My three year journey

Here are the contents of this page:

1. Spirited Away: Train scene re-imagining (2020)

2. Meet Mat 2 (2020)

3. X-TAON (2019)

4. Homeland (2018)

5. OpenGL Flight Sim (2017)

6. Bonus!

I hope you enjoy your stay :)

1. Spirited Away: Train Scene Remake (2020)

My latest project is the recreation of the iconic scene from Spirited Away (2001) by Mr. Hayao Miyazaki. I fell in love with the film’s subtle imagery and style so I decided to give it a 3D re-imagining as a fan tribute.

Originally was developed under Unity3D in 2019, but as real-time raytracing became more accessible and easier to develop for, I decided to port the existing project into Unreal Engine 4 to push the visual quality as high as possible.

Target: 4K @ 30FPS on RTX 2080 Ti

Real-time raytracing does add a lot of noise, so to minimise this it is best to have the assets to be as minimal as possible, this means not adding too much wear and tear or any high-frequency details.

Slider: Comparison between original Unity (2019) and remastered Unreal Engine 4 (2020)

Slider: Comparison between real-time raytracing reflection OFF vs ON

(OFF: screen-space + reflection probe. ON: raytracing + reflection probe)

My water shader is a heavily modified Lake water shader from the UE4 content examples, water textures were created from Substance Designer.  

Special thanks to Luc Chamerlat for the cardboard smart material.

Special thanks to Luoshuang over at UnrealEngine forum for the custom GPU lightmapper.

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2. AstroMat: Meet Mat 2 (2020)

Meet Mat 2 was a texturing competition hosted by Allegorithmic at the start of 2020 with a huge emphasis on tessellation and displacement.

At the time I was playing a bit of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit by Dontnot (creators of Life is Strange) so I decided to create this character with a vivid imagination and is able to turn it into reality.

Introducing AstroMat, a young boy playing pretend as an astronaut superhero using materials that can be found in his home such as cardboard, aluminium foil and pieces of cloth.

Rendered in Substance Painter’s Iray.

Please have a go with the sliders!

Ported into Unreal Engine 4!

I am a runner-up in this contest

Special thanks to Luc Chamerlat for the cardboard smart material.

Special thanks to Allegorithmic for making this possible!

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3. X-TAON (2019)

Before Meet Mat 2, there was another texturing competition by Allegorithmic. This one is an art car competition designed by auto designer Mr. Takumi Yamamoto. This was the first art competition I even entered so it was an interesting time for me.

Introducing X-TAON: Lighting. Inspired by rain, lightning and masquerade masks, this cute but ferocious race car will stun those who sees it, leaving its competitors in the dust.

Most of the design is done using procedural grunge maps and noise while the stripes are hand-painted in. The process behind this can be found here: https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php?topic=26965.0

I remastered the original submission for your viewing pleasure :)

Rendered in Substance Painter’s Iray

In addition, I created a couple of variations.

1. Red-lava: to commemorate the winning gown worn by Miss Philippines / Miss Universe 2018.

2. Black-gold: to commemorate Manny Pacquiao’s win over Adrien Broner as a 40-year-old fighter.

3. Original Submission 2019

4. Remastered 2020

Please have a go with the sliders!

I am a runner-up in this contest

Special thanks to Allegorithmic for making this possible!

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4. HOMELAND (2018)

HOMELAND was my very first game project that involves group work. It is part of the Information Technology - Game Design & Development course at Macquarie University where in the final semester we have to create a working game in a group of four people. The purpose of this class is to simulate industry working conditions as an indie developer and it was a valuable learning experience.

HOMELAND is a co-operative first-person shooter where players must clear out enemies in stages. My role in this group is the 3D artist and level designer, this includes performance optimisation. 

Developed in Unity3D, Blender and Substance Painter. Most assets here are from the Unity store, a few ground and rock textures are created in Substance Designer.

Offline renders of the character models

Special thanks to my friends at Macquarie University

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5. OpenGL Flight Sim (2017)

Hey I love programming too!

Three years ago for a Computer Graphics assignment where we have to create a pseudo 3D flight simulator from scratch where a user presses buttons on the keyboard that will do pre-programmed flight manoeuvres (e.g. barrel rolls) and able to switch multiple viewports.

The catch here was that everything must be done in C++ and OpenGL. No game engine or 3D modelling programs are permitted.

It was a very difficult but fun assignment. It makes me appreciate all the tools we have today so that we do not need to write code for most things.

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6. Bonus!

Bonus content not necessarily related to game development but I would love to share!

My current role at Animal Logic Academy is surfacing (Substance Painter), here are a few samples of my finished works so far.

Turntables rendered in Renderman.

Special thanks to my fellow peers at Animal Logic Academy

'rockLarge02' - 3D model by Jessica Gu

'rockMed02' - 3D model by Jiacheng Wang

'rockMed06' - 3D model by Phoebe Li

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Wowzers! You made it all the way here?
Thank you for visiting! 

Have a nice day.