Pectabyte's Blog

Skies of Strife W.I.P

2010-06-09T17:59:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I started modeling a few preliminary models for a graphic novel. In hopes of speeding up production time I thought it would be easier to model and render each frame (cell) of the environment in 3D as apposed to having our traditional artist have to draw all the fine detail each of our environments has. Here are a few Work In Progress renders of a piece I call "Skies of Strife".

Whats in an MMO

2010-05-26T21:39:00.001-07:00

For the last few months my company, Millionants Productions, has had a casual Massively-Multiplayer-Online Game in development. I've been designing and over seeing the Environment as well as all of the static meshes that go into making a game world. Our Alpha already has a fairly extensive avatar creation system as well as a lush and vibrant world to explore. No release date yet. Feature list as well as additional media will be posted to the Millionants site as soon as it becomes available. Here are a few screenshots.

New Blog layout

2010-05-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

So, I got a new Blog Layout. Over the weekend I noticed the blog layout I had been using had an error and was no longer viewable. I guess the hosting location of the title image is no more which lead to some strange display errors. I think this new design suits my blog a little better anyways.

Staging Up Style's new website.

2010-05-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

Just finished A new site for Jessica Quiroga, a home staging artist based out of Hayward California.

"Jessica brings more than 10 years of design and artistic experience. Prior to starting her own firm, Jessica has had the opportunity to work with many talented Artists, Art Directors, Architects and Interior Designers. Some of which include Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) one of the world's leading architecture and interior design firms, based in San Francisco."

Check out her new site: www.stagingupstyle.com

Random Recent Photos

2010-03-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

Just thought I would post a few images I took on the fly recently:

Two weeks ago we had a couple days of incredible sunshine in San Francisco. I happen to look into the backyard and saw yellow flowers had opened up and covered the whole yard

Last weekend I was down near fisherman wharf. Great opportunity to snap a pic.

"Reveal" A Freelancers Dream tool?

2010-03-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up to a Facebook post titles "50 Tools for Freelancers". Half way down the page was a website and service called Reveal.

"You only get one chance to make a first impression. The job market is saturated with thousands looking for work in the same field.
Raveal allows you to perfect your message: define your professional profile with a resume, portfolio, and social voice.
Have an in-depth career profile? Give your visitors a pre-recorded audio introduction to help explain pertinent items."

Reveal is basically a quick alternative to building and maintaining a website - portfolio. I've been playing with the free version to see if this is an avenue I want to go down. So far its pretty interesting. Check out my Reveal Site:

This may render my website pointless...

Nova-Watch

2010-03-02T15:12:00.000-08:00

So... I had the worst cold of my life last week. Still got the cough. A wise man once told me that being creative while sick will return great rewards... Something about brainwaves being different due to the virus and whatever cold medicine you are taking. Needless to say I had to put that theory to good use as I had nothing better to do. :P

Here are the fruits of my labor: Nova-Watch Observatory.
The Nebula background I painted by hand, in Photoshop with a little help from Apophysis, about a month ago on a cold, wet, rainy Sunday. The Station I started "doodling" two weeks ago in 3D Imaging. Last week I combined them and added some things. In the end I rendered it at three different exposures and then ran it through Photomatrix for the HDRI effect. Total build time was roughly 14 hours.

Music Concourse

2010-02-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post these for a week or two. We had some sun shine in San Francisco a couple weeks back so I took the opportunity to do some HDR Imaging at the Music Concourse in Golden Gate park. Over all I am happy with the out come.

Millionants Productions

2010-01-25T14:47:00.000-08:00

For the last couple months I have been working with a group of very talented individuals and our collective dream of starting a production company. Adam Zwakenberg and I have been pulling double duty to get our website ready for today, our official launch.

Millionants Productions is a full service 3D animation video and interactive production company based out of San Fransisco, California. We produce graphics and interactive media for companies and the military. I'm their Director of Interactive overseeing the interactive multimedia pipeline. Check out our site!

Millionants.com

Tau Building Models

2010-01-22T20:30:00.000-08:00

A couple months back I was inspired to do a little Warhammer40K related 3D modeling. I love the design elements in the Tau building structures. I googled up a few concept designs and got down to modeling. Here a couple rough Game models I had intended to use in an Unreal Map.

With wireframe layover:

More HDRI...

2009-12-19T22:23:00.000-08:00

So here is my attempt at more HDR Photo's. I feel like I'm getting a better grasp on what situations will yield a better HRDI as well as a better understanding of which settings in Photomatrix yield what effects. ?As always feedback is welcomed!!!

KF-DOOMed Released

2009-12-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

Just occurred to me that I never posted the release of my Killing Floor map "KF-DOOMed" v1.0. It was released back in early October.

