TGG

game scene

2011-01-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

2010-11-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

some new stuff

2010-06-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

new models, they all have proper UVW, waiting to be textured.

IAR 80 romanian WW2 airplane
Micro Air Vehicle ( with video cameras on it, used for enemy surveillance)
MQ9 UAV
mobile ATC, field deployable

more angles, wires, and also more models/drawings on my photostream.

UH-T1 First Response Rescue Unit - game model

2010-04-18T00:43:00.001-07:00

The main problem that we've seen with big disasters (Hurricane Katrina, Tsunami in Indonesia, Haiti earthquaqe etc) is the first thing that happens. The infrastructure just completely collapses. I would pose the questions: how come we are able to put a special operations force, on the ground, with such great effectiveness to go after military objective(Irak war),and somehow it eludes us to have the same kind of "ready to go" force, that can get in and set up a temporary infrastructure to help out in this type of situation? And not just as a national level, but at an international level. It's stupid not to have that. The UH-T1 is a fictional rescue helicopter, featuring an upgraded UH-60 Black Hawk (entered service in 1979) with a custom RED CROSS paint. Visual wise, it combines the classic american look with an innovative body kit, as it's based on the following Sikorsky prototypes:

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Piasecki X-49 is a four-bladed, twin-engined, experimental compound helicopter under development by Piasecki Aircraft. The helicopter utilizes Piasecki's proprietary vectored thrust ducted propeller (VTDP) design and includes the addition of lifting wings. The concept of the experimental program is to apply the VTDP technology to a production military helicopter to determine any benefit gained through increases in performance or useful load.

The X-49A flight demonstrator is being developed with funding from the US Army's Aviation Applied Technology Division to demonstrate the ability to increase the speed of existing helicopters to 200 kt (360 km/h) or more. The flight demonstrator has been updated with a lifting wing taken from an Aerostar FJ-100 business jet. A ring tail has been added and the helicopter drive train modified to accommodate VTDP.

The compound helicopter technology was first demonstrated in trials of the Piasecki 16H-1 and 16H-1A in the early 1960s, when the helicopters were flown at speeds up to 225 mph (360 km/h).

Video:
TEST FLIGHT

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The Sikorsky X2 Demonstrator is an experimental compound co-axial helicopter under development by Sikorsky Aircraft.

Coaxial rotors are a pair of helicopter rotors mounted one above the other on concentric shafts, with the same axis of rotation, but that turn in opposite directions. This configuration is a feature of helicopters produced by the Russian Kamov helicopter design bureau.

Coaxial rotors solve the problem of angular momentum (the tendency of the helicopter body to begin spinning in the opposite direction to that of the rotors once airborne) by turning each set of rotors in opposite directions. The equal and opposite torques from the rotors upon the body cancel out. Rotational maneuvering, yaw control, is accomplished by increasing the collective pitch of one rotor and decreasing the collective pitch on the other. This causes a controlled dissymmetry of torque.

One other benefit arising from a coaxial design include increased payload for the same engine power - a tail rotor typically wastes some of the power that would otherwise be devoted to lift and thrust, whereas with a coaxial rotor design, all of the available engine power is devoted to lift and thrust. Reduced noise is a second advantage of the configuration - part of the loud 'slapping' noise associated with conventional helicopters arises from interaction between the airflows from the main and tail rotors, which in the case of some designs can be severe. Another benefit is increased safety on the ground; by eliminating the tail rotor, the major source of injuries and fatalities to ground crews and bystanders is eliminated.

Videos:
Sikorsky X2
LTH

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The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a private humanitarian organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland.

The ICRC has a special job, based on the Geneva Conventions as well as other international law, to protect the victims of international and internal armed conflicts. This includes people hurt in war, prisoners, refugees, civilians, and other non-combatants. But the ICRC is a private organisation. It is not controlled by any government, group of governments or international organisation

It is the oldest organisation within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and one of the most widely recognized organizations in the world. It is also the most honoured, The ICRC won three Nobel Peace Prizes in 1917, 1944, and 1963.

