going to keep on chugging the work out.

I'm currently helping develop a character for use in a future game called RUST, dont think im allowed to say anything for the minute, but yeah, heres some doodles

Work in progress, massive canvas :D

okay so..heads....development schmevelopment..

Messing around with this guy, hell knows whats happening with him... looks cool though? isnt that what counts? oh no wait...quantity! I forget! NEEDS MORE HAIRSTYLE VARIATIONS! COLOUR, SHAPE, PASTEURIZATION!
WURD

I'm going to bed, can't do anything moar right now,
here he is with an extremely useless spanner....doesnt he know he looks ridiculous?

Began character work...by began I mean I sat down and drew a guy, thus deciding he should be my character, I liked the design of him in any case [/continues on to draw him with a 1000 different hairstyles to satisfy the brief] kinda punky esque general badass on a vagina ache 24/7

Anddd beginning to finalize [whut?] my vehicle, just gotta look at weapons and accessories.. I think the turnarounds will come before the previs, just so I can get everything where it should be in a technical precise manner rather than winging it in photoshop.

A glance at my layout sheets aswell as some pre-production for the vehicle.
Please...feel free to peruse

Started experimenting with silhouettes for the vehicles, most of them just playing around with the different vehicle classes we plan to have. I'm taking up the medium size class; jeeps, hummers, rally cars, general off roaders which is in the bottom image. Ren and I collaborated to create the hover type vehicles and the rest was just me.

Thought I had better put the ignition key back into this blog, I've done a few bits over the summer that aren't really worth posting, more tests for myself to improve in different areas.

Anyway, my current project is to create an environment in Autodesk Maya, and here is what it look's like:



Particulary happy with the text, getting russian text into any 3d program was proving impossible so instead, each letter was lovingly handcrafted, there goes my life.
Nearly finished with the modelling, by the end of today would be epic, then off this whitebox stage and onto the pretty textured whitebox stage, I love concrete.