senor-freebie

Clearly, its been a long time since I've really been active on DeviantART but I have been progressing steadily, I feel as a 3D artist, and more specifically these days as a Technical Artist so this sites relevance is not lost on me. I thought that since I may need some constructive criticism from the likes of the people I know on here it might be time to explain what I've been up to and what I'm planning.

Basically, around August/September last year the Game Developer (Wicked Witch Software) that I was employed by on a long term, full time basis had to make serious cut backs and as I'd gotten my work on the project we had done I was one of those cut backs. It wasn't all bad, since I'd been working far too hard to stay sane and I got a handy payout.

Up until that point I'd been working more and more on the tools side of art creation, trying to smooth the flow from visual 3D art to useable real time art. Only a minimal amount of this work is actually demonstratable so far on a site like Deviant ART thanks to a combination of Non-Disclosure Agreements and my annoying habit of learning stuff half way through developing something (which leads me to try other, newer and more exciting things).

Of course at that point I went job hunting and in order to assist in this I set up a website for the sake of a portfolio, in a format I could control. Previously I'd used DeviantART for that but now that I'm an experienced professional I thought it only logical to have my own site. I only spent a week on that though, before I ended up knee deep in other projects. The next major project for me was working for 01 Animation on a new, real time retail concept for Adidas and Intel but this was only a short term contract and so now, while not exactly on the hunt for work, I have, I'll say a lot of time for personal projects. Naturally one of those is updating and improving my website.

The below is a fairly thorough list of the above:

Wicked Witch Software:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_W… - Wikipedia
www.wicked-witch.com.au/ - Official website

01 Animation:
www.zerooneanimation.com/site.… - Official website
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKbsfO… - Adidas retail project

Website:
jamesr.senorfreebie.com/ - Portfolio
blog.senorfreebie.com/ - Blog
senor-freebie.deviantart.com/a… - Header Mock up

Other Online spaces:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sen… - Wikipedia User
www.facebook.com/profile.php?i… - Facebook profile
www.youtube.com/user/senorfree… - Youtube channel

Once upon a time there was nothing. Or perhaps it wasn't once upon a time, since time didn't even exist as a concept. A mass of energy somehow spawned out of this singular nothing and exploded broadly into all space and time that currently exists. And thus the universe was born.

Soon patterns and waves formed this space and time into distinguishable matter. The matter was attracted to its neighbours and clumped together creating more and more waves of different kinds of energy. And thus stars were born.

Eventually these waves grew so great they caused these clumps to create new forms of energy. These new forms of energy caused great change amongst the different clumps. Some exploded, some shrank, consumed by their own energy. And thus planets were born.

The smaller parts that were exploded out began to go through their own processes, gathering into even smaller clumps. Eventually there were enough of these that through their own momentum and energy they would circle around the earlier, more ancient stars. Thus orbital bodies were born.

These new orbiting planets had their own rules. They were not overflowing with enough energy to ignite and were made of more complex materials. Under the constant flow of energy from their parent star they changed form and spawned even more complex matter. And thus organic molecules were born.

Under constant bombardment these tiny chains of matter eventually fell together into different patterns. These different patterns were like the experiments of the stars. Eventually they began to consume their organic cousins to grow and multiply. And thus life was born.

Over time, the way they consumed and the way they replicated changed. Eventually they banded together to form superior life forms. And thus multi-cellular organisms were born.

These new life forms grew and consumed to attain dominance and eventually were so large they needed specialised life forms within them to cooperate. Those that developed the best ones would be most successful. And thus nervous systems were born.

Now coordinated in their approach life began to develop new and more advanced ways to consume other life and to move from food source to food source. And thus fins were born.

Eventually the food ran out under the sea and some more adventurous life forms ventured out of the sea to find more. Over time the ones with the strongest fins were able to get to the best food. And thus legs were born.

Now, with new, legged animals competing for the food of the land newly specialised lifeforms appeared. The unlikely hero of them, survived amongst predatory monsters by hiding in undergrowth and cracks. And thus mammals were born.