The original motto of the International Committee of the Red Cross was Inter Arma Caritas ("Amidst War, Charity").

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flickr limit reached, switching to picasa or something

2010-03-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

Hey teo greengage! About your photostream...

You've run into one of the limits of a free account. Your free account will only display the most recent 200 things you've uploaded.
Anything beyond 200 will remain hidden from view until you either delete newer items, or upgrade to a Pro account.

Nothing has been deleted, and if you upgrade, they'll all come back unharmed.

here is the old photostream, containing airplanes, tanks and misc modeds. from now on i will post my stuff on picasa or deviant.

carts for Vietnam War Simulator

2010-02-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

Third Wire Productions Inc., (also known simply as Thirdwire or Third Wire), is a Corporation based in Austin, Texas, USA; it is an independent software development company founded in 1999 for the purpose of creating multimedia entertainment, such as flight-simulation and strategy games.
Third Wire is the developer of many computer games, including First Eagles: The Great War 1918 and Strike Fighters: Project 1. There are other products outside of the combat sim genre, a notable example of these projects is First Flight: The Wright Experience Flight Simulator, which is a Wright brothers' Flyer simulator for reenactors.

carts: (used on the runway to start/repair airplanes):
(the modeling was done in blender, texturing in gimp)
* you can see more angles/wires on flickr

random work

2010-02-20T09:35:00.000-08:00

I am trying to improve my texturing skills and to become faster by modeling/texturing some random game models. Here are some recent projects, created mainly for practice. You can see the wire mesh/more angles and even more models on flickr.
(the modeling was done in blender, texturing in gimp)

Digging up my past. Three years old models !

2009-10-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

As a result of some recent lucrative freelancing, i just bought myself a new system J (specs) and transitioned from the old pc to the new one. So, going back to the subject: in the process of transferring the data, I’ve found some three years old models. I feel a bit nostalgic but also ashamed about the quality. I am aware of the fact that they suck ( not that i've changed alot), but they bring back nice memories about the old days. Here goes nothing:

ps I would also like to thank the people who had helped/motivated me since then. If you’re reading this, I’m just sorry for not being more of anything .

3D interactive museum, featuring the early history of Nintendo

2009-08-09T19:53:00.001-07:00

There are two things that i really like about the classic video game consoles. The first one is the rudimentary design, showcasing primitive technology, that you can pick it apart and put it back together by yourself. The simplicity of the construction makes me feel in charge, so that i am the one using the machine, and not vice versa. From the perspective of a tech-guy, you can learn lots of things just by studying the case. They don't make them like in the old days. The second thing is the gamplay. These days, it's all about graphics, fancy CGI, big explosions and giant robots. Back in the day, they had to compensate for visuals with engaging playability. They also had to use simplified graphic elements and rough animations to convey emotions, taking advantage of the fact that the human brain needs very few pixels of information to recognize a character. Games like pong, pac-man, donkey kong, space invaders or tetris will always be interesting because of the pure gameplay, representing the golden era of video games. These days, they are still very popular on portable devices and they represent a great source of inspiration.

tip: press "P" to save screenshot

easter egg: press ctrl + shift + W to transform the NES into a movie poster.

use WASD and mouse to move around, thanks tutorialsforblender.com for the mouseloook script

i can't guarantee the contrast, saturation etc, as i am away from home and it's very hard to output it out on a decent monitor. I will fix it in time and also provide better screenshots.

Work sample.

2009-07-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Here are some different company textures on B757 and ATR72. The models are done in Blender and the Ogre settings in Max, as usual. Textures in Photoshop, currently learning Gimp. (still wip, needs more polishing)

Space Invaders Remake

2009-06-28T17:02:00.001-07:00

This rough scene is my own take on the classic arcade game Space Invaders.

