Title art by Yami Trujillo
Final in-game UI for combat scenes
Final in-game UI for equipment menu
Rings of Hell | Technical Artist
Project Details
Rings of Hell is an RPG using active time combat along with the typical turn-based mechanics of the genre. The game follows Red and Blue as they explore sinful streets, fight demonic wrestlers, and try to beat Satan herself in order to escape Wrestle Hell.
It was developed in UE4 over 7 months with a team of 18 students as a capstone project at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA).
Contribution
I worked as the primary tech artist on the team. My roles included UI design, VFX, shaders, and rigging the imp character. I was assigned 30 hours per each 2-week sprint.
I collaborated with the design team to determine the UI layout and overall design. The art director finalized the designs’ appearances, and I created additional assets to complete the menus.
I edited pre-existing VFX assets used primarily in combat scenes and integrated them with the moves being performed. The focus was to make them dramatic and over-the-top without overshadowing the animation.
I created an outline shader to better integrate the 3D assets with the illustrations. The shader works based on a Sobel operation reading the scene depth. The thickness of the line is divided by the scene depth and clamped so the lines have a consistent thickness around the assets. It can also be omitted from objects using a custom stencil.
Wrestle Satan magical aura VFX
Rig created for imp characters
Ready stance VFX
Example animation utilizing rig
The Nova Encounter | Co-lead / Technical Artist
Project Details
The Nova Encounter is a sci-fi VR escape room with light horror elements. The player is tasked with solving puzzles, finding clues, and interacting with the environment in order to escape the ship as an alien antagonizes them.
This project was developed over the course of 5 months with a 10 person team. I was the co-lead of this team along with Jack Gombos.
Contribution
I was the originator of the project’s concept and chose the majority of the members involved. I was in charge of team meetings, presentations, overseeing the art department, and helping to manage tasks in addition to the roles I played as a tech artist.
I programmed ASTR’s main functions, including speaking to the player with subtitles, looking at the player when they are near, and animating correctly based on his dialogue. As he is the only assistance the player has in the game, having him work without any major issues was a priority.
I was also the primary pipeline for integrating art assets into the game and ensuring the code still functioned as intended with the updated models. This also allowed for me to look at the art assets and provide feedback if tweaks needed to be made, ensuring that nothing was overlooked.
Project demonstration shown at the end of the semester
Primary room shot
ASTR: the robot assistant
VR note demonstration
The Corpse Bride VR Experience | Technical Lead / Technical Artist
Project Details
The goal of this project was to recreate the piano duet scene from Corpse Bride in virtual reality. The primary interaction was to play a song on the piano as Emily reacted to the music.
The team consisted of 5 students and was developed in UE4 over the course of 6 months as a part of the common art curriculum.
Contribution
I acted as technical lead and was the only tech artist on the team. As a result, I programmed the majority of the gameplay and interactions in the scene.
Most significant of these was to create a piano that could be played with the virtual reality hands. The piano consists of individual keys that rotate and play a sound when the pointer finger overlaps it. The piano’s blueprint also allows for a note sequence to be programmed in so that the player has to hit the right notes in order before they can progress.
Emily is a large part of the experience and needed to have expressions and reactions to match. The mesh for the character’s body rig is shrunk down in places to allow the facial rig to be socketed on top of her neck and the skirt’s static mesh, allowing us to utilize motion capture while minimizing the overlap with separate assets.
I created a simple facial rig that allowed for basic expressions to match the posture and animations of her body. There are three joints per brow, five joints in the mouth, one joint for each eyeball, and one joint for each eyelid. The joints are controlled by keyed positions with the corresponding facial controls.
Emily disappearing VFX. Character texture effect sourced from Alex Harvey.
Base facial rig for Emily with controls for the eyebrow, eyelids, eyeballs, and mouth
2D/Illustration
