Eli VanderBilt

April 2018 Path of the Lantern

Contributions: All (Except Grass and Rocks) | Programs Used: Maya, ZBrush, Substance Designer / Painter, SpeedTree | Engine: Unreal Engine 4

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ZBrush and Unreal are powerful tools. With this project, I wanted to see just how far my skills could take them. This was my first foray into Substance Designer as well, where all landscape textures, and some stone ones, were built from the ground up. I also wanted to use more deliberate lighting than in the past, and think it all turned out quite excellently.

February 2018 Wakandan Separatist - Heavy Reconnaissance Helmet

Contributions: All | Programs Used: Maya, ZBrush, Substance Designer / Painter | Engine: Marmoset

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This helmet's purpose was to get a better understanding of hard surface modeling techniques in ZBrush on a photorealistic level. The overall design was heavily inspired by the Marvel film Black Panther, with the idea that it would belong to a communications specalist, who is part of a separatist Wakandan group. Furthermore, the front of the mask is similar to a great boar, in keeping with the animal elements of Wakandan masks.

April 2017 Garden of Ancients

Contributions: All | Programs Used: Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, SpeedTree | Engine: Unreal Engine 4

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This goal of this week-long project was to take a number of new techniques I'd learned and apply them to all to a small environment. This included a more refined approach to hard surface sculpting in ZBrush, the use of PBR shaders on a large scale, and taking full advantage of SpeedTree's robust customization options. The focus was initially on just the centerpiece ruin, but I decided to use the modularity of the components I'd built to construct an entire garden.

February 2017 "Precinct A013" Patrol Drone

Contributions: All | Programs Used: Maya, Substance Painter | Engine: Marmoset

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I took on this personal project as a means of better understanding how to integrate physically-based rendering into my workflow. I purposefully chose a design that would involve a number of different materials without going overboard for a first attempt, as well as a vehicle where texture details would have the potential to add real characterization not just to the droid, but also the world it belongs to. In this case, that world was an authoritarian dystopia, based in the desert.

December 2014 - February 2015 "Heaven Six" Airship

Contributions: All | Programs Used: 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, World Machine | Engine: CryEngine

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This project is my first attempt at a full-on environment. I wanted to invoke a spirit of Victorian-era pioneering with a steampunk airship on an expedition through the desert. It taught me the basic workflow of importing assets into a game engine, as well as the benefits of vertex alpha blending materials.

May 2017 Bounty Hunter Wrist Communications Device

Contributions: All | Programs Used: Maya, Substance Painter | Engine: Marmoset

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This prop was designed with the goal of refining my workflow. I honed a number of steps while creating this object, including the use of more scripting shortcuts for modeling, creating custom alphas in Photoshop for Substance Painter, and the use of emissive maps to mimic a computer screen.

May 2016 - August 2016 Realms of Conquest Environments

Contributions: All (Except Foliage and Skyboxes) | Programs Used: Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, SpeedTree | Engine: Unity

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These two environments are part of the ongoing development of the tactical strategy game Realms of Conquest, an independent title by the new studio Warpforged. Each faction has its own battlefield, and these two belong to the Dwarven and Undead races, respectively. The mechanics of the game required the central terrain to stay mostly flat, which posed a unique challenge to keep the foreground interesting without too much verticality.