It has significant game play and graphic tweaks. If I remember correctly the Beta release had some spawning issues and only two buy rooms. It now has two buy rooms. I've cleaned up all the bot pathing and got rid of the zedspawners that were malfunctioning. I plan to eventually post a gameplay video of the final release. You can download the map HERE or HERE. Enjoy and I appreciate feedback!

Look what I found...

2009-12-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

Last night I was hanging out with a friend who mentioned he had never played a game on an iPhone and had never seen my game Teeter Blox. I did a quick youtube search to show him and found someone had JUST posted a review. Its nice to know people are still playing it :D

HDRI

2009-12-08T21:29:00.000-08:00

So someone showed me this awesome little program called "PhotoMatrix". Its a stand alone program that stream-lines the process of combining AEB images into High Dynamic Range Images or HDRI. Here is an informative Wiki on what HDR is. Wiki Article.

Here are some images I took and processed today:

I'm still pretty new at this. I hope to expand on my abilities as time goes on. I REALLY like HDRI.

Gliese 581 C

2009-11-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

Last week a friend and I were talking Sci-Fi and he told me about an extrasolar planet Nasa has found and named "Gliese 581 C". Here is a link to the Wiki Article: Gliese

They believe it to be an ice world within Habital range of its Sun. Oddly one side of the planet always faces the Sun. I found this idea inspiring and decided to make my own mock-up of what a planet like this might look like:

Believe it or not there are no 3D elements in this render but rather it is a composite of different Nasa images of planets layered and painted on.

RQS Concrete, Inc

2009-11-04T13:33:00.000-08:00

So recently I redesigned RQS Concrete, Inc's website. Hosted by yellowpages.com. RQS Concrete serves commercial, industrial and residential customers and has been serving the bay area since 1986. Based out of Hayward CA, they bring more than 35 years of design and construction experience to the job.

Check out their site at: rqsconcrete.com

Fremont Photography

2009-10-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was down in my old stomping grounds of Fremont. Some friends of mine are getting married and wanted to scope out a Winery for a possible place to have it. I took my Camera along and got some pictures of the place. Fremont is a really beautiful town.

Later on I went to Lake Elizabeth in central Fremont and took some pictures:

Never fading calling...

2009-10-10T21:28:00.001-07:00

So recently I found this amazing free Fractal program called Apophysis. After some playing with it, and a quick Lens Flare I rendered in 3DS Max, here is an image I put together...

Wide Screen Version:

Mod DB

2009-10-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd post this:

http://www.moddb.com/members/pectabyte/addons

Today I copied over all my maps from Map-Factory to Mod DB. Hope it will drive up the number of downloads I get. From now on any new maps will be posted at both places.

Night Photography

2009-10-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

Living in San Francisco gives me ample opportunity to take pictures of interesting things. Night is no exception. These pictures were taken various places such as The Legion of Honor Museum and Twin Peaks. Decided to post individual pictures this time instead of an album. People have been telling me the Albums don't always work properly.

Killing Floor "Grind House" Map Competition Follow up.

2009-09-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

This is a follow up to my post:

"Killing Floor Grindhouse” Custom Map Making Competition

So Wave 1 of the "Grind House" Killing Floor Map Contest has concluded. I didn't place but got reviewed by the Vice President of Tripwire Interactive. Here is what he had to say about DM-DOOMed Beta:

Awesome fun map. Need to fix being able to fall out windows into unplayable area that you can't get back out of. Lighting is really nice and it looks good. The room where the "exit" is in the original doom map is far too defendable. You can set up there and fight off any onslaught. This is a shame, because the gameplay in the rest of the map is very fun. You need to make sure that zeds can get into this "exit" room from more directions. This could be done with air vents that stalkers and crawlers spawn in for example (like you have done in other rooms).

Cheers,

Alan Wilson
Vice President
Tripwire Interactive LLC

That is pretty cool he took the time to play my map let alone give me direct feedback about it. I guess I'll make the changes and put a final coat of polish on it and release the "final" version. Maybe I can still submit it to Wave 2...

Photography Album 2

2009-09-08T20:43:00.001-07:00

Here is my second Photography Album this year.

Teeter Blox now on Facebook.

2009-08-11T23:21:00.000-07:00

So Teeter Blox is now playable on Facebook. My best score was 616. See if you can do better!

Teeter Blox on Facebook

Photography

2009-08-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks I've really gotten into photography. Its a nice release from my normal art. Its also the next logical step for an Environmental Artist / 3D modeler. Helps me see the world a little differently. Here's my 2009 Photography album.

