Portfolio

Controls

• Mouse click / Drag – Paint on surface
• R – Reset

Features

• Any renderable object can act as a brush, by default particles are used.
• Paint effect based on particles, any way a a particle can be moved, the paint will spread.
• Approximated/Implicit paint physics, paint slides down walls, drips off roofs and pools on floors.
• Per surface control over paint color, paint fade time, paint resolution, camera dimensions.

Limitations

• Flat surfaces only, preferably Unity Planes or similar geometry (see example), Unity planes can be scaled to increase size.
• One paint colour per surface.

Lately we’ve been invested in work for a client that has required, among other things, models of 19th century Southern-States plantation workers and owners.

So, here we have some of the models in all their glory. This was a fun one for me because I got to try my hand at texturing. Thanks to Hannes for all his patience with me, and as always thanks to Xavier for the great meshes!

Today we bring you more artwork in our Asset Crafting series. We’ve made some Steampunk-inspired cannons for great clients of ours, Sea Monster.

These cannons were used in an iOS Augmented Reality app we built, in which an interactive cannon fires at a seamonster that emerges from a business card. The truly excellent work comes from Master 3D Modeller Xavier, and Master Texture Artist Hannes, with a few concept sketches from myself.

Check out this video of the app in action!

For more info on Seamonster and the cool things they do, check out their website at seamonster.co.za.

New artwork ahoy! I thought I’d share with you some new concept artwork for a new project in the works, running with a theme of victorian-era vegetables. That’s all I’ll say about that for now, because as it is with things in an early production phase, everything’s still up in the air.

With the concept work on these guys done, I handed it off to Xavier and Hannes, who did the 3D modelling and texturing respectively. You can see more of their fantastic work over at the Asset Crafting page.

That’s all for now, but more is to come!

Instructions

• Click to spawn a shield.

Flex shapes! Shape Keys, Morph targets, Blend Shapes… Take your pick! This lab introduces this feature to Unity in a method that is friendly, flexible and fast.

Features:

• Automatic generation of shape differences from meshes with similar vertex counts.
• Powerful base-line functionality, allows for programmers to choose how flex shapes are animated.
• Split symmetrical shapes into Left and Right asymmetrical shapes, with definable blend width (eg closeMouth_R, closeMouth_L).
• Small memory/storage footprint, only the differences between poses are saved.
• Flex data can be shared between multiple similar meshes.
• Difference shapes are recalculated at tool-time.
• Works cooperatively with Skinned meshes.
• No limit on number of concurrent flex shapes.

The future:

• Decay: points that move less, move slower.
• Flex vertex colours: useful for advanced normal map blending in shaders.

We were asked to put together some weapon effects prototype for a Mech based action game. The effects were limited to particle, line and trail renderers. The Mech asset was provided by the client.

Controls

• Aim with the mouse
• LMB to fire
• Mouse scroll wheel, or 1-4 to change weapons
• R to reset level

This feature will allow slightly more advanced ragdolls than are available in Unity.

Features:

• Fully integrated ragdoll: no switching between ragdoll and non-ragdoll rigs.
• Recovery from ragdolled pose to preset animation.
• Ragdoll freeze strength: ragdoll maintains a shape and doesn’t just collapse.

The future:

• Isolate ragdoll to specific bones/bone chains.
• Recover through preset recovery animation (stand up animation).
• Active ragdoll: Play animation while ragdolling.

NB: This project has not yet been made available to the public.

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For this project RetroEpic was tasked to create a demo of a role playing game using an existing franchise. The game concept and specifications were provided by the client. The dinosaurs and scorpion assets were purchased from a third party provider by the client for inclusion in the game.

The demo is still in development and currently consists of 4 levels in 3 different locations. The project is 3 weeks into development.

NB: This project has not yet been made available to the public.

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RetroEpic was tasked to create a prototype of a social game in order to promote an established brand on Facebook. The game concept and specifications were provided by the client. The character and environment assets were purchased from a third party provider by the client for inclusion in the game.

The prototype took 2 weeks to assemble and consists of multiple player objectives in 2 locations.

NB: This project has not yet been made available to the public.

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For this project RetroEpic was tasked to create a demo of a platform game using an existing franchise. The game concept and specifications were provided by the client. The dinosaurs, fish, mech and scorpion assets were purchased from a third party provider by the client for inclusion in the game.

The final demo consisted of 21 Levels spanning 3 time periods and 4 different locations with a final boss fight at the end. There are 6 pre-rendered promotional scenes and 8 in-game cut scenes. The project took 15 weeks to complete.

This new feature allows the level designer to place ambient light probes into the scene, which create ambient lighting maps at run-time.

• Designers can choose frequency of probe updates: Once, Time Delta (useful in day/night cycles) or Position Delta (moving probes) with variable granularity.
• Ambient Receivers will choose the closest ambient probe to reference.
• Variable ambient map resolution, blur and saturation.
• Per-probe culling mask.
• The Super-global probe acts as a catch all if no nearby probes can be located, also creates global shader variables for it’s cubemap and power.
• Global probes are for more specific areas.
• Local probes allow ambient probes in rooms and other confined areas.
• Tool-time definable ambient maps (one per probe).
• Plays well with lightmapping, dynamic shadows and image-effects ( so far )
• Custom landscape shader adds landscape ambient sampling (from the super-global probe).
• Time based environment map transitioning
• Usable as ambient (diffuse) or reflective (specular) shaders.

The (possible) future:

• Sample the nearest 1, 2, 3 probes : should eliminate the snapping seen when changing probes.
• Hue and value shift environment maps : more artistic control over ambient maps.

More experiments coming soon!

This is a very simple experiment in skid steering or differential steering as seen in most tracked vehicles. This method of steering allows a vehicle turn about its vertical axis by stopping or reversing one track or set of wheels.

Controls
Both W,A,S,D and the Arrow keys are used in combination to move the rover.

• W and Up to move forward, S and Down to move backward.
• W and Down or S and Up to turn on the spot.
• A and Left or D and Right to strafe.

SpaceFlea is a perspective based puzzle platformer. The player does not have direct control over the flea’s movement, instead the layout of the level is dependant on the players point of view. This creates interesting opportunities for mind bending platforming action. Rest assured that each level has a solution.

Controls

• Move the mouse to control the camera.
• LMB show laser pointer
• RMB launch flea
• r to reset
• [, ] to change levels

del takes place in sectors of a hard disk drive. The player is in control of a command prompt and is responsible for deleting blocks of redundant data and eradicating viruses. Two powerful tools are available to the player, a delete tool and a tug. The tug serves as a method of recovering clusters of data blocks by dragging them back to the recycle bin, while the delete tool is used to destroy the links between the data blocks.

Controls

• Use the mouse cursor to aim
• W, A, S, D or arrow keys to move
• LMB delete tool
• RMB deploy tug

Zombie Town started off as a technology experiment. We wanted to create an area where we could learn interesting Unity technologies and try out a few tricks and techniques of our own. There isn’t much to the game as yet, but we have lots planned for it.

Controls

• W, A, S, D moves the character
• LMB fires primary weapon
• 1, 2, 3 / mouse wheel changes primary weapon
• R Reloads current weapon