As the monsters evolved into beautiful, winged creatures, the unlikely heroes emerged from hiding and grew. As they diversified, some of them developed nimble limbs to hide, forage and hunt in the dense forests. And thus primates were born.

Eventually there was not enough forest for all of them and some ventured out into the long grass that covered most of the planet. From constant practice over many an eon they grew better at standing on 2 legs to look over the grass. And thus arms were born.
As their arms became less like feet they learnt new ways to use them, producing tools to help them hunt or gather. They were not the first to do this but they were the first to be able to do this while walking or standing on 2 feet. And thus the impetus to learn was born.

As their tools and methods grew more complex they had to figure out more complex ways to store and share the vast amounts of information they learnt about the world. And thus complex language was born.

With their complex language their tools were able to get more and more complex. Their methods and understanding of the world expanded to the point where they realised they could use other living organisms as tools. And thus domestication was born.

With domestication their productivity was increased. They now existed in every corner of the world and some had become sedentary, focused entirely on the growing of their newly domesticated plants and animals. However they needed a way to store undisputeable information on the output of all this work. And thus Writing was born.

With writing they were now able to communicate better across broader areas. They gathered into major groups and determined to make their mark on this new concept of written history. Invention, productivity and art were all now important but most important of all was explaining the world and its greatness. And thus religion was born.

With science ideas formed and were dashed. The world went on but apocalypses predicted by men who spoke to the creators of the world came and went. Then over time as these explanations failed men sought explanations that could not be unravelled. They explained in word and writing that there is nothing we can truly know and anyone who tells you otherwise is either very smart or very dumb. And thus philosophy was born.

Philosophy however didn't explain the magic of the world and as inventions grew more complex people wanted better explanations as to why things worked in certain ways. From the power of compressed hot gasses to the way certain materials burnt was a constant fascination and prophets and alchemists of all kinds gave us explanation after explanation, and as the philosophers had predicted each proved to be very stupid. Eventually men began to apply philosophical concepts to the physical world and asked that before we decide something is known that we prove that it is so every time. And thus science was born.

Science brought forward a greater understanding of the world and fueled the imagination of the world and its inventors. One decided that he would try to harness the awesome power of lightning. Another that he would harness the power of steam. And thus industrialised electricity generation was born.

The centuries of science and invention however had other unintended consequences. Humanity now wasn't merely spattered loosely across the world. They dominated it. Every corner showed their influence and the ways they interacted had changed. The masses now learnt from the scientists that all men were born equal and they demanded their rights. From them, came the inventors, the scientists and the ideas that brought down the religiously righteous rulers. And thus the concept of democracy was born.

Inventors for centuries had attempted to create devices that would answer riddles. With electricity and the greatest minds of their generations eventually they learnt to create devices that would compute answers, communicate them, store them and still be able to answer further questions. And thus computers were born.

With the masses now free from the burdens of much of the previous labour new inventions flourished and new ways to spend time became fundamental to life. One solution was to design a computer that returned a series of interesting answers to interesting questions, either visually or later through language. And thus computer games were born.

Like most successful ideas before it, these games grew more complex and ingenious. Eventually they required teams of people to work on them. Each person had their own strengths and weaknesses. Some intended to make the games more beautiful and immersive. And thus game artists were born.

As the game artists produced larger and more amazing worlds in their games their tools neccessarily became more complex. But with complexity came ineffeciency. Some more inventive artists grew frustrated and delved deeper into the methods. And thus technical artists were born.

I recently got hit up with this comment:
"So, what practical purpose does real time (*i assume that this is real time) displacement serve? Normal mapping is less hardware/software specific as far as I can tell, no need for directX 11+ support, and it looks nearly as good, if not better. And if normal mapping is too 'old', try some fancy parallax mapping.