"Killing Floor Grindhouse” Custom Map Making Competition

2009-07-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

So, Tripwire Interactive released a game called Killing Floor a few months back. They are having a custom map making competition. First place is $5,000.00. I entered my map "KF-DOOMed-Beta" into the competition. I am REALLY excited. The game runs under Unreal Engine 2.5. It was a trip down memory lane opening the editor every night to work on my map.

I've been really lucky to have such supportive friends, namely Nikki, who kept uploading the new revisions I made up to the dedicated server she Admins so people could actually play and test my map. She was a bi Its a major thrill to play your map with other people.

You can download the Beta Here

The following are a few Screenshots from the map:

Video Graphics

2009-07-28T23:21:00.001-07:00

So, many years ago my website, Pectabyte.com had a Binary and Cellular theme. It was a great idea in theory but my web designs skills had not flourished enough to really be able to express the idea. None the less I produced the following Splash Screen to go before video projects I worked on. Check it out.

New Render: "No Happy Ending"

2009-07-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

So this render took me about two days to complete and about two hours to render. I touched it up in photoshop to add some depth. Learned a lot of new things in 3DS Max. Exposure controls can be a real bitch when you have Photometric and Standard lighting in the same scene. I feel like I understand Mental Ray Shadows and Materials much better now. I had no idea it was so robust and had so much flexibility as far as light surface interactions go.

Product: Sci-Fi Texture Pack!

2009-06-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

I'm proud to announce the release of my first Texture pack.

Sci-Fi Textures by Pectabyte.com

Here are a couple previews of the Textures that are included:

Sci-Fi Textures includes 63, totally original, tile-able textures designed to create 17 unique materials for your level or model. This Texture pack is priced and designed for the hobbyist or independent environment designer.

This Zip file contains:
18 Diffuse Maps
16 Normal Maps
24 Specular Maps
4 Ambient Occlusion Maps
1 Opacity Map

Textures are 2048x2048 or 1024X1024 in .tga format and have been tested with Unreal Engine 3 and are game ready.

Click Here to Visit the Purchase Page.

Left 4 Dead

2009-05-26T02:54:00.000-07:00

I've played a LOT of games in my life. When I think back over the course of my game playing carrier a few titles stand out. Final Fantasy 7, Deus Ex, Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, ect... Games these days seem to lack something. Replay value? Originality? Witty dialog? Probably all of them.

While doggy paddling though the Ocean of crappy games these days I've latched onto one I can't get enough of Left 4 Dead. I've had it for a few months and all I can say is WOW. Even after I've played all 4 of the current Campaigns dozens of times I can't get enough. I find myself loging onto Steam to play on those lonely nights at home. Having virtually no story line doesn't bother me in this case. There really doesn't need to be a story line as long as I get to blow away hordes and hordes of Zombies.

Another thing about this game that feels so right are the weapons. The shotties don't feel useless like other games. *cough* Combat-Arms *cough* And who doesn't love Duel Pistols? I prefer the Hunting Rifle as I typically play on advanced or expert and you need power over everything else when it comes to the Boss Zombies. Being able to pick off a Smoker from 50ft away is more important than being able to mow down 15 zombies in front of you. You can always play a drum roll on your alternate fire key when in close quarters ;)

All in all I have to say Left 4 Dead is an amazing game. One of those rare gems these days. Its worth buying on PC or Xbox 360. You'll play it over and over again trying to get all the Achievements. Look me up on Steam. My ID is Pectabyte.com Go figure ;)

Unity. Sweet Sweet Unity.

2009-05-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

So for the last week or so I've been playing with Unity Game Engine. REALLY Impressive stuff. Its amazing how versatile this Engine is. I checked it out because I'm looking to expand past Unreal 3 not that there is anything wrong with it but rather because the pipeline can be very difficult for a single artist to produce a highly polished looking level that plays and feels good. I take pride in creating my own models, textures and shaders and Unreal can be a rather hard beast to tame when doing all of that yourself. Unity on the other hand seems to be design with small Dev teams and individuals in mind. Its very liberal about what file formats it accepts and the whole process of creating shaders in Engine is stream lined. I've had a lot of fun playing with the Cell Shaders. The following are some screenshots of a "Just for fun" game I've been working on.

Teeter Blox Release!

2009-05-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

"Teeter Blox is our new gravity physics based application. It is easy and very fun yet challenging to play. Teeter Blox Lite and Teeter Blox are available in the app store."
-Cliff

Cliff Baeseman and I have released another iPhone/ iPod touch game entitled Teeter Blocks. The dev time for this game was considerably lower than Cruise Strike. There is a free demo (Lite version) available too.

