Jared Tod - 2023 Rookie Awards Entry

SENIOR CAPSTONE

The final product of nine months of work during my senior year of college.

After two long semesters of work, critique, passion, and perseverance... NEW HEIGHTS is meant not only as a display of my technical ability and what I’ve learned through my years of studying 3D, but also as a story and spectacle that means something different for everyone.
This piece is very personal as it features my childhood home. I 3D scanned and modeled the overwhelming majority of objects and all environments featured in the piece. The video serves as a metaphor for my growth as a person and my ability to now reach new heights in both my personal and professional lives.

"Cinematic Time Lapse" by Lexin_Music.

Foliage by Megascans and Forester.

BREAKDOWN:

Early progression of interior and exterior (each starting with my 3D scans)

The grass matrix below is used to scatter grass on a given surface. I used a world space, procedural noise to drive instance grayscale values. These values are then piped into a Redshift shader, which uses them in a mix node. This gives individual control over the "patchy" look of the color of grass and the texture used for that color.

This flower matrix is used to achieve a very similar result. I used the same world space noise technique as the grass, but rather than drive the grayscale instance colors, I'm driving the scale of each instance. This gives the flowers a more natural, nonuniform, realistic distribution.

These ideas are simple when abstracted, such as in this breakdown. But, when layered on top of each other, with multiple flower species, different random seeds for each noise, and carefully directed volumes of growth, it makes for a seemingly complex, realistic buildup of foliage.

SHOWREEL

A collection of my best mograph work from pre-2023.

"Around" by Coma-Media.

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An unofficial fan commercial for the Galaxy S10+. 

Phone model by @UMURdesign on Sketchfab.

WINDOW TO THE SOUL (Loop)

I used this project to explore a technique that I had theorized previously.

As seen in the screenshots below, the parallax effect is achieved by only rendering the character when camera rays go through specific pieces of geometry. This could've been done in post, of course, but I wanted to challenge myself. I can also imagine other applications of doing this in-engine.

The subject is a recreation of a tattoo that I liked (shown below). Artist unknown.

SIMULATIONS

A reel of short-term simulation projects made for my senior year simulation class.

Depending on each project brief, I switched between (or used a combination of) Houdini and Cinema 4D to achieve each result.

Asset credits in YouTube description.

PRODUCT VISUAL (Loop)

A short, abstract product visualization of a bicycle.

Bike model by @oksana_grym on Sketchfab.

IDENT

An unofficial fan ident for Walltones/Ecstase.

Poster artwork by Shørsh.

MOLDED BY YOU (Loop)

A short, experimental loop.

This piece helped me learn more about sculpting, volumes, alembics, and new procedural shading techniques.

EVOLUTION (Loop)

Teaching myself more about Cinema 4D's cloth engine.

Foliage by Megascans.