Effects | Apple Destruction Simulation

 Death of an apple.

Here are a few images from a sequence my classmate and I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. We decided to try to shatter an apple for our final effects project. We used a mixture of multiple rigid body simulations in Bullet as well as Bifrost for the liquid. We used Vray to render. I'll have to admit, my classmate did an awesome job tackling most of the sim work. I helped on the rigids, doing dirty work here and there. I worked on the materials/shaders, and the models. We got some help from our professor on the wood and juice shaders, which definitely helped make our scene pop. For how much work we poured into this little project, I have to say some of the stills look pretty cool. We are going to work on a longer sim and more complex apple skin simulation to help give it a warping effect, so it looks less like pottery chips. I definitely learned a ton during this process, and I wanna try more effects projects soon.

My awesome classmate's blog! 

Effects | Bullet Render Test

A quick test render of a 9mm hollowpoint bullet I'm working on for my effects class. It's been forever since I've rendered any real thing in Vray, but I think the texture is coming along.

GameJam | Amo

Some screenies.

Trailer 
Full gameplay walkthrough.

Controls

Spacebar starts the game. Click on the colored triangle you want to place. A and D rotate it. Spacebar to place the triangle. R to reset Amo if he gets stuck.
45 Degrees. That was the prompt my professor gave me and two classmates for a week-long GameJam project. We limited ourselves to one week of development, Sunday-to-Sunday. In exactly one week, we took our little concept and actually concocted a playable, interactive experience. We spent roughly 10 hours a day working on this project, so in a combined effort, that's about 210 hours between the three of us. We started out brainstorming what 45 degrees meant, whether it was temperature or angles..We decided on a strong triangular aesthetic that reinforced the idea of sharp angles. For a week's worth of work, I think Amo turned out to be a very good learning experience, as well as an interesting, even if rough, finished product. I hope you enjoy playing our game as much as I did making it!

My personal involvement on the project included a lot of the art direction. On day one I sat down and drew up some concept art for the character, the mood, the settings, etc. After that, the rest of the days became a blur of modeling, animating, and applying materials. We spent about 6 days on content creation. The last day was when everything took most of it's shape, as I spent a good couple hours set dressing the level and bringing Amo's little world to life. Animating Amo was fun, but I am fairly proud of Nyx's hand. Also, this was the first project I've ever animated two characters in a single scene, which was new, but also quite challenging and fun. Interestingly enough, even though we had such a short amount of time for development, we still wanted to include a strong narrative, even if it was simple. I worked with my fellow classmates to develop a story in which Amo, our hero, is guided by Nyx, the Goddess of Sleep, on his adventure to become the hero he admires. Nyx helps Amo by placing triangles in his path to help him overcome obstacles. We set up special 'hero' locations that included a shop, a giant tree, and a shrine, where he obtained the armour he needs in order to become that hero. We also didn't want the game to include violence, so if Amo fails in his quest, he gets another try.

I could go on and on about how much I learned from this project, which was a ton. I could also talk about all the problems we experienced and how if we had had more time, this and that could have been fixed/added. But I'm truly happy I spent my school break building something unique, hopefully fun, engaging, and artistically driven with friends who I've gotten much closer to over the last couple of days. I'd love if it you could try the game out, leave some feedback on all of our hard work!  Here's the download link again in case you missed it above!