That said, dx11 tessellation is a cool tech toy."
By user: daemoria.deviantart.com/
On Submission: senor-freebie.deviantart.com/a…

The comment is a good one as it challenges plenty of assumptions that game developers and gamers have about new technology, eg. that it should be implemented immediately without debate because it makes things more shiny.

I started writing a long winded response to his questions from my perspective (and I am no god of argument) but for the sake of debate I thought I would make it into a journal instead so that anyone interested could join in the discussion.

First though I will explain the difference between normal and displacement mapping for people unfamiliar. Both are textures that you typically generate by 'comparing' a low detail and a high detail mesh. Where there are differences between the meshes the generation process stores information on the texture.

Normal maps store the angle of the face but not the depth.

Displacement maps store the depth of the face but not the angle.

The reason this has occured as a debate in the first place is because originally, your low resolution geometry would exist untouched and therefore a displacement map would be useless since modifying the low detail model to appear like the high res one had to be done on its terms.

Now, there is graphics hardware able to do what is called Tesselation in real time. And what that means is that it divides the detail more on your low detail model as you get closer so that there is physical detail to 'displace'

Now here is what would've been my comment:

It is real time. This was just an experiment, so after looking at this, arguably normal mapping could look better, but there are a couple of things I should point out first. This was my first real time displacement map I had made and I made it with a generation program, rather quickly, instead of tweaking the model to get the best result. The next model I did this to looks far better: fav.me/d2xai26 and I believe with this technique you can make some models indistinguishable from their real life counter-parts. Of course, this isn't the completed job either as I haven't added scratches or bumps into the metal.

But the advantages of displacement are broad:

The first is it affects the silhouette of the model so unlike with normal maps you lose that hard edge that has plagued game art for so long.

The second is that lighting isn't faked. Normal maps only alter the way light falls on a surface artificially. Displacement affects the surface meaning a deep hole will naturally be darker.

The third is, and this is an argument some had against displacement mapping, that it is ineffecient at creating polies. In some of my examples the tesselated low poly model is of higher detail then the high poly bake.
  But this is actually an advantage, strangely enough. The problem with polies on modern graphics hardware is NOT the amount of them but the amount of room they take up in RAM. Displacement maps store polies more effeciently.
  Also, they provide an automatic detail LOD'ing system by reducing the resolution of the texture and the amount of tesselation. This saves valuable rendering time AND work load.

The fourth is that they actually work in conjunction with Normal maps. They displace on the angle of the normal map so they are really complimentary, not in competition.

The fifth is that being greyscale image, unlike normal maps they are easy to modify, both in the art pipeline and by code ingame. Of course this is dependent on the complexity of your model, but you could for example use it for geo-mod or water ripples.

The sixth is, assuming you are syncing up your tesselation and mip-mapping with your LOD'ing you could use it to turn 'ground detail' into other kinds at long range such as tree tops on a hill, that at higher LOD's you switch out for actual modelled trees.

I'm not trying to be combative or anything here. I'm just trying to rationalise something I'm excited about and that I hope I get to put into games sooner rather then later, to realise the graphical potential. I'm open to counter-arguments etc.

Many people live under the assumption that when they hear about economic growth or progress that they will recieve some benefit, with a wage increase or cheaper commodities. They have this belief that the system is fair and rewards their hard work and that their vote means they have power against people who oppress them.
  Over time, they see examples that they can mentally cite that prove this. For example, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world thanks to his genius and hard work. Or indigenous people and ethnic minorities eventually gained rights in Western Capitalist states.
  But what they don't realise is quite how far the system has gotten away from them. One challenge to the logic that supports the system is the belief in the free media. Until the internet, there was no real free media and the mass appeal of the old systems still remains even it is waning.
  This, as well as the assumption that hard work is rewarded with time can both be disproved with simple maths. The media question is easier to prove, but I'll put forward a little theory first. The so called free media is actually a behemoth of an industry, where in order to gain a voice with a hope of influencing anything you need billions of dollars.
  Those who control these empires generally fight new entrants tooth and nail and go so far as to deliberately manipulate government policy to protect their interests. Recent laws and policies in Australia, the USA and the EU seek to corporatise copyright, ensuring you cannot protect your work unless you are one of these behemoths. They seek to censor the internet and outlaw anonymous political commentary. They want to nip this little problem with freedom in the bud before it unravels everything. And here is why it might just unravel.

