VEHICLE RIG - Car character rig used in Jimmy Michel Motors commercials. Responsible for modeling, mapping, skin and rig. Created 3ds Max. Front axles and wheel rotation wired to movement. Independent control for wheels and axles for shocks or burning rubber. Constraints for eyes. Bone and Control Rig for body. FFD morphs for wheels and eyes. 70 body morph targets for phonemes, expressions, mirrors, and hood.
QUADRUPED RIG - Created for bull in "PBR (Professional Bull Riders)," Sigma Game, Inc. Responsible for model, map, skin, and rig. Created in 3ds Max with bone and skin system. Rig simplified to use shapes for controls. Look-at constraints for eyes. IK and FK. Morph targets for facial animation. FFD boxes for more eye shape control.
BIPED RIG - Created for mice in "For Peanuts," Sigma Game, Inc. Responsible for model, map, skin, and rig. Created in 3ds Max with bone and skin system. Rig simplified to use shapes for controls. Attribute Holder to control finders and foot roll for animation ease. Stretchy bone controls for spine. Local and world control. Look-at constraints for eyes. IK and FK. X Form control for facial animation.
A.I. assisted Unity Tool Creation - Examples: Prefab Position Controller - Instantiates a prefab at a given position and moves that prefab to another position. Used in Cleopatra Cash Link to move a highlighted symbol border around the reels. Selection Tracker - allows user to keep track of hierarchy selections to easily recall and select those items that may be buried deep in the hierarchy. Multi-Screenshot - Created with input from TA Team to capture screenshots from multiple monitors or cameras. Jackpot Chance Spin - Allows adding prefabs that will appear on Z facing wheel that can spin and stop on a given award. IGT.
SPINE ANIMATION - Layer Spine images in Photoshop. Spine Rigs using mesh deformation, constraints, path constraints, and control bones to be manipulated at runtime. Setup Spine objects, animations (JSON or Image Sequence) in Unity. IGT.
SPINE ANIMATION REFERENCE VIDEOS - Created Spine Animation video tutorials and library for IGT employees to access and learn about Spine.
UNITY ANIMATIONS - "Little Fish Big Fish: UC Sign" Saber Interactive. IGT. Pulled art from base game to create interactive sign display. Created Unity animations and animator controllers for leaderboards, jackpots, and attracts. Uses animations for transforms, shaders, particles, backgrounds, and Spine.
DESIGNER TO ENGINEER PIPELINE: ANIMATIONS - Unity Setup. Amazing Money Machine Sapphire. Lighthouse studio. IGT. Wild Streak Gaming. Responsible for technical art. For this portion of Amazing Money Machine, the designer gave documentation to be used as a script of how the money machine should behave.. My role in this pipeline is to decipher the instructions, build the hierarchy choreographing movies, sprites, sprite animations, transform animations and particles in Animator states as well as create those various Unity animations and particle systems. For this particular example, it highlights the money machine which steams and shoots out various objects to land on specific segments on the reels.
TILED STYLIZED TEXTURES - Low poly model to high poly sculpt pipeline. Lighthouse studio. Responsible for all. Low poly model and setup in 3ds max. Setup (Subtools, DynaMesh, Polygroups, Sub D), Sculpt, and Render Passes in ZBrush. Gray scale and color composites in Photoshop. Preview in Marmoset. Import and setup in Unity.
PBR AND TRADITIONAL STYLIZED TEXTURES - Lighthouse studio. Responsible for all. Textures made from Zbrush and Photoshop; preview in Marmoset. **Normal, AO, Roughness/Glossiness, Height, Metalness, Albedo, Diffuse
LOW POLY TO UNITY PIPELINE - Lighthouse studio. Responsible for all. Blockout - 3DS Max; Low poly detail; mesh optimization; UV map; low poly smooth and cage setup for export; high poly sculpt - ZBrush; high to low texture bake - XNormal; 3d model paint - 3D Coat; textures - Photoshop; low poly modular and merge setup for final export; preview - Marmoset; set up in Unity.
SKILL-BASED REAL TIME LOW POLY - "Aladdin Prince of Adventure" Pixel Hunters. IGT. Blockout scenes to artists. Cleanup, optimization and export of final UV's, models, materials, textures, and animations. Final game ready scene setup.
UNITY SHADER GRAPHS - Create various URP shaders in Unity Shader Graph for sprite and mesh. Create and maintain library of Shader Graphs with documentation for each shader. Optimize shaders per project. IGT.
AREA OF EFFECT PARTICLE PIPELINE (with Unity universal renderer and shader graph) - Sketch anticpation, climax, and dissipation. Create particle textures. Create shader in shader graph. Create meshes and particle systems.
PROJECTILE PARTICLE PIPELINE (with procedural anims in shader graph and texture anims for universal renderer) - Sketch muzzle, projectile, and hit. Create textures anims in Photoshop. Optimize textures in texture sheet. Create shader with procedural anims in shader graph. Create meshes and particle systems.
REAL TIME FX - Examples of runtime FX for Particle Systems, Shaders, 3D Mesh, Spine, Animated Masks, Particle Image Sequences and Meshes, Colliders, Transforms, Render to Textures, Water, Fire, and Light FX. IGT.
UNITY PARTICLE/ SHADER FX REAL TIME TRANSITIONS - Epsilon Gaming. Particle FX for the waterfalls, shimmers in the water, fog, and transition. Tileable sprite animation for the background clouds. Animated texture sheet particles for all birds. Water shader fx. The transition changes the scenery when the bet changes. Had to create intense and optimized hierarchy and animations to transition the top glass, but also main screen and button screen.
RESKIN & ART MOD - "Dancing Phoenix Soaring Dragon" IGT. For this game I was tasked to take an incomplete art package and skin it to another game that had done well. In this example, for the top screen, I had to use parts from the base screen background. Desaturated to start clean, paint over the parts that were undesirable, add border, and then colorize for 2 different variations. Water and particle fx were then added in Unity.
CLONES - "Fortune Charm" IGT. Product Management wanted to create a clone of the popular IGT game "Fortune Coin." With the producer, I quick-concepted the ideas for art. I painstakenly went through entire game to find every asset that needed to be cloned and documented. I needed to be accurate as engineering time is extremely limited on straight clone games. Once art was ready, I replaced it in the game and we had to fill in the blanks. For some of those blanks, as pictured: we had to recreate, reanimate, and replace meshes, rework particles, recreate animations to use movies instead of part-animation (as requested), update shaders to account for the difference in the art. We were able to bang it out very quickly once art was ready and to much success.
PORTS - "Valhalla," "Bombay," and "Kilimanjaro" IGT. The idea to is to take a successful game on an old platform, either IGT 960 or Ascent, and upgrade it to work on current platform. This requires changes for new standards, resolutions, parts, and new regulations. The trick is to use as much of the original art as possible and fill in the blanks seamlessly. Repainting and manipulating portions due to wider screens. Sometimes upsizing. Adding text and FX in Unity. Creation of new assets to include Attracts or Digital Button content that didn't exist on the older versions.
LOCALIZATION - "Queenie" IGT. English text and material setup in Unity. Localization component setup, text adjustments, and localization tool export for syncing to database and translation document creation. Translations requests, test tools for verifying, and finally, Spanish content playing in the game..
GAME RULES - Create in Unity with real-time text or in Photoshop for pre-rendered pages. Animated, 3D Mesh, Sprite, or Canvas.
LED LIGHTING - "Cleopatra Multistrike" IGT. Peripheral lighting animation using IGT tools. Create light sequences to match game play. Remap lights for other cabinets if necessary. Exports. Create lighting documentation for product assurance.
gLike
