Author: JS

Crypts Of The Golem King

Posted on by JS

Firedrake: Crypts Of The Golem King.

Firedrake VR is a open world, first person sword and sorcery RPG, set in the vast and mysterious kingdom of Dorin for the Oculus Rift, Gear VR and Go, Pico and Quest virtual reality platforms.

Sole developer of experience.

  • Created all pre production material including, story boards, concept art and story scripts, schedules, budgets and project plans.
  • Created all game assets.
  • Created 3d models in Blender and 3D Studio
  • Created custom sound effects in Adobe Audition and Audacity.
  • Developed performant Baked lighting models and custom shaders in Unity3D
  • Became a expert in Optimization techniques for VR, including Mesh combination using tools like Bakery Meshbaker Pro. Utilized Texture atlases and crated custom atlases in Photoshop. Created levels for best practices for automatic culling.
  • Programmed all experience interactions in C#. Such as door openings, pickup, lever and control surface interaction. Utilizing MSVS for custom code and Playmaker or Bolt for interactions.
  • Programmed A.I. modules with Emerald A.I. and custom heuristic routines.
  • Developed all U.I. elements in Photoshop.
  • Created all corresponding marketing and social media material in photoshop and managed all social media and paid ad campaigns.

 

 

 

Example of A Pitch Deck:

In the entire development cycle of an VR experience, a lot of corresponding design and development material needs to be crated. These include, storyboards,design bibles, camera breakdown, scripts and wireframes, Use Case studies, test plans; as well as, marketing and business plans.

Below is an example of a pitch deck designed in Adobe Photoshop. for Oculus Store review.

 

 

 

Example of a Store Package:

In designing a VR experience, there is much more that goes into other then just the VR experience assets. Below is a typical example of the corresponding visual assets needed for inclusion into a VR store Such as the Oculus store, Applab, Sidequest or Steam.

Each asset is designed in accordance to required technical specification like size and aspect ratio and is an overall exorcise of product “branding”. Each assets must be unique in its own way, while maintaining brand identity.

This set represents the main game logo teaser and is the same design, just in different sizes and formats.  Some with transparency, some designed for mobile display, VR display and some for PC  high resolution display.

 

 

 

Example of Marketing and Launch Promos:

Below are some examples of launch marketing promos used on social media to introduce and promo the experience to potential target audiences.

These are used to post into social media feeds such as Facebook, Twitter or Reddit. These were designed in photoshop using ingame screenshots.

 

 

 

Screenshots From the Quest Version of Firedrake:COGK

Optimized to run at 90FPS on the Quest1 using UNIT3D. It was very challenging to get as much visual quality, and interaction in the VR experience while maintaining the performance budget required for publishing on a mobile stand alone deceive. Luckily I have 25+ of 3D animation and modeling experience, so I knew many optimization techniques from the days when computer CPU processing was based on single threading technology to speed up rendering. Many of these techniques transfer directly to the VR space.

 

 

 

Hand Building Levels in Unity.

Many hours are spent tweaking the levels in unity to find the right balance of perspective, size, photorealisum and lighting.

I have found, designing the levels takes a mere fraction of the time that actually play-testing and then tweaking the levels requires. Sometimes I play a level 2 to 3 hundred times to get the right balance.

I have played a lot with procedurally designed levels and find hand building levels brings a certain “Je ne sais quoi” to the experience, that computer generated levels do not have.

 

 

What Dungeon experience would be complete without some first person combat!

Core gameplay in Firedrake is based around melee and ranged combat. The player can combat a wide variety of monsters (over 30 types) and each monster type has their own specific A.I. behavior heuristics and animations that were programed via a blend of custom C# scripts and Emerald A.I. integrations.

Firedrake features over 50 different types of weapons and each one had to be modeled, scripted, play balanced and tested thoroughly.

Here are some examples of the melee combat “interface” from the players perspective.

 

 

 

Six Side Cube Maps:

Here is an example of a six sided cubemap generated out of Unity/OVR toolset. These maps are used in social media to allow a end user to preview and experience actual 3d environments and used in the store listings for the same reasons.

This one was generated Raw out of Unity and then edited in Photoshop.

Rangi VR

Posted on by JS

   

 

RANGI The Game

A first person Puzzle and Platform game based on Central African mythos 

  • Worked on multidisciplinary, UbiSoft Europe dev team developing game assets in Unity
  • Worked on U.I. elements in Photoshop
  • Developed concept art
  • Developed custom textures and image maps from design guidelines.
  • Level design in Unity for Low Poly budgets for mobile VR
  • Managed Marketing and launch plans and Social Media PR
  • Setup and administered version control for game assets
  • Conducted weekly/daily team status meetings and kept project schedules







VR Regatta – The Sailing Game

Posted on by JS
  • Acted as sailing subject matter expert to design realistic sailing gameplay mechanics.
  • Created environmental assets for background and natural environmental assets in Unity
  • Created 360 Background Panos in Unity.
  • Developed low poly game assets of industry standard marine equipment in Blender/3D Studio and created corresponding texture maps in Photosohop.
  • Developed Testing plans and conducted manual gameplay testing.
  • Tweaked gameplay experiences in Unity based on testing feedback.

