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28/Mar/2024
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Made Screen Graphics for my UMBRA project today.

UMBRA - Screen Graphics

I’d love to work with a Post / VFX shop and take on fantasy screen graphics work for major film / TV productions or video games. This kind of work is different than the actual UI work I’ve done for triple-A games / VR / apps, where it usually has to be as simple, user-friendly, watered-down, and invisible as possible.  With fantasy UI, it would be far more liberating work, though still functional and meaningful, but can shine a lot more with more complexity.  I’ve also recently done some fictitious brand work, which I always enjoy, with my Neon Eclipse project.

To explore this and other ideas, I plan on creating and releasing concepts more regularly instead of saving them all for release with my own productions.  Sort of like #everydays, but not necessarily every day since I have my fingers in so many pies.  My original IPs UMBRA and Neon Eclipse should be great buckets to drop experimental output along these lines into as I work on other projects too.  Fun fun. 😉

If you’re interested in booking me for a gig like this, contact me here and let’s talk: office@xanderdavis.studio


28/Mar/2024
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Between getting VAST shipped, the birth of my firstborn and first son with my wife, getting settled into the new parenthood life, getting back into the swing of things with my various companies and productions, finalizing and filing taxes with my accountant, founding a new VR company after experimenting with VR since 2012, completely re-arranging my primary office and merging it with my (formerly) separate VR lab, and completely rebuilding my site here this week, it has been a very busy 2018 so far!  These last few weeks have flown by!

In ramping back up for the new year in 2018, I’ve decided to go through Unity’s Blog and read (sometimes again) everything that I find relevant to improving my skills in 3D modeling, materials, and rendering in Unity and maximizing my use of Unity in general.  This will benefit both my secret VR prototyping at Dreamseed and my continued work on VAST as I polish and expand it throughout this year.  I’ll be on the road later this morning so this list should especially come in handy:

 


Lightweight Render Pipeline: Optimizing Real Time Performance:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/02/21/the-lightweight-render-pipeline-optimizing-real-time-performance/

Scriptable Render Pipeline Overview:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/01/31/srp-overview/

Rendering and Shading in Adam:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/01/24/rendering-and-shading-in-adam-episode-3/

Getting Started in Interactive 360 Video:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/01/19/getting-started-in-interactive-360-video-download-our-sample-project/

2018 and Graphics:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/01/18/2018-and-graphics/

Neon Demo:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/10/04/neon/

Adam – VFX:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/01/04/adam-vfx-in-the-real-time-short-film/

Adam – Evolution of Alembic Support:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/04/adam-the-evolution-of-alembic-support-in-unity/

Adam – Clothing Simulation:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/05/they-are-what-they-wear-clothing-simulation-in-adam/

Adam – Keeping the Adam Films on Track:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/06/adam-timeline/

Adam – Lighting Tips and Tricks:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/07/lighting-tips-tricks-in-the-adam-films/

Unity 2017.3 Is Here:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/19/unity-2017-3-is-here/

Available Now: Octane Renderer for Unity:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/14/available-now-octanerender-for-unity/

Spectating VR:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/12/spectating-vr/

Neon Challenge:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/09/neon-challenge-cinemachine-timeline-community-resources/

Building a True Free-Roaming VR Experience:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/11/27/building-a-true-free-roaming-vr-experience/

How to maximize AR and VR performance with advanced stereo rendering:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/11/21/how-to-maximize-ar-and-vr-performance-with-advanced-stereo-rendering/

Talking the Future of Tech at Web Summit 2017:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/11/17/talking-the-future-of-tech-at-web-summit-2017/

Updated Crunch Texture Compression Library:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/11/15/updated-crunch-texture-compression-library/

Dealing with Scale in AR:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/11/16/dealing-with-scale-in-ar/

Oculus Connect 4 Roundup:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/10/25/oculus-connect-4-roundup/

VR Advertising:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/10/20/vr-advertising-experience-lionsgates-jigsaw-in-vr-with-a-virtual-room-ad/

