Just got word that I got credited as a Rigger for Vicious Cycle’s latest game, Eat Lead. I skinned some of the enemy characters for the game, using 3ds Max. Massive Black also did some of the other NPC models and textures.

Big shout out to Vicous Cycle for this project; it has a nice charm to it. I recommend everyone to check it out

Game Informer Cover

Just got word that Game Informer is releasing this cover. 2K Marin hired us at Massive Black this past Janurary to create a setup a high-res verision of their in-game model of the Big and Little Sister. They supplied us with the original rig and assets. After collabaorating with our Shanghai branch to ensure the high res model was built similar to the game-res 2K sent us, I had transfer the high res model onto the game-res rig and skin it. One very neat thing about 3ds Max is it’s ability to make a wrap deformer and “bake” it into a skin for faster manipulation. After the bake, I simply edit any weights and polish the deformations.

Afterwards, I handed it off to our Animator, Chris Hatala, to pose and render the image who passed it to Jason Chan, to paint over the render in Photoshop.

We did a pretty funny spoof commercial to advertise our company. I’m featured in one of the last shots and the very last shot is a creature I rigged a while back in Maya. I highly recommend checking out the HD version, if you can.

Check it out!

Whew! It’s been a minute since my last post.

Massive Black: Volume 1 is an art book from my company and not only contains some of the most inspiring concept art out there, it even features a few of my rigs in action in the Intellectual Property section.  The book’s been well-received thus far and receiveing mention around the web.

I’m proud to be a part of this talented company and here’s hoping that we can make Volume 2 even better!

Massive Black: Volume 1 is published by Ballistic.

CGSociety Feature – The Art of Massive Black

Kotaku Article – The Art That Launched a Thousand Games, Now a Book

Gamer’s Daily News – Massive Black Launches Art Book Volume 1

Haven’t gotten a hold of my own copy yet, but this a title I done some nice maya rigs for last year. It won’t be until the movie is out when Massive Black and myself can show off some of the characters we’ve worked on.

I’ve heard moslty good things about it so congrats to Sega and Edge of Reality. The game looks great and I enjoyed contributing!

here’s a bitmap error that comes up in 3ds Max when using exceedingly large texture files or fairly long image sequences in the scene. The error usually brings up this window:

I ran into this error recently with a rig that’s using more memory than 3ds Max’s current threshold. I did some poking around the Autodesk forums and came across a solution that seemed to work.

To fix the error, we have to enable Windows to allow more memory to Max. In Windows XP, right-click on “My Computer” and go to “Properties”.

Now, go to the “Advanced” tab, and click “settings” in the “Startup and Recovery” section:

Click the “edit” button you’ll see in the next window, this opens a text file in notepad; add the flag “/3GB” on the last line.

Save, close the file, restart Windows. Upon re-opening the rig file, there should be no memory errors regarding the texture sequence.

So far, this solution has worked for me. THe only snagged I’ve run into was when I tried the process again on a coworker’s machine and his display driver (NVIDIA) needed reinstalling after the reboot.

Check the gallery below for screenshots each steps.

3ds Max is relatively new to me and I’m very much used to the way maya does a lot of things. To get an animated texture to work in Maya, you simply make a material and assign an image sequence or movie to it. Max also does this but there is a snag.

When importing an animated texture in either package, the default is to sync the texture’s animation with the scene’s time slider. For the particular project I’m working on, I need to to have the frames of the  texture controlled by a control in the rig so the animator can play with it (the texture in this case being the pupil of a cartoon eye). Max’s bitmap has no way of reconnecting the active frame of the texture. There was once a plug-in to achieve this feature, but it’s not compatible with 2008. Running out of time, I came up with a ghetto solution that still does the trick.

Instead of importing an .ifl sequence, I instead used a multi-material which is basically a material containing multiple materials. In my case, each sub-material is instead a single frame of the texture animation.

To drive it, apply a Material modifier on the object in question. The Material modifier creates an key-able attribute for changing the material ID of the multi-material. In other words, with the multi-material set up like an image sequence, the attribute created by the Material modifier is like a specifier for the active frame of the animated texture.

To make this solution a bit elegant, link the Material modifier’s attribute to a custom parameter. Thisway , limits can be specified and the animator wont have to scrounge through the modifier stack in order to animate.

I did the some of the rigging for this latest project from the talented Edge of Reality. A trailer was released this past week on Gametrailers TV showing Hulk doing what he does best.

Released: October 2006

Client: Disney

Software: Maya

I contributed to this MMORPG for the PC in late 2006 and a bit into next year. I rigged various NPCs and monsters for Pirates Online, including Davy Jones, Barbossa, and his monkey: Jack. Massive Black also worked on animation, models, and textures for this title.

If FREE gaming is your thing, give the game a try.

Date Complete: October 2006

Client: Iron Lore Entertainment
Modeling: Barringer Fox III Wingard
Texturing: Jessica Hook

Copyright © IronLore Entertainment

This rig I did for Iron Lore around October of 2006 and was one of my first professional projects coming out of school. Since the character was only being used for still images, I kept the rig full FK skeleton and I focused the bulk of my time on skinning this rather high-res model. The armor is attached through a combination of wrap deformers and constraints where appropriate. Upon completion, the assets were given to Iron Lore, who posed and rendered the models for their ads, website, and game cover.

Titan Quest: Immortal Throne

CGTalk Thread (thanks Bif!)