#lightbox interactive

[hogjonny]

This is the "Maw of Despair" co-op exclusive map that came with the Starhawk Limited Edition release.  I more or less did all of the environment content and level layout (content not design) for this level.  I had to write a modified version of our 3D terrain shader to pull off the right look for this level, which is somewhere in between our Dust (desert) and Echo (canyon) maps as far as look and feel.

[hogjonny]

This is the reveal trailer for our Starhawk DLC map pack on the world of Cypress.  I was the lead developer of the environment team for Starhawk and directed the environment content for this DLC release.

[hogjonny]

I am going to post some video from Starhawk for my portfolio.  I was the Lead Developer on the 'Environment Team' and pretty much touched all of the content you see when traveling through our varied environments and architected the creation of "Build and Battle" structures and deployment.  I had a pretty heavy influence over developing the entire look-and-feel of the game.

I did all of the final content for all of the terrain in each environment, along with the vegetation and deco - and as Dylan Jobe once said "You know, in a vehicular shooter like Starhawk the environment is 60% of what you see on screen at all times."

[hogjonny]

Here are some of the high-res trees I have done for Starhawk.

I do start with speedTree, for blocking out, but i am a perfectionist so they are highly modified.  For instance, I completely redo the UV's (plus add a second set), and I had the programmers write me a pretty complex dual bark shader.

They look pretty sweet ... and with the back-scatter shader they light pretty well in the game.  They turned out better then I thought they would.

[hogjonny]

I did way more then 20 of these high res terrain skins for Starhawk (lost count ... and there were a lot of terrain files for shattered planet environment) 

Core terrain was 4906 ft x 4096 ft  (16777216ft² = 0.60179982mi²)

That doesn't include the 'infinite skirt'

All source was generated at a whopping 8192 x 8192 resolution

16-bit heightmap based terrain...

... but we baked (with tools and pipeline I designed) to low-res mesh

... generate displacement maps

... then in realtime sub-D the terrain from the low back to the target resolution based on distance

Maya side tools for wrangling data, building shaders, etc. (automated)

Tools also generate all the deco placement on terrain (based on map inputs and deco project configs)

Tools output deco placement maps, so I can bake some deco occlusion into the texture inputs

Terrain uses blend maps and detail maps for high-res fidelity at player scale

We used a novel in-house solution for 3D projection/blending of multiple detail layers so we could have awesome vertical canyon walls, etc!!!

[hogjonny]

Here is the final touched up albedo for that terrain set ... put in roads, deco occlusion, etc.

[hogjonny]

This is the Starhawk 'Build and Battle', Troop Supply Bunker structure.

This primarily my design.  I did the Lion's share of modeling and texturing, rigging, etc.  This was one of the first BnB parts to be fully functional (destruction, deployment rigging, team based paintjob, etc.) and underwent a lot of evolution and revisions along the way... lots of people touched it.

As production ramped up, and I was swamped with work (with more then 20 high res terrain skins to complete by ship) after designing the implementation of BnB structures, and having many of them blocked out or modeling, I was able to mostly hand off the remaining workload to a talent artist by the name of Matthew Breit - he saw them through safely, he deserves a lot of credit for doing a wonderful job.

This is one of the coolest looking structures in the game.

(Matthew added the turret mounts, revised the front ramp for gameplay, and knocked out a large interior wall to make more room for ground troop maneuverability before we shipped.)

[hogjonny]

Close-up of the Order Shrine model.