Gameplay elements:

-you can move the defending blocks by left clicking and dragging them with the mouse, to form new strategic arrangements, or just to group them when they become isolated.
-you move your ship on two axis using the mouse. as a result, you can dodge between enemy fire and also choose the firing distance(which is important, due to spacing/timing)
-you have limmited ammo
-once you hit the UFO you get an extra life

Graphics:

- i did my best to keep the classic proportions for the ships and the feel of the old game.
-the ship's gears are animated using bones (also, as you are being hit, you will see the rotating gears stopping one by one)
-the menu is added with alpha planes over the background
-the blocks have four lives each - as they loose one life, they become reddish. also, they are not affected by your fire!

Hard surface practice in XSI.

2009-06-22T08:14:00.001-07:00

No polycount limit, just trying to replicate the models the best I can.

Enterprise Fun

2009-06-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

This is a fun one, as I am a big fan of the classic series.

The geometry of the ship respects the blueprints, but I took the freedom to add my own twist to the textures, by making it cartoonish. It's the kind of ship you would want inside an arcade game, popping out of the background in an eye candy fashion.

I keep it very rough, no GLSL. The original UVW texture is baked on the AO(smart UVW)map to save space. I only used the simple default Mist Effect to get the planet depth feel.

Sky-Dome Method:

I use an extra scene with a flipped normals sphere(skymap texture) and a camera in the center.

GameLogic.camor = own.getOrientation() - for the original scene camera

own.setOrientation(GameLogic.camor) - for the background scene camera

As a result:
1. the sky is not affected by Mist.
2. no matter how far they are positioned relative to the camera, the objects will always be in front of the background.

Collision system:

The ship is set to No Collision and parented to a collision box(triangle mesh bounds).

Camera Rig and Ship Movement:

I used a mouselook script from here.
You have the possibility the look at the ship from any angle by moving the mouse. Once you left click, the ship will move in your "sight" direction. There is no need to use the keyboard, it just goes forward by using the camera's local orientation.

Camera Wall Collision Detection:

A ray is sent to the player, if it encounters a surface with the property "wall", it places the camera at the last location.

Direction, Horizon:

The ship will track to the horizon line all the time, to keep a sense of equilibrium, orientation.
Both direction and horizon are done gradually.

There are 8 small "planets".

Don't mind the average 35 FPS from the screenshots, it's on a laptop with integrated video.

I plan to add more visual diversity into the enviorment. I still need to learn texture painting with nodes( a new feature in BGE, similar to BP3d) to create seamless maps, and maybe implement a laser firing system.

My work for CDS

2009-06-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

During the last year, i was in charge of modeling, texturing and doing the OgreMax settings for dozens of airplanes, helicopters, vehicles and also creating a couple of scenes.

Here is a short brief of my tasks.

airplanes,helicopters -

creating 3 LOD for every model- LOD1- 2k tris, LOD2 - 1k tris, LOD3, 500 tris
animating the first LOD- landing gears, props etc
texturing - diffuse, specular, gloss, night emissive - different texture for each company(tarom,lufthansa...)
damage
billboard lights: strobe, taxi, landing etc

vehicles, tanks-

texturing - diffuse, specular, gloss, night emissive
damage
billboard lights: head lights, tail lights etc

OgreMax settings for all of the above, testing in lexi viewer

I will post some of them with the permission of the company.

Peach Ball - prototype

2009-06-12T21:47:00.001-07:00

The first screenshots showing a very rough concept.

You move the grey platform with the mouse (both the platform and the cursor are limited to the grey area, they can't hover above the orange one). You hit the ball and make it bounce with the object of moving it around the screen.

The platform "jumps" where you left click.

Right click to slide screen right. You can't go back!

Middle click to slide screen double speed.

The goal of this game is to bounce the orange ball up and down so you can pick up all the items(except the piranha, if you hit a piranha fish, you loose one life)

I am using rigid body for the ball, so it rotates. No "pong" movement, as soon as it hits the platform, it bounces a little and stops, so you can rest it there and think about you next move if you want to.

The game is a combination of basketball and tennis/ping pong.

If you loose the ball, you can instantiate a new one with spacebar, but your health decreases.

The artwork comes from Big Buck Bunny and Yo Frankie! (blender foundation, open projects)