Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Fred - Metahuman Creator Character Using Standard Animations

I have been working quite a lot with the Quixel MetaHuman Creator early access and have some decent results. Very easy and intuitive, not to mention groundbreaking (at least the creation part before the export process). Here are some basic quick captures of a character I have been working on. He started out as a preset but I have blended him with at least 7 other presets of significantly different varieties. I reccomend anyone to check it out, even non game folk. Its easy enough to get you hooked, I promise. I will update when I have a little more fine tuning!




Thursday, July 25, 2013

Project WOTO - KMMIE - Facial Scanning Tech

Here is the new tech we were working on for Depth Analysis at KMMIE.  It shows the old heads we were working with on L.A. Noire, and what we where we were going with them in real time for Project WOTO.

All of the modeling, unwrapping, sculpting, mapping, and blending work was done by myself.  The Depth Analysis work was done by Scott Mcmillan, and the incredible pipeline and tools work by Hamish McKenzie.  We used the original scan data is from Depth Analysis, using a line from L.A. Noire by the actor  Bob Clendenning.




In L.A. Noire all of the makeup and face textures had to be scanned in, which required all of the texture work to be finalized on the scanning end.  With this new tech, we moved all of that responsibility to the character artist, who was then allowed to do any texturing required, from makeup to gunshot wounds. And the biggest advantage was being able to put a realistic talking head, connected to a game mesh (which we couldn't do in L.A. Noire).  No more hiding neck seams behind collar attire.  With this new method we were able to get perfect real time facial animations using realistic in game budgets.

Project WOTO - KMMIE - Warner Bros.


Team Bondi became KMMIE in August 2011, when George Miller showed interest in a game development studio, and partnered up with Brendan McNamara.  The remaining members of Team Bondi formed the KMMIE crew, and we began development on our last project, WOTO.  This game was set in Shanghai during the 1930's, during a revolutionary time with an incredible cross culture environment.

Please contact me if you need work samples from this title.

Thank you.
lucmcote@gmail.com

Happy Feet 2 - Dr.D

I was a Character Finaller for this project on its final months of production, during Team Bondi's transition to KMMIE.  The Character Finaling Team corrected animation errors and strange deformities in the models in each shot, using specific Dr.D pipeline tools and corrective blend shapes.


L.A. Noire Blooper Reel



After production this was edited together from the outtakes that actually happened during the actor scans.  This video is an insight to the potential of our scanning technology.  These heads could have been stuck on any character in any environment we chose.

L.A. Noire - Team Bondi - Rockstar Games

This project was my first jump out of freelance, and the beginning of my four and a half years in Sydney, Australia.  I was able to work with an amazing crew and some incredible new technology, and we developed a title that sold nearly 5 million copies.

Official Trailer:



I was a Character Artist, responsible for Cole Phelps, the main character, in all but two of his outfits.  I was also in charge of the majority of the Case Partners, the Police Captains, all of the homicide case victims, and most of the other dead characters as well.

Tech Video:

Old Showreel (2008)


This is my old personal work demo reel, last updated in 2008.