First of all, the assumption that the free media is here to protect us or to serve the interests of the masses is disproveable by one figure alone. Wikileaks, the online, near anarchical organisation dedicated to protecting the anonymity of moral people within large organisations, has recieved more leaks then the entire free media has EVER since launching in 2006.

Time for some more theory; if the media is not here to protect us, by uncovering corruption etc. then it is here as a tool for propaganda. Therefore we must look at the most fundamental question, does the system it creates propaganda for serve our interests? One way to look at this is to look at "real wages", a term Chomsky and the like look at fairly regularly. IF the capitalist propaganda is here to serve our interests and our economies are growing, the purchasing power of our wages should be too. But this is not the case. I'll outline a simple bit of maths you can do to some publicly available information to figure out if you're being paid what you should be in this expanding, awesome monetary system:

Australia is one of the few OECD countries that didn't go into recession in the last decade. Its constant growth has seen it push through the rankings in employment and GDP per capita.

Here are some crucial statistics:
GDP per capita in US dollars: $45,586
Working age population*: 67.9%
Proportion employed**: 71.0%

* 15-64
** Proportion of working age people employed

Follow me here:

0.679 x 0.71

Means that only 48.2% of the population has a job and furthermore that while the average Australian earns $45,586 a year, that includes the infirm, the old, the young, the students etc. etc. etc.
Instead of a percentage we need a ratio for the next calculation. So:

100 / 48.2

Shows us that 1 in ~2.07 people work.

That means that they earn on average:

$45,586 x ~2.07

or $94,576.76 in US dollars

And since a US dollar is worth 1.19104 Australian dollars thats:

$94,576.76 x 1.19104

Or $112,644.70

In other words, if you're working hard, like most people, earning $40-60k a year, with your uni degree proudly hanging from your wall and your blood sweat and tears poured out for your working life you're just another example of the declining real wages in this country. And this story isn't unique. In fact, Australia is a best case scenario in modern Laissez-faire capitalist states. The gap between rich and working poor here is LESS pronounced then in the USA or much of Europe.

I'll try and put this properly in perspective. If you consider yourself successful and a good earner, talented and important to your employers and are earning LESS then $112,644.70 a year (before tax of course) then you are in fact below average. You are considered by capitalism to be a bad worker or exploitable and discardable.

And given there is probably no one on my watch list here who earns anything even close to that per annum despite the internet being a luxury for the richest 5-10% of the worlds population, can you imagine how non-sensical it is that we do not use our DEMOCRATIC power, let alone our physical might and numerical advantage to take what we work so hard for? Why on earth would we be sitting around, comfortable to earn less then half the average income, while watching house prices balloon and our rights slowly impinged?

The answer? The propaganda the "free media" sells us. Which is tantamount to censorship, since they give us the range of opinions that are considered "acceptable" to discuss while they simultaneously lobby governments and the population to allow them to censor and control our new medium for freedom. If we want our children to reap the benefits of their own hard work, we need to fight the battle for internet freedom and we need to do it now. And we need to spread messages like this.

"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever."
-Chomsky

Not a full journal by my standards at all, but I thought that I would at least throw some form of update up here. After well over a year of constant betterment and focus on intellectual and labour pursuits I have finally been stopped in my tracks. Its not a bad thing, just someone raised some questions and implied more to me. So hence no giant rant on the affairs of the world or game development or the like.

As before, I promise to eventually put some renders up of what I've worked on as a developer, rather then just leaving these old modding renders up, but in a sense the fact that you won't all be that impressed has stunted my motivation. That said, I did just figure out something easy, yet very geeky to submit. Will be up soon!