Doug Hogan » Video Games

halo odst goodness

Doug — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:47:00 +0000

So what did everyone do on their long weekend? Mine was spent cleaning up my office filing cabinet (long overdue), seeing “Extract” with Jess to cleanse the horribleness that was “Inglourius Bastards”, and finishing “Batman: Arkham Asylum”. Which was pretty much the best superhero video game I’ve ever played.

But now that’s it’s all over, and it’s back to work, we better start it off right. So check out this really well done “Halo: ODST” trailer that will leave you salivating for the long anticipated, and long delayed, Halo movie.

Isn’t that an awesome short? It seriously makes me wonder what is holding Microsoft up. I mean when you have Steven Spielberg throwing in his hat for Director and you still take a pass, what are you waiting for? It’s all there ready to go, and ready to make a butt load of money! It’s just pretty unlike Microsoft to pass up a big check like the Halo franchise would bring in.

Do you all think it will ever happen? Will we ever see Master Chief on the big screen? I say nay, but let me know your opinions in the comments below!

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hi spore, I’m maya

Doug — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:14:33 +0000

‘Spore’ Art Directory Ocean Quigley (awesome name btw) made some waves on his blog when we announced that with the newly released patch 5 for the game, players and 3d artists can actually export out the creature they create in game directly into Maya. This isn’t just a simple .obj either, because the exporter will give you Normal, Diffuse and Specular maps and a fully rigged and weighted character. All ready for animation and rendering in your favorite package of choice.

No other game has ever allowed you to do this, so I’m really excited to see what people do with this new ability. And yet another thing that I think the VFX world can learn from it’s Gaming cousin. This could be a glimpse at the direction 3D character modeling is heading in the future. Where a creature artist will have a software package that procedurally evolves his character based on what he needs to do to survive and the environment he lives in. A very big idea, and really makes me want to dust off my Galactic Edition copy of the game and give this exporter a go this weekend!

A full tutorial on how to do this is over at Ocean Quigley’s website so just follow the link below!

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LINK: How to export Spore creatures to Maya

First, get a creature. I’m using Jomeaga ‘s creature “Recruit“, because it’s cool looking and asymmetrical (that’s the other major new feature in Patch 5). Go to paint mode, so you can see what it’ll look like textured, then open up a cheat window by pressing “control-shift-c“.

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shake yo spruce

Doug — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:06:15 +0000

This one goes out to all you musicians out there! Now lets start off with a question…

Q: “What does a musician using a tree as an instrument have to do with CGI?”

Read on to find out, and get ready to have Diego Stocco blow your mind!

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Click here to view the embedded video.

LINK: Absolutely Amazing Music Made from a Tree!

In the garden of my house there’s a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs. It looks odd and nice at the same time. One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.

To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.

I recorded the tracks live on a Pro Tools LE system. I didn’t use any synthesizer or sampler to create or modify the sounds. All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on.

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The strange and unorthodox seem to be this musicians weapon of choice, as he has also made music using a bunch of other weird stuff like Typewriters, Sand, and Saws, to name a few.

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Typosonic Machine:

LINK: Typosonic Machine

Click the link to hear the Typosonic Machine in action.

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Music from Sand:

Click here to view the embedded video.

LINK: Music from Sand

I had some sandbags in the backyard that I used in November during a rainy day. I was moving them to a different spot when I heard the noise of the sand. I thought that maybe I could try a new sound design technique so I bought some piezo film transducers and started to experiment with them.

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Now this is of course not a music blog. So we started off with the question of “What does a musician using a tree as an instrument have to do with CGI?”

Well if you’re like me and always skipped to the end of those old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, then probably already saw the answer in the Topics section of this post! But if not…Diego Stocco is also the composer for the new Nintendo Wii game, “The Conduit”. And he brought along all of his weird and wonderful instruments for the scoring of the soundtrack. Check out this behind the scenes video below!

Click here to view the embedded video.

LINK: The Making of “The Conduit Shaping” Soundtrack

For this project I created a large amount of ambiences, tonal distortions, massive drums and percussions by using various unusual acoustic and electronic instruments. In some cases, also for the orchestral sounds I experimented with signal processing to alter their original color and character.

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Kinda makes you want to pick up the game doesn’t it? Or at least the soundtrack.

LINK: Amazon.com – The Conduit – Nintendo Wii

In The Conduit, you’ll find yourself at the center of a thrilling battle involving aliens, secret agents and centuries-old government conspiracies, all set against the backdrop of modern-day Washington, D.C. Built from the ground up for the Wii, the game pits you against ruthless, wily enemies who react to your moves and use the environment to their own advantage. Tailor the game to suit your personal style, and see the game’s intense visuals burst to life complete with dynamic environment mapping, interactive water with real-time reflection and four-stage texture composition. Gather up to 11 additional players online for brutal multiplayer action, and incorporate the Wii Speak peripheral to enhance the immediacy of the battle.

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