My Work...

I’ve been hard at work the last 6 years over at Bluepoint Games working on God of War Ragnarök and Demon's Souls. Before that I was at Netherrealm doing a lot of cinematic work on the Mortal Kombat and Injustice franchises. I have done a lot of environmental, damage, destruction, physmat, character and cinematic fx work over the years. I had the honor of doing the vast majority of the Magic and Miracles on Demond’s Souls and Blood and Gore on MK which was colorful to say the least.

I break my work down into the following sub-categories.

Ingame fx: Sprite based particle systems make up most of my work. I have used many different particle editors over the years including Cascade, Niagara, Shuriken and proprietary editors.  Other tasks would include the creation of texture maps, texture pages, materials and meshes.

Fluid Dynamic Simulations: Using high end 3d programs like EmberGen, Maya, Realflow or Houdini to simulate fluid fx like smoke, fire, explosions and liquids like blood or water. The final product is usually converted to a sprite based particle system that can run realtime. In recent years a few new tricks have come along that are helping bridge the gap between pre-rendered and runtime fx (Flow Maps/Vel Flow Maps/Vert Animation/Vector Fields/WPO).

Destruction: The prepping, processing and implementation of breakable objects or cinematic destruction assets (geometry). While it sounds simple there are a lot of nuances to setting up a good believable breakable object...there is an art to it! The addition of particle systems can add another layer of depth and details to breakables and destruction sequences.

Cinema: I really enjoy doing fx work for cinemas. It’s where you can have the most control and creativity. A place to add a little extra love you usually can’t afford. The layering and blending of tracks and dynamically driven parameters really allow you to dial in the look and timing of your fx.