Meta Real Estate

Posted on by JS

I have created a number of  virtual buildings and spaces for virtual real-estate holdings sold or rented through  metaverse.properties.  

Construction of 3D spaces in Blender and 3D studio   to create low poly and performant online 3d models and texturing and atalsing  in Photoshop for uploading onto metaspaces including  Upland,  Somnium and and  Decentraland.

Some projects are sourced from real word blueprints and strive for as much photo realism as can be created with the current state of technology, some projects are conceptualized entirely in VR and allow for a more ethereal design esthetic.

 

Models and assets are custom modeled in either3D Studio or Blender.  Some projects are authored directly in Unity3D with the Probuilder modeling plugin. 

Current state of the online world does not allow much ‘interactivity” so I have developed a number of 3D modeling techniques  that can be applied at the 3D level to allow some more limited interaction in VR.

Tools used in these processes are varied as the upload formats for each virtualland are distinctly different.

Hardsurface modeling techniques are generally used for their control and ease of modification of single vertices.

3D Studio or Blender are my tools of choice, but Unity/Probuilder or just using primitives and tiling them together is also a technique used.

My background and experience in architecture coupled with my technical background  has led to easily transitioning into this exciting  new world.

meta1
meta2
cad2
cad_1
cad3

Star Trek 55th 360 Renders

Posted on by JS

 

A series of 360 3D renders of Star Trek’s iconic ship: The Enterprise.

These were created for a commissioned social media marketing campaign marking 55th st anniversary.

55 images were created in total and new one was posted each day on social feeds.

Rendered in 3D Studio using MentalRay renderer to created equilateral 360 projections. Background mattes were created in Phtoshop and composited into the raw renders in Adobe After Effects.

I developed a custom program  created in Python to inject the proper meta data for uploading into social media as a 360 image.

Below is a raw render as a equilateral projection. This render took 8 hours of render time on a small i7 based render farm.

 

Below is the live 360 image of the render. (links out to Facebook where the image is hosted)

360 Image live on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153601698396191&set=pb.714426190.-2207520000..&type=3

 

 

Below are exampled of various images. These all linkout to Facebook and will popup in a separate window.

Catacombs of Doom VR

Posted on by JS

Catacombs of Doom

CoD is the first of the  Firedrake adventures, created for the GearVR, Go , Pico Neo and Daydream VR systems.  

It is a first person fantasy RPG featuring first person melee and ranged combat, magic, puzzles, exploration, heavy story elements and level ups.

 

Firedrake Concept Art:

Below are some examples of pre-production concept art.  these were created from pen and ink sketches in photosohop.   These represent  the development of the initial idea through refinement cycles.   These were created to set the mood and tone of the game. 

Skybox Background Environments:

Rendered in Vue, a terrain and environmental CGI package, these are equallateral skyboxes used in unity to add depth and immersion to VR levels.   Each level has a new skybox and each had to be designed to simulate  specific weather and time of day requirements while maintaining performant.

 
 

Lightmapping In Unity

Here is an example of a scene in unity not light and the same scene lightmapped.   Firedrake required high performance  baked lightmapping.  it has ZERO realtime lights or pixel lights.  All effects were done via lightbaking.

 

Firedrake  3D Architecture Screenshots:

Below are a series of screenshot representing various dungeon environments.   These were assembled in Unity from a variety of custom modeled and textured 3d assets  created in Blender exported to Unity as well as  modifying a number of  per-existing assets in an object library.  

Performance requirements dictated a max of 50k verts, 50 k tris and 30 megs of textures per scene view, requiring pulling almost every performance and optimization trick in the world to keep framerates high.

 

 

Debugging and Building in Unity:

Debugging environmental levels in Unity is agnostic to VR.  many issues that crop up are completely decoupled from the VR overlay.  

Here is an example of trying to find a lightmapping issue.  (this one took a while to figure out, overlapping UV from teh source modeling program!!!!)   

 

 

GEAR VR – DAYDREAM Versions

Firedrake VR was originally created for Gearvr and ported to Google Daydrean VR.  The technical limitations of this platform were immense and it made for some serious challenges getting an open world first person shooter running on that platform.  

Below are screenshots from the GearVr version.   All assets were created in Blender or 3D studio and textured in Photoshop. 

Notice graphic fidelity, especially poly counts in the 3d levels,  is somewhat limited vers the Quest version.

Linewars VR

Posted on by JS

Line Wars VR for the Gear and Go platforms.

Linewars is a updated remake of the retro space cockpit simulator game “Linewars”.

I worked with the developer through the Oculus Start programs, where indie VR developers share skills and techniques to help build better VR experiences.

I help test and optimize 3d models as well as developed texture libraries for Unity and all background spacescape graphics.