Mobile inside-out VR Tracking, now readily available on your phone with Unity:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/10/18/mobile-inside-out-vr-tracking-now-readily-available-on-your-phone-with-unity/

Looking to the future of mixed reality (Part III):
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/10/09/looking-to-the-future-of-mixed-reality-part-iii/

Unite Austin 2017 Keynote Recap:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/10/04/unite-austin-2017-keynote-recap/

Looking to the future of mixed reality (Part II):
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/09/21/looking-to-the-future-of-mixed-reality-part-ii/

Looking to the future of mixed reality – Part I:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/09/05/looking-to-the-future-of-mixed-reality-part-i/

Multi-material: Using custom Inspectors and Scriptable Objects for UDIM materials:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/08/01/multi-material-using-custom-inspectors-and-scriptable-objects-for-udim-materials/

How to integrate 360 Video with Unity:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/07/27/how-to-integrate-360-video-with-unity/

Spotlight Team Best Practices: Collision Performance Optimization:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/07/26/spotlight-team-best-practices-collision-performance-optimization/

Animating Inside VR: Mixing motion capture and keyframes:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/07/24/animating-inside-vr-mixing-motion-capture-and-keyframes/

Unity’s future of VR ads and how Cinemachine and Timeline will change storytelling as we know it:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/07/22/unitys-future-of-vr-ads-and-how-cinemachine-and-timeline-will-change-storytelling-as-we-know-it/

Real-Time Line- and Disk-Light Shading with Linearly Transformed Cosines:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/07/21/real-time-line-and-disk-light-shading-with-linearly-transformed-cosines/

Oculus & Unity Launch Pad Workshops: Promoting Diversity of Thought in VR:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/06/24/oculus-unity-launch-pad-workshops-promoting-diversity-of-thought-in-vr/

Augmented World Expo: How Unity developers will be part of the future:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/06/08/augmented-world-expo-how-unity-developers-will-be-part-of-the-future/

XR on iOS and macOS:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/06/05/xr-on-ios-and-macos/

Announcing our VR Artist in Residence:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/05/02/announcing-our-vr-artist-in-residence/

Altering Body Perception in VR:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/04/28/altering-body-perception-in-vr/

Linear-Light Shading with Linearly Transformed Cosines:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/04/17/linear-light-shading-with-linearly-transformed-cosines/

 


 

As you can see, I have a lot of ground to cover, but I’m super excited to dive in. I can’t wait for Unity 2018.1 to come out of Beta, and I’m thrilled to hear my friends at ProBuilder just got acquired by Unity, with their suite of tools now officially part of Unity natively!  ProBuilder was instrumental in the creation of VAST.  Next Unity needs to acquire PlayMaker and Rewired and then the engine might finally be complete.

I’m also going to be going through my set of Pluralsight tutorials to master 3D modeling and materials creation as much as possible, particularly across Modo with a pipeline towards Unity.  This time, instead of just watching them to get the processes I need, I’m going to actually do the tutorials step-by-step and will be posting the results in the blog.  You can see my Pluralsight Course Channel here.

I’m also interested in taking Unity’s courses for certification.  I’m particularly interested in the VR Developer Degree at the moment.  Even though I just built and shipped my first original console game entirely by myself in Unity, there’s always still room to learn.  By running through actual courses, it is my hope that I will fill in all the gaps that I might be missing after about 7 solid years of trial and error based learning with the engine that’s gotten me this far already (and this is, of course, as the engine has also been developing and expanding).  Unity today is far more whole, varied, and powerful than it was when I first began working with it in 2011.

Last but not least, Unity has removed their simple Jobs forum and instead cloned a hybrid of LinkedIn and ArtStation.  So I’ll start building up my profile on Unity Connect next too.  If you are on Unity Connect, feel free to add me to your contacts.

Anyway, it’s nearly 4am and I have an early drive tomorrow, so I better get to bed.