Environment Creations

Procedural city building - work at Tippett Studio

It can be a chellenge to get familiar with a city I've never been to, and build it out.

Part of the process was identifying specific unique buildings that serve as landmarks, then making info sheets to assist in creating the assets.

The bulk of the city was made of a library of buildings to fill the style of the city.

Used controlled scattering to fill out the space between the more unique buildings. Starting with single buildings with variants.

Constrained scatters, 90 degree step rotations, height variants dropping into ground. make a library of blocks.

Control over the style of each block. Residential, industrial, business, etc.

Blocks are scattered on terrain, control over which blocks are used. Rotation of blocks controlled by map. Used satellite photos to create scatter guides.

Landscape Topograb and set dressing - at Tippett Studio

Developed "Topograb" process to pull together the pieces to make terrain for an existing location.

The topo was a good starting point to create a more detailed terrain. Once the camera path was established, the details were added where specifically needed.

Used the satellite images as reference, top-down guides to scatter vegetation types.

The process was used as the foundation for dozens of shots.

Building New York for "Avengers" - work at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)

Photo based for high quality, high accuracy look of real NY location. Images were stitched to create many "panospheres"

The panosphere were then layed out in place to texture simple versions of building locations.

As needed, details are added to specific buildings, like glass and room interiors.

A library of props were used to dress out other details, especially at ground level.

London for "A Christmas Carol" - work at Image Movers Digital

Building 70s San Francisco for "Zodiac" - work at Matte World Digital

Scene model from specific point of view, with just enough detail to catch lighting.

Ambient color painting with layered elements that turn on/off. The building animation is controlled by a "reveal rig" - null objects moved up reveal construction pieces to create the time lapse effect. Final composite blends in lighting and atmo passes.