3D GENERALIST PORTFOLIO

DEMO REEL

PROJECT NAVIGATION

STONE LIONS DON'T ROAR ENVIRONMENT LOOK DEVELOPMENT

Tasked to establish a style for the fantastical short film "Stone Lions Don't Roar," I created a Look Development test based off of the concept art of Leah Whalen, our director. My priority was to create materials that would be responsive to the extreme stylistic lighting the of the film while not sacrificing the illustrative style the concept team desired. To accomplish this, I developed assets and shaders alongside a workflow for painting normals, scattering cards, and adjusting foliage coloring based on factors like position.

modeled in Maya, tileable base textures made in Substance Designer, textured in Substance Painter,

assembled in Houdini, rendered in Arnold

Responsible for all look development excluding the bridge, waterfall, and fire wisp.

Before I started experimenting, I analyzed the works of our concept team, the final renders of animated films with similar styles, and real life references to prepare. This stage helps me identify key features of the target style as well as create a game plan for manipulating shaders and materials to reflect the style.

STONE LIONS DON'T ROAR LANTERN LOOK DEVELOPMENT

modeled in Maya, tileable base textures made in Substance Designer, textured in Substance Painter,

assembled in Houdini, rendered in Arnold

Responsible for all except concept.

STONE LIONS DON'T ROAR CHARACTER LOOK DEVELOPMENT

hair cards modeled in Maya, textured in Substance Painter, rendered in Arnold

Responsible for all except concept and base model.

STEAMPUNK INTERIOR

With this interior, my focus was to create a painterly final product with bold lighting. To maintain a consistent look, all models and textures were made completely from scratch.

modeled in Maya, textured in Substance Painter, posters drawn in Procreate, rendered in Arnold, color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Responsible for all except concept (concept by StarCG on Artstation).

Throughout the process, I constantly did rough paintovers of my renders to plan lighting and problem solve issues.

While the original concept had an eerie tone, I shifted mine to have a more wistful final look to contrast the eclectic state of the room.

GOLDEN HOUR PORTRAIT

The goal for this portrait was to utilize natural light in a dramatic fashion. A warm key light with a barndoor filter mimics sunlight filtered through trees, and a combination of rim and fill area lights mimic the cool sky and the bounce light from the surrounding forest. Despite using a HDRI for the background, all light cast onto the character is from spotlights and area lights.

modeled in Maya, textured in Substance Painter, hair made in XGen, rendered in Arnold, color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Responsible for all except base topology.

The original mesh is by the lovely Leon Li-Aun Sooi and Xiong Lin, which I then modified to match the concept I created.
The texture maps were completely hand-painted in Substance Painter. As a traditional painter, getting to translate Sargent's nuanced use of color into 3D textures was a delight :)

For the groom, I started with curves to define each section of hair and then converted those curves into geometry that would serve as the input for the tube-groom. After much experimentation with shaders, I landed on a final look consisting of three descriptions- main, flyaways, and broad strokes- with different texturing approaches.

PATCHWORK DRAGON LOOK DEVELOPMENT

This stuffed animal is a gently loved patchwork dragon that was handmade for a young girl who was always looking up at the stars. My aim was to replicate the subtle wear of fabrics on a toy that has been used but not mistreated.

patches and threads modeled in Maya, textured in Substance Painter, fabric pilling and felt made in XGen, rendered in Arnold

Responsible for all except base model.

Base model provided by Hannah Kuehn.

PLEIN AIR ENVIRONMENT

The aim for this project was to capture a joyful and ethereal atmosphere using realistic assets. To accomplish this, I leaned heavily into light's ability to convey emotion. My primary references were film photographs and Romantic landscape paintings.

concept and paintings made in Procreate, modeled in Maya, textured in Substance Painter, assembled and

rendered in Unreal Engine

Responsible for all except for foliage and rock assets (sourced from Quixel Megascans).

STREET MARKET ENVIRONMENT MODEL

The goal for this environment was to achieve a stylized final product that mirrored the imperfect and hand-made quality of models crafted for feature animation and many AAA games.

References for the concept were mostly gathered from personal photos of Savannah, Georgia, specifically the hidden corners of the historic district. For greater detail, I looked into props from the cultures that inspired the visual culture of Savannah, heightening the depth of history in the scene.

Concept made in Procreate, modeled in Maya, high poly details sculpted in ZBrush, normal maps baked in Substance Painter, rendered in Arnold, color graded in DaVinci Resolve.

Responsible for all aspects.

MODEL INSIGHT // TREE

One of the things I challenged myself with this project was to create a tree without using any plugins or premade templates. To do this, I started with the curve tool, created a base mesh using sweep mesh, added volume using primitives, retopologized using quad draw, and added sculpted detail from ZBrush using a normal map. For the leaves, I blocked out a silhouette using primitives, created a couple different leaf opacity maps, and distributed the leaves using MASH.

This approach allowed me to have a final result that matched my animation style reference.

The total amount of reference photos used for this project was over 400 images, but here is an example of how I used references for a single prop- Athena's Helmet (sourced from The Met and Le Louvre).

As the project progressed, I expanded beyond my initial concept, leaning into the imagery of war and wealth as well as weaving a story through my placement of props. Even with the changes to the details, however, I ensured to maintain the layered composition, hand-crafted shape design, and intentional use of light from the original concept.