Juan Hernandez Level Designer

I have enrolled into a Linux class and a scripting for the internet class. I am going to be
CompTIA Linux+ certified after I complete the course. The scripting class is mainly for me to learn some HTML 5 for possibly games or for dynamic websites in the future. I have manage to import Sketchup models into Hammer editor. The setup for the Sketchup scripts was not the difficult part. It was making the models having the right extrudes for hammer to recognize them that was vital. I like using Sketchup a lot more after using it for a while. My model of the Madison Bear almost complete and I will try to use that model in the future for a future L4D2.
 I have also been able to properly import models I have made in Maya to export out and compile correctly for use in L4D. The setup required more so the use of .bat scripts for the whole process to work. I had to use a different PC for its 32 bit version of Photoshop since one of the custom scripts wouldn't work in 64 bit.
 Granted I only imported cubes into the scene. I have still figured out many of the road blocks that were before me. Now I can start cranking out a lot of custom content to better populate my levels and give it that feeling that you are actually in the O'Connell building. Heres a little sample of the 133 room. Very early layout with L4D stock props.
For my next post I will have a new fly through and I will start to begin rebuilding O'Connell with Sketchup since it feels like I can building it a lot faster that way opposed to the Hammer editor way. I will being the custom content immediately so I can really have this place looking like its suppose to.

     





       This semester I was enrolled into a Level Design Class and these are some of the levels I designed. These maps were designed for an early build of Sketchy Business. I did not make the game, only designed a few levels that were used for educational purposes within the boundaries of the course. For a detailed account each level and the work that went into them, follow this link. Level Design Class

Level Designer
Juan Hernandez

Some renders of my scene. My Final Video.


       Taking a class on Digital Lighting and Texturing  made me realize there are many level designer elements involved. The placement of objects and lights is crucial in leading the viewers eye to what you want them to observe.

The Beginning to the End.


The Aftermath.


        This is the end product of the Training Video Demo I was assigned to work on. Spend a majority of my time at the internship working on this video and various 3d models of buildings.

Interning at IMC Productions was a great experience because I learned a lot over the course of one semester. My first day I was introduced to everyone working there and Randy Wall was my lead. Randy started me on various projects over the course of the semester. The production studio was working off of a script that had various natural disasters. I got the opportunity of helping making one of the scenes that would later be used as a scene in a training video for fire fighters and emergency response teams. The first week at IMC, Randy got me started on working with particle effects such as smoke and fire. He gave me tutorials to do and also scenes to dissect which would help me understand how they work. I practiced the tutorials on particle effects for the first two weeks.

I was going to work on a animation that was going to be used for the training videos. Now that the script was more solid, I was going to be working on an earthquake scene. The script read that Los Angeles had been hit with a high magnitude earthquake and that a camera from off in the distance caught the destruction on film. Since these were going to be used by professionals, my work had to reflect that fact so I tried my best to make a really nice final piece. I got a lot of help and tips from Randy along the way. I started the project by looking for reference pictures of downtown Los Angeles to work off of. I was mainly looking for a picture that was taken at a distance but also was high resolution. I spent a while searching the internet but finally found a picture that fit what I was looking for and was free to use by anyone. I started searching for pictures of buildings that had been hit by either an earthquake or a natural disaster. After getting a good amount of pictures, it was time to matte painting of the aftermath part of the earthquake. I was going to do this by adding the destroyed buildings to the picture of downtown Los Angeles that I found. I spent a week painting and polishing my picture of destroyed Los Angeles but it ended up coming out very nice.





It was time to brainstorm exactly how I was going to start the destruction of Los Angeles. I ended up going two different routes through trial and error. The first way I approached this was making 3d models of all the buildings that were affected by the earthquake because they were going to be collapsing into pieces later.





. Importing the models all together into one scene with the matte painting was easy to accomplish. The smoke and fire I was working on were also imported into the scene. A few of the buildings had parts cut out that were going to be breaking off and falling down into the street. The fire and smoke were going to appear at the holes in the models. After I had my scene set up for the most part, I added lights to the scene.


This was a good time to apply some of the stuff that I was learning in digital lighting and texturing class. I added a physical sun and sky to the scene which blew out my textures but I knew that they needed to be gamma corrected. Spending a few days adjusting the lighting had me reconsidering my scene set up. The lighting was looking good on the models that I made but the shadows they were putting out were not fitting with the matte painting. The 3d view of the buildings also popped out a lot that it was noticeable in the renders. There had to be another way to approach this scene so I explored another possible way of making the scene. I used the create polygon tool to make perfect cut outs against the background cutout.


I did this for the rest of the buildings that I made which did not take me long. With the perfect cut out, the UV was simple to texture in Photoshop. The rest of the buildings went through the same process and then gamma corrected once back into Maya. Using the cut polygon tool, I split up the cutouts so that pieces could fall off during the earthquake shot. With spots for smoke to emit from, I added smoke to these spots.






 I started to animate the pieces falling off of the buildings and into the street. I animated one piece fall off the building very roughly and Randy helped me to smooth out the animation of my falling piece. I applied that animation information to the rest of the pieces so that I had a base to start off of. I was not sure how pieces looked like when they fall from a building so I looked up videos of buildings collapsing in earthquakes and demolitions. Once I got an idea there was a lot of adjusting to each piece to make them not seem so uniform. It made a huge different after the adjustment to the scene.
 There were also smaller buildings that I painted in as collapsed so I animated a smaller cut out for those parts. Randy suggested that I use particle instancing to make the buildings have smaller pieces also falling off which was a great idea because I did not want to make a bunch of individual rocks. It was a good alternative and pretty easy to implement. I will definitely be using that trick in the future for other projects. The last thing that I made sure to tweak was the smoke I made earlier. The smoke was made thinner and made to be more light dusk smoke at first and then heavier smoke to represent smoke emitting from fire. I had a lot of fun working on my scene and I am glad Randy gave me the opportunity to work on a great project.

To see the Final Production, follow this link.

Level Designer
Juan Hernandez