Demo Reel Breakdown

0:04 – 0:16: Pixar group project: This scene of ancient Venice was created by three interns (myself, Sam Wirch, and Megan Gritzfeld) over the course of four days during an internship at Pixar Animation Studios. I handled all of the shading and most of the modeling using Maya, Slim, and Photoshop. The project was created completely within Pixar’s pipeline and was rendered out through the render farm.

0:16 – 0:35: Independent Project in Subsurface Scattering: The images in this section were rendered using an path-tracing integrator written by myself, which plugs into the Mitsuba renderer. My integrator calculates the direct, indirect, and subsurface illumination required to illuminate the scene. Written in C++, the integrator traces the paths of light rays around the scene (and through scattering media when necessary) in order to compute accurate illumination. This was a 10-week independent programming project.

0:35 – 0:47: Ray Tracer: These two images were rendered by a ray tracer written by myself and Thomas Buckley in C++ over the course of two weeks as the final project for an introduction to graphics course. The ray tracer features texture mapping, area lights (for soft shadows), ambient occlusion, bump mapping, depth of field, environment cubes/spheres, refraction, glossy reflections, and support for OBJ files (for arbitrary meshes other than primitives).

0:46 – 1:20: Procedural snow and drift generator: This system was my personal project during the last week and a half of my internship at Pixar. The generator takes as input any arbitrary mesh and procedurally generates snow accumulation and snowdrifts according to input parameters. The system was created in Houdini and thus is completely procedural. Utilizing an ambient occlusion approximation (calculated via ray casting) and other heuristics, the system intelligently builds up snow based on geometry and input parameters. The user can then toggle parameters including the wind speed, direction, and snow softness in order to achieve procedurally generated snowdrifts. The snow shaders were created in Slim and rendered using RenderMan.

1:22 – 1:32: Shader Demo: I modeled everything seen in the renders as well as created the shaders using 3D Studio Max and Mental Ray. The shaders were based off of both the default 3DS Max materials as well as the Mental Ray materials. The diffuse, bump, and specular maps for the tile material were created by myself in Photoshop. I used photometric lights, an HDRI background map, soft shadows, depth of field, vignetting, and other features for the render. Render time (using the Mental Ray renderer): 50 hours on a 2.66 GHz Intel Q6600

1:32- 2:18: Cargo truck, Vietnamese huts, vegetation, helicopter, guns: Everything seen in these renders was modeled and textured by myself. Models were created in 3D Studio Max. The textures are a combination of hand drawn textures and photographs, created in Adobe Photoshop. All of these models and textures were created for the Call of Duty game modification Eve of Destruction and thus are low-polygon models meant for use in a real time video game environment.

2:18 – 2:40: 3D Racing Game: I created this racing game as my final project for Harvard’s introductory computer science course during my first semester as a freshman. The game was programmed in C++ and uses DirectX 9.0c. I used Microsoft Visual Studio for the programming and created all of the models and textures in 3DS Max and Adobe Photoshop. I based the engine code off of Frank Luna’s book “3D Game Programming with DirectX”. The game features artificially intelligent opponents that race around the track, collisions between karts, height map terrain, skidding, and more.

Reel Breakdown

0:12 – 0:38: Shader Demo

I modeled everything seen in the renders as well as created the shaders using 3D Studio Max and Mental Ray. The shaders were based off of both the default 3DS Max materials as well as the Mental Ray materials. The diffuse, bump, and specular maps for the tile material were created by me in Photoshop. I used photometric lights, an HDRI background map, soft shadows, depth of field, vignetting, and other features for the render. Render time (using the Mental Ray renderer): 50 hours on a 2.66 GHz Intel Q6600

0:39 – 1:32: Cargo truck, Vietnamese huts, vegetation, and helicopter

Everything seen in these renders was modeled and textured by me. Models were created in 3DS Max. The textures are a combination of hand drawn textures and photographs, created in Adobe Photoshop. All of these models and textures were created for the Call of Duty game modification Eve of Destruction and thus are low-polygon models meant for use in a real time video game environment.

1:33 – 1:46: Various models for video games

I modeled the Abrams tank in 3DS Max and the texture was created by the online alias Miles. (a member of the mod team that I was working on at the time). I modeled, textured, and rigged the model of Ronald McDonald and his car, which I call the Fry Mobile. I modeled and textured all of the weapons seen here. I drew these textures by hand (Wacom tablet) in Adobe Photoshop. All of these models and textures were made for the Call of Duty game modification Modern Warfare. I led this mod team for about two years during the early stages of high school.

1:48 – end: 3D Racing Game

I created this racing game as my final project for Harvard’s introductory computer science course during my first semester as a freshman. The game was programmed in C++ and uses DirectX 9.0c. I used Microsoft Visual Studio for the programming and created all of the models and textures in 3DS Max and Adobe Photoshop. I based the engine code off of Frank Luna’s book “3D Game Programming with DirectX”. The game features artificially intelligent opponents that race around the track, collisions between karts, height map terrain, skidding, and more.

I compiled the reel in iMovie 2009 and Sony Vegas Pro.