I developed environmental background mattes and spacescape skyboxes in photoshop, optimized for mobile.

The target platform for this project was the GearVR running on a S7. Performance constraints were exceedingly limited on this project as most CPU cycles had to go to physics simulations.

 

Below are screenshots from Linewars VR.

 

 

Equilateral Skybox projections for Linewars

These were created as the background “atmosphereics”  to each level of the game.  I used a variety of tools including Photoshop, Spacescape Generator and Illustrator to create these background mattes.ewars VR:

 

 

Virtual Reality Society

Posted on by JS

The Virtual Reality Society

  • Cofounder of a website dedicated to XR.
  • Created business briefs
  • Crated wireframes and use cases of website in pre-production. Developed design and branding guidelines.
  • Developed accessibility guidelines in accordance to ANSI and WCII guidelines
  • Created all site code in Notepad. Later migrated to WordPress
  • Created all graphics in Photoshop. Optimized for web destitution.
  • Developed technical scematics for backend server configuration.
  • Developed marketing and PR plans and all corresponding marketing material such as press releases, social media posts.
  • Designed and implemented weekly “this week in vr” infographics in phtoshop and distributed through  social media campaigns..
  • Developed social media landing pages on Facebook and twitter.
  • Grew Facebook and Twitter feeds from 0 to 100k in 90 days.
  • Through the use of ad campaigns and intergrated social media, took website viewership from 0 to 250k unique monthly.
  • Developed online content such as User Guides, How-to’s, Tutorials and Hardware guides.

 

Sheffield Docfest

Posted on by JS

 

 

Travel though time and space to explore the first Earth Like planet discovered by the Hubble telescope in this 3D generated 360 VR movie…

Safari To Vanda III

 

Float over alien landscapes in your airdrone and explore alien flora and fauna of the alien and mysterious world of Vanda III.

 Sheffield DocFest –audience choice award. 

I created  a360 degree 11 minute sci-fi film using adobe After Effects,3D Studio and Maya,  Esoftware’s Vue and Adobe Premier.  

From storyboard, narrative script, through rendering and graphic element creation to editing and sound design. 

Rendered, animated and modeled in 3D Studio for steroscopic 360 output,  this project required huge amounts of computing power and I had to build my own small renderfarm. 

I lucked out and found a pallet of decommissioned PC’s on ebay for sale for pennies on the dollar and they were perfect.  Small form factor, i3 dell pcs.  

Not the fastest in the world, but networked up together a considerable amount of render cycles.     This film took almost three months of render time to complete.

I then rendered the raw output in Adobe Premier  using a custom built stereoscopic editng template. Then did the final output animation while compositing of special effects in After Effects.

Final colour correction was done with Davinchi Resolove and final encoding was done with Handbrake.    

  
   

Road To Innmouth VR Escape Room

Posted on by JS

Road To Innsmouth VR is a companion “Escape Room”  experience coupled with a stand alone board game.  Players can take expanded adventures from the board game in VR.

This was developed for online web delivery and was created in Unity, rendered in HDRP as 360 stereoscopic images.

The imagery was developed in Unity as 3D models and rendered out utilizing a custom 360 generator plugin.

I created the environments used in the renders,  Over 20 different environments rendered out at at least four to six camera views, using custom 3D models, specific to the adventure and asset packs to create photo realistic background environments for the escape room puzzles.

Environment as presented from the game designers in the spec, vers final render in Unity
A series of renders based on a puzzle spec.

VR Zen Garden

Posted on by JS

The Virtual Zen Garden is an ever evolving project utilizing the state of the art of web VR capabilities to create a tranquil and educational node, for the online traveler to visit..

It was originally developed in the VR 1.0 days as a interactive 2D web based interactive experience

It was 3D modeled and rendered in 3D Studio, then processed in Photoshop as static 2D images and scripted together with HTML and embedded with a looping mono soundtrack.

It was released on the Microsoft MSN network.

It quickly transitioned into a full  web based 3D VR  multimedia experience, developed with low Poly  3d assets and textures using VRML 2.0.

Recently, It has been re-authored to Meta’s Hozions VR based worlds and is currently being ported to web VR.

The main tenant of the idea of the VR Zen Garden as a evolving testbed, is to continually push the boundaries of real time , over-the-wire, web based delivery systems for VR.  

Always stretching the limit of the current  technologies and to ultimately create the most photo realistic environment possible within the current technical limitations.

It’s a great little project to keep the skillz sharp with!

Virtual Birds

Posted on by JS

Virtual Birds

Created as an streaming feature for Jaunt VR.  This  360 documentary film, follows the life of a series of birds in their natural habitat.

Filmed using an custom designed DSLR rig to capture stereoscopic 180 and mono 360 film, then edited in Adobe premier and rendered in After effects.   Film on location in Priest Lake Idaho on the remote Canadian border.

Sound edited in spacilized surround sound 5.2

A series of watercolor paintings used in the film have recently been minted to the ETH crypto block chain and sold as NFT’s.

owl_1