Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order – E3 Trailer

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News

I’ve been working on various site updates: ssl/https everywhere, new theme that works better on mobile devices, and improving old posts with galleries and simpler categories.

Trailer

There’s a new trailer out! A few shots I’ve worked on, also tons of less visible work like setting up look development testbeds, exposure standards, blueprints, helping other artists. There’s been a ton of great people working on this getting a huge amount done in very little time, I can’t wait for the game to be finished.

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Blender to Unreal FBX + T3D exporter with instancing

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Blender: these objects share linked mesh data
Unreal: import one FBX, paste T3D as instances

I wrote a very simple Blender to Unreal exporter because I couldn’t find one that exported scenes to FBX and T3D at the same time. The purpose is to export only unique data to FBX, instead of all object data, this way duplicates (with linked data in blender) are preserved and objects can be pasted in to Unreal after placement was done in Blender. Now I can export a whole scene at once and still benefit from the efficiency of linked data, without needing to reconstruct object placement manually in Unreal.

It’s no Datasmith, but this is all I need for testing and it works with Blender.

Usage:

  1. In Blender:
    1. Select objects to export, run script. (FBX names are based on mesh data names)
    2. Copy (T3D) text from console output to clipboard (Placed instance/object names will be the same in Unreal and Blender)
  2. In Unreal:
    1. Import FBX files
    2. paste (T3D) clipboard

To Do:

  • Convert to exporter addon
  • Options for file output destination, and content path in Unreal
  • Optionally skip either FBX or T3D output
  • Send T3D to clipboard or text file instead of console
  • Optional scale conversion
  • Instanced Static Mesh Component for Array modifier instances.
  • More features for iterative workflow?

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Respawn

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After 3 awesome years at High Moon Studios, I’ve decided to seek out new challenges and join the team at Respawn. It’s been an honor to work on both Destiny and Call of Duty franchises, and it certainly will be to work on Star Wars too. I’ll be joining at least one former co-worker and I’ll be much closer to old friends, outdoor adventures, and my career goals. The timing is good and I would happily recommend High Moon as a great place to work. I’m excited for their upcoming adventures too.

In other unsurprising news, I’ll be putting a pause on the Weekly Lighting Challenges. Lately I’ve been focused on technical projects and preparing for my upcoming role. The lighting challenges are fun and I hope to get back to them. I worked on 2 or 3, but only kept 1 posted publicly. “Weekly” was a self-imposed time constraint so that I don’t spend too much time on one instead of moving forward and learning new things. It’s meant to be a positive experience, and if I can post anything I’m happy with or that’s useful which I’ve done in my free time I will.

R2D2 – work in progress

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Blender

Recently I decided to pick up Blender. I’d like to be able to work on projects at home, and I’ve always been a fan of Open Source projects. I decided to start with a modelling project.

Blender has some good modelling tools. I really love being able to use edge bevel weights with the bevel modifier, much like QuadChamfer in 3dsMax.

R2D2

Artoo has a lot of good reference and blueprints available as well as a good variety of shapes, so I figured it would be a fun project to start wtih. Modelling is complete, but I’m still finalizing UVs before I get started with shaders.

click images for 2560×3840 (9MB)

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