Looks like we already have some fans:

Video of Cruise Strike

2009-04-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

We are nearing the end of our Beta phase for Cruise Strike. The game will be available in the app store very soon. Until then enjoy this pre-release trailer.

Another endeavor

2009-03-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

So the last month or so I've been working with a programmer developing an iPhone game. The game is called Cruise Strike. You tilt the phone to navigate a cruise missile to its target. I had to keep this game quiet as we didn't want our idea copied or stolen.

You can download the game in the app store on any iPnone or iPod Touch. Were working to get the main site for the game up. Check out www.cruisestrike.com in the near future for more information, screen shots and demo video's of the game.

New Venture

2009-03-28T20:48:00.001-07:00

Been a while since I posted. Yesterday I put into action an idea I had brewing for a while but was just to lazy to do it until now. Basically its a video blog site like failblog.org or everything is terrible. My idea is to have videos with the topic "Natural Selection". Its comedic of course and consists of videos of people doing stupid things. I see these videos all the time and thought why not start a blog of them. As of now this is the url:

http://naturalselectionblog.blogspot.com/

My roommate is helping with this. We'll have to see where this leads.

My Combat Arms Clan Site.

2009-01-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

Well as of now my map has been downloaded 43 times. Not bad for 24 hours. Not bad at all.

On another note a few months ago me and my roommate began playing a free MMO shooter game called Combat Arms. Its really a great game. We found enough people to scrape together and make a clan and get a ventrillo server. Check out our clan Fuster Cluck.

SWEET SWEET RELEASE!

2009-01-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

DM-LAST DITCH EFFORT is officially released!

http://www.map-factory.org/31-ut3/1-deathmatch/1198-last-ditch-effort

New Website.

2009-01-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

Well I'm still waiting for map-factory.org to post my map. In the meantime I overhauled my website.

Check it out at www.Pectabyte.com . Its a lot more conducive to freelance opportunities.

Waiting...

2009-01-01T20:06:00.000-08:00

Well last week I released DM-Last Ditch Effort to h ttp://www.map-factory.org/ and am waiting for them to post it. Here are some screenshots to wet the appetite.

The last few days of production were mainly cleanup. I was having a strange error where the UI disappeared and shadow maps would display in the weapon icons. After reducing my large textures by half their resolution and the bit size it seemed to reduce the intensity and frequency of how often this happend though on lower powered systems I expect it to continue to occure. The only thing I can figure is I was overloading the Texture Memory Pool. In used a different method for combining normal maps which made everything look more realistic and vivid. I'll post a side by side comparrison image later once im home from winter vacation.

I'll post my map as soon as its released on http://www.map-factory.org/

Apologies and a new Map.

2008-12-09T22:22:00.000-08:00

Wow. Its been a while since I posted. Well Archer's Agony map fizzled out. I bit off WAY more than I could chew with that project. I should have posted this earlier but I've been working on a new map. I call it Last Ditch Effort. Here are some beauty shots. I hope to release this some time in the next couple weeks. Once its released I'll post a link here and here:

http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=644386

I'm a semi-active member of the Epic Games Forums for level development.

Without further a due here are the shots:

Glass Finally

2008-08-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

Sixteen days since my last posting might have you believing that I haven't been working on this map. Couldn't be more far from the truth. Had a problem with my glass not allowing light to come through for the past week and I was too artist like to take screen shots that way. I finally solved the glass problem by just importing a static mesh, applying my glass material to it and telling to not cast a shadow. Additionally I've done a lot of modeling of interior resources. Catwalks, Grills, Piping, Door ways ECT. Here are the results.

Textures

2008-08-04T20:07:00.001-07:00

So here are two examples of the textures I'm using in the map I posted screen shots of yesterday. I made these by hand in Photoshop. Diffuse, Specular and Normal. I'm new at "from scratch" texturing but I think these are pretty good newbie attempts. Now bare in mind when viewing them they are compressed from 2048px Targa files to 800px web compressed jpegs.

My creation method seems to be sound its just painting technique I noticed I lack. I'm sure a wack-off tablet would make things easier but being a starving artist I don't have $100+ to drop on a decent one. I'm thinking of making a video tutorial for making spaceship textures from scratch once I'm done with this project and refine my methods.

Unreal Engine 3

2008-08-03T19:34:00.001-07:00

So I've been using Unreal Editor for years and I have to say it has come a long way since V1.0. Unreal Engine 3 supports Materials now instead of just textures meaning you can create all sorts of high resolution effects for surfaces. I've been making textures by hand for this map and let me tell you its time consuming. Each material has a Diffuse map, Specular map and Normal map. So far here are the results. Currently I am working on a DeathMatch map for Unreal Tournament 3. Here are some W.I.P screen shots from it. No models in the map yet.