SteamVR environment Star Wars Cloud City Catwalk (Rancor Viral April fool joke)

While not my best work, it was definitely my most successful April fools prank, it has received industry coverage in the form of an article on UploadVR, the article to date has over 169,000 views.

I created the Bespin/Cloud City catwalk, for SteamVR just as a quick introduction for substance painter for my students at Capilano University, and to start creating fun VR content.  My environment has become quite popular on the SteamVR workshop (in the top ten of most subscribed items).

On April 1st, 21,000 of my subscribers who put on their VR helmet got a giant 30 foot Rancor reaching towards them, the joke was popular enough that I created a separate download for people who enjoyed the joke, and could keep the Rancor in Cloud City.

Cloud City Rancor VR environment by kent sunde on Sketchfab

Texturing primarly focused on the platform and the end of the platform as those are the areas the user can get to.

The user spawns on the middle metal plate on top of the platform, a challenge was establishing an eye line with Rancor because of how close and large he is to the user, subsequently the rancor is a little more hunched over than I would have liked.

The above is not the original Rancor used in the prank, but an updated and rigged model, I enjoyed the scale and presence of the rancor in VR so much that I updated the model and created the pit from Return of the Jedi.

Original Aprils fool Rancor model

The original rancor model was prototyped in VR, modeled, textured, rendered and integrated into steamVR in two days.

I used Maya to model and stage, substance painter/designer for texturing, and Arnold for baking the textures.

Virtual Reality Experience - Star Wars Rancor Pit

I'm really jazzed about VR, I think it adds a sense of scale and presence to video games that just wasn't achievable before.  Current games are starting to bring a good sense of scale to VR environments, but the characters right now tend to be human sized.  I created this VR experience from Star Wars Return of Jedi, to play with the presence of something massive coming into the users space.  (animated sequences will hopefully be added by the end of July)

A current destination on the SteamVR home application, and can be freely downloaded from steam workshop at http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=949747869 steamVR is required to view the experience.

I used Zbrush, substance designer, substance painter, Maya and Arnold (to bake the lighting).  SteamVR uses the source 2 game engine.

All content was created by me (design of creature and environment taken from Return of the Jedi, by Lucas Film), animation for the rancor will be provided by one of my colleagues at Capilano University hopefully by the end of the summer.

Star Wars Rancor Pit by kent sunde on Sketchfab

The asset on Sketchfab, has all the specular/normal maps and lighting baked in, primarily for performance (for the webVR ui).

Rigged by Joe Rummy, and Animated by Corey Belina, here is a WIP of an animation I will be putting into the VR environment once I can get my Vive up and running again.  I rendered this out in Redshift and composited it in Nuke.

Current Projects

Blade

Sculpted in Zbrush, textured in Photoshop, substance designer, substance painter, xgen for the hair, and rendered with Maya Arnold.

The skin pores are part of an algorithmic material I've been making in designer.

I need to rig and pose the model still.

Pool Shark

What happens when you put a 16 foot Great White Shark in a 16x32 swimming pool?  we'll see.

Modeled in Zbrush 4r6, textured and rendered in Lightwave 11.6, compositing done in After Effects.

Admiral Adama

This is a bust I've done of James Edward Olmos as Admiral Adama for my portfolio and to learn Lightwave (this was my first project using that package).

I had an older used Zbrush for the creation and modeling of the base mesh, and then rendered in Lightwave 11.6 using fiberFX for the hair.  Post processing was done in After Effects.

Rift Concept Creature

I did this project for fun, it was based off concept work for the game rift (rift concept).

I sculpted the assets in Zbrush and used Maya to render, and finished the image in After Effects.

2012 Production Reel

Here is a compilation of work I had done over the last year and half, most of it being as a Motion, 3D and Interactive Graphic Designer at TBA Digital.

Kent Sunde Production Reel 2012 from kent sunde on Vimeo.

Shot List Breakdown

In all shots I was responsible for animation, rendering, lighting and modelling, in addition this is also what I had done

1. Cancer Cell - Personal project done entirely by myself.
2. Macrophage - Compositing, art direction, editing. particle effects.
3. Fat Cells - Compositing, art direction, editing. particle effects
4. GE Life Sciences Wave - Compositing of the 3D elements and text placement.  The animated text and lens effects were done by Barry Chapman.  Wave models provided by GE.
5. Baxter Floseal - Compositing of the 3D elements, again Barry Chapman had done the text and lens flare effects.  Syringe model provided by Baxter.
6. Philips Sonicare - Motion tracking and integrating the 3D elements into the video.
7. Cell Wall explosion - compositing, art direction, editing, particle effects.
8. Baxter Floseal - Compositing of the 3D elements, Syringe provided by Baxter
9. GE Life Sciences Wave - 3D fluid simulation, Compositing of the 3D elements and text placement.  Wave models provided by GE.
10. Fat under the chin - Compositing, editing, art direction.
11. Ge Life Sciences Logo - compositing of the water enviroment, background particle effects.
12. Baxter Floseal - Compositing of the 3D elements.  Syringe provided by Baxter, watch was an existing asset.
13. Celebrity portraits -  Personal project done entirely by myself.

BD Globe

I modeled and textured this globe for BD while at TBA Digital for a product spotlight on the syringes BD produces.

I used Zbrush to sculpt and create the texture map for the terrain.  I also used 3Ds Max to model/position and animate the 3D elements.

For texturing I used a lot of stock photography with the exception of the sand which was created using a modified skin texture.  The ocean texture was taken off a stock image that the globe concept was based on.  Most of the cars and buildings were existing 3d assets purchased from various sources (eg. Turbosquird).

The web page this was created for can be seen here (the video can be skipped).