Starhawk: Cypress Trees

  A ZBrush render of the Crypress tree models.

Starhawk: Cypress DLC

  Our fist DLC patch for Starhawk was the swampy planet of Cypress.  This was easily the most enjoyable planet to work on.  With Mark Skelton, we sculpted all of the plants and trees, roots and stubs which jutted all throughout the ground and reached to the clouds.  These trees were broken into modular units so that we could create each tree individually but at a quick pace.  No two trees are alike.

  For most of these levels I was in charge of layout as well.

  The boulders for Cypress had to be designed with the tree root interaction in mind. These forms best interact with the roots, they would bend over or reach around the rocks.  It was fun sculpting with this in mind, it helped point out where I should focus any detail and where I should leave smooth for when moss would grow and cover an area.  Matthew Breit wrote an excellent shader for the moss in which the moss would always grow ontop of the asset regardless of which way you rotated it.

Starhawk: Shattered

  Shattered planet was a tough world to work on and design.  The planet was simply falling apart around you, the challenge was creating a visually interesting area while maintaining a navigable play space. I worked on all of the rocks for this planet with Mark Skelton. They were extremely fun to sculpt due to their slightly stylized and exaggerated forms.  We needed large forms with areas of detail.  We also used detail normal maps for extra scale and detail.  Here you see the macro sculpts from ZBrush. 

  Here is a shot from one of the later levels in the middle of a battle.  Chris Smith did all of the vehicles on Starhawk, and he killed it!

Uncharted temple progress

  Here is a progress update on the mock Uncharted 3 concept art by my friend John Park (http://jparked.blogspot.com/).  It is quit a large piece, so in order to actually finish it, I broke it down into modular pieces, the overall temple is a cylinder, so I broke off a fraction of that and modeled/sculpted only what I could instance around.  These shots are of course WIP, however I think they give a good feeling of the direction where this piece is going.

John Park Concept

Starhawk: Dust

  Dust is my favorite planet in Starhawk and I was glad to be able to work on it so much.  I was in charge of the Outcast totems you see here as well as some of the rocks and layout for these DLC pieces.  Jonny Galloway did an excellent job bending world machine to his will on this planet.

  I created the homeworld buildings, such as these shacks here, which populate the entire planet.  These buildings were used to create the main towns such as Whitesands in Starhawk.

Starhawk bits and pieces

  These are some renders from a few of the assets I worked on.  Some of these didnt make it into the final game.

Space Ship Battle Prototype

  These are some prototype ships done in exploration for seeing just how far we can take and create an epic space battle.  These ships are 100% DESTRUCTIBLE.  I cant stress enough how much work went into creating these pieces.  The focus for each piece was to enable them to fit with one another, this meant that all surfaces needed to be accounted for to the n'th degree.  The following images are a combination of work done by Jonny Galloway, Matthew Breit and Mark Skelton.  I handled the largest connector bit as well as the fins throughout the ships.

  Here is a simple breakdown on one of the fins.  They are comprised of an internal foundation, flashing, then hull plating which was broken into INDIVIDUAL panels for the most realistic results.

Starhawk: Canyon

  The Comm Base was one of the first models I worked on for Starhawk.  I spent a majority of my time on the largest assets in Starhawk, and this one is one of the biggest.  It was the highlight of the Starhawk demo and unveil videos, but was not intended for the final game.

  The Canyon Elevator is another massive structure, it connects the ground base to a supply ship in orbit via a spine which stretches through space.  In the game a large climactic battle takes place ontop of this structure based around gameplay in which the cargo (seen on the left in containers) is jetting up into space during combat. 

Starhawk: Textures

  These are a few of the sculpts I did specifically for textures on Starhawk, these were alot of fun to do.  Primarily I would block in interesting shapes in maya, import them in and use an alpha grab in ZBrush to create a stamp, then I would block in my pattern and sculpt traditionally on top of that.  Its a fast and effective workflow.

Starhawk: Acid Sea

  Matthew Breit and I were tasked with creating the visual construction of the buildings on the harsh Acid Sea planet.  These buildings had to stand out as imposing as well as something that could be built on an uneven surface.  The darker color schemes and angles helped relay their more tough demeanor. 

  The acid sea elevator is a tower of intimidation, this was a very fun model to work on, it is the center point for the level and it completely destructs as well!  Its also one of the largest structures we have in the game (it reaches to space!)

  Note how the buildings interact with one another, this was part of their design, we built each piece to work together for maximum versatility.

  The dry well was the most ambitious asset we created for Starhawk.  It encompasses an entire level.  A player is only a mere spec in these shots.  There are multiple floors which the player must fight through, opening large doors, and then back up while acid from the base rises.  In order to accomplish such a large model in a short amount of time, we broke the entire asset into modular pieces which could then be instanced around the center pivot point.  It was also the most memory efficient way to achieve this.  The original scope of the well was much greater, but time forced restrictions.  We had fully modeled interior rooms you would fight through to work your way down to the bottom.  I was in charge of creating the design and model you see here, Jonny also worked with me creating the modular pieces.

  Here is a good shot of the roads which I worked on with Jonny Galloway, these roads were modular in their construction so that we could vary them up throughout the numerous levels they appeared in.

Starhawk: Space

  Due to having a small environment team, we needed to come up with a solution to build epic space areas for battles to occur.  The most efficient approach was to make these space "nuclei", bits of space station that can be rotated and fit into one another for maximum diversity.  In addition to changing their paint colors, each piece also had accompanying pipes and connectors as well as glowing windows which further hid the fact that only a few pieces were creating entire levels.

  Jonny Galloway and Matthew Breit spearheaded the implementation of these massive pieces, we each hand our hands on them. 

  I was in charge of this area, from destruction to layout.

  Here is a shot of one of the first levels in the game using only a handful of modular "nuclei" parts

  Here is another example of those same parts rearranged into a completely new structure.

Older works

Here are a few older pieces that I am still fond of.

this piece won top row and CGHub gold award

based off of a quick sketch, this stylized haunted house is still one of my favorite pieces

based off of the concept of JPark

For more work by my talented friend John Park, head over to his blog: http://jparked.blogspot.com/