In 2012, I moved to Seattle to join the world class team at Microsoft.

What we’re doing is amazing.

Unfortunately, all of the cool work I’m doing on other SOE projects is covered under NDA:

Project Amazons (Technical Art Director)

Reich (Technical Art Director)

Exigent (Co-Founder and VP Production\Technical Art Director)

Artificial Studios and Boanerges

Reality Engine and Project Armageddon

Catalyst Media (Assistant VFX Supervisor)

Personal and Side Work

Various explorations in mobile apps and casual games:

Obviously this is a simple case, but it illustrates a way to define your anisotropic direction on a per-pixel basis. Another way to do this is by painting a gradient along the direction of flow and turning it into a normal map. One way to do this might be to use the puppet warp tool in Photoshop CS5+ to take a linear gradient and warp it along the path that you need. Then just generate a normal map and use the X and Y components as your anisotropic direction.

The purpose of this post is to shortcut the process to get this up and running as fast as possible using Maya 2012 x64, without delving into the details. Basically a very succinct “how” without the “why”, that I have had laying around in my notes for awhile. I use it as a checklist to setup my development environment on new machines. Here goes:

1. Download and install Eclipse 3.7.1 Classic SDK (Indigo) for x64.
2. Use Eclipse’s Software Update window (under Help) to install PyDev
3. Add pymel autocompletion by first following these instructions to set up a Maya Python interpreter from the pymel guide.
• IMPORTANT! Make sure to add these folders to the PYTHONPATH for your Maya interpreter:
• your_path_to_maya\bin\python26.zip
• your_path_to_maya\devkit\other\pymel\extras\completion\py
  
  
• Setup your Predfined tab in your interpreter to point to the included Maya 2012 pypredef path:
• your_path_to_maya\devkit\other\pymel\extras\completion\pypredef
• Download and extract the additional Maya commands pypredef elsewhere on your system.
• VERY IMPORTANT! Prepend “maya.” to all files in the documentation pypredef for Maya 2012. This is the only way it worked for me without double entries.
• VERY IMPORTANT! The Predefines are loaded in alphabetical order. Make sure the directory for the downloaded pypredefs is listed AFTER the Maya pymel path, as below:
  
4. Close and restart Eclipse.
5. For MEL syntax highlighting:
• Install Colorer from http://colorer.sf.net/eclipsecolorer/ under Help > Install New Software…
• Follow the instructions at https://www.creativecrash.com/downloads/applications/syntax-scripting/c/eclipse-maya-mel to download and install the mel syntax highlighting update.
• Configure *.mel files to open with the Colorer Editor in Window > Preferences > General > Editors > File Associations:
  
6. Install the Eclipse Maya Plugin to support sending the contents of the current window or selected to Maya’s script editor.
• Download the package from http://www.creativecrash.com/zbrush/downloads/applications/c/eclipse-maya-editor
• Add the software in Eclipse using Help > Install New Software… and choosing the extracted ZIP folder on your local HDD
7. (Optional) Install Eclipse Perforce integration
• Download the package from ftp://ftp.perforce.com/perforce/r10.1/bin.java/p4eclipse36.zip
• Add the software in Eclipse using Help > Install New Software… and choosing the extracted ZIP folder on your local HDD

After this everything with Eclipse and Maya should be working! Next, you should set up PyQt so you can make the creation of complex GUIs a breeze. There are several ways to do this and Nathan’s post covers most of them. My preferred method is a bit different and I’ll cover it another day. Good luck and let me know how everything works out for you!

I joined the talented team at SOE Austin in July of 2011. This is hands-down one of the best and brightest teams I have worked with. I’m honored to be a key part of driving DCUO forward to new heights!

Sometimes it can be useful to have the sky to appear at infinity even though the geometry is really close, or perhaps you want to seamlessly blend near and far 3D elements with the skydome in the material regardless of position. Examples to come.

Handbrake – An open source media encoder that’s great at mp4, the new web standard. Also has easy presets for iOS devices and a host of other targets. I found the UI to be simple and intuitive, and to produce better, faster, and easier results than Apple’s Quicktime Pro.

CamStudio – I like Camtasia Sudio but the price tag is a bit much for me. CamStudio is a great free alternative that makes creating tutorials and screen casts a snap. It lacks Camtasia Studio’s editing and publishing suite, but that’s not a huge deal to me.

TreeSketch 2.0 - An awesome iPad app that generates 3D trees you can actually use, and exports them to FBX. The interface is nothing short of revolutionary, in my opinion.

Even with no programmers we had a working prototype of the key features in our game by the end of the preproduction phase, including transformable vehicles and weapons, special character abilities, 4 multiplayer levels, and a GDD with production schedule and staffing plan.

Materials

• Sky Material
• Base Material
• Terrain
• VFX
• Character

Created to allow the art team to quickly dial in the look for each level. Cloud textures, sky colors, painted backdrops and other variables can be tweaked artistically to achieve desired results. The sky light source is a texture (Sun, Moon, etc) that can be positioned anywhere in the sky and provides back-lighting for the clouds. Cloud panning speed and tiling amount can be adjusted per layer.

No effort was made to simulate actual cloud formation, behavior and dissipation. I feel doing so would have made the material unwieldy to artists and actually given them less control over the end result. It also would have been a lot more expensive and taken longer to develop!

Base Material Example

Base Material Info Sheet

Features

Used for nearly every environment object in the game, allowing for easy performance optimization and maintenance.

• Static switches to enable features
• 2 Layers with Diffuse\Spec\Normal
• 1 Variation Layer
• Reflection on Base Layer (blurry reflections with gloss map via tex2Dbias)
• Emissive on Base Layer and Layer 2
• Snow feature over all layers (sparkles)
• Advanced vertex blending with mixmaps
• Simplest variation is ~40 instructions

Terrain Material Info Sheet

Features

• Height-based blending using vertex R channel for height
• 3 Layers (Bottom, Middle, Top)
• Water Layer with procedural darkening, and ripples influenced by world wind actor
• Heightmap-based water mixing for added detail
• Snow feature over all layers (sparkles)
• Precise blending with layer masks

A few VFX materials I created during pre-production. The meteors are a very simple particle system that drives the animation of the meteor trail material over time, controlling parameters for the fireball position, color, and smoke dissipation.

UI Particles uses a vertex material to offset the geometry of the particles from the player’s position along the impact vector, keeping their size constant relative to the screen.

Character Material

Character Specs Excerpt

Features

Despite the fact that our characters were stylized, the materials were full-featured and supported mesh and texture compositing for player-customized characters.

• Custom SSS implementation.
• Human skin specular.
• Custom anisotropic hair.
• Customizable clothing and skin in one material, using UV offsets.

Systems and Documentation

Below is a small sampling of key pipeline documentation I created during pre-production.