What kind of modeling software do you use? How long has it taken you to become a top 3D modeler?

I have been using Softimage 3D every day for about 3 years now and I have no intention of changing my ways. I couldn't do half the stuff I have achieved without it. In my opinion, Soft excels in everything from modeling to texturing. It just can't be beaten - not to mention the animation tools. There is a reason every huge movie studio and any game company with a clue uses it. The learning curve is fairly high ( I still learn something new everyday almost ), but I think the only way I could ever have taken it all in is by attempting to achieve a certain goal and learning whatever it takes to get to that point.

After a couple of years I have covered nearly every part of Soft (at least that's what I think until we have to add a new feature to the game and a whole new chapter of Soft will unfold before me.) My brain just isn't big enough to fit all the info in! I have already lost a few years of childhood memories in order to squash in a few chapters of Soft info! haha!

I really learned most of my modeling and 3D skills from the lead artist at Beam software in Australia. He was a hard teacher but it really paid off: have a look at the Keys tracks in Dethkarz to see what I mean. And since I've been with Pandemic I have had a good chance to really polish and clean up my skills. I think that now I am really confident and able to model anything that is thrown at me, from low poly to high res.

What's the main thing you've worked on in BZII?

Hmmm, that's hard because the main thing I've been working on is a top secret new ingredient to the game and I can't really say what it is just yet, but it involved the most complex models I have ever made. The skeletal weighting in these models was very complicated. I also worked on animating and texturing these and other certain features of the game. Battlezone II really looks amazing. It may take some people by surprise and will definitely be one of the biggies of the year. Some features that have been implemented have not be seen in any game yet and will lead the way when it is released. It's just got the right look, if you know what I mean. As soon as you see it, you just can't stop watching it. I think that comes from Carey's vision of how it should look, and he really pulled it off. I also worked on the building destruction physics animations which was very hard to get looking just right, but thanks to Soft (again) we had the right tools to pull it off.

What's been the toughest thing to model in BZII? How about the toughest thing to animate? Have you ever put together a 3D model and said, "Heck, I can't animate this"?

The toughest thing so far has been getting the look right on the 'secret stuff', trying to match Carey's thoughts as closely as I could. That really is the toughest part of any production: trying to get it to look the way the "vision carrier" sees it. I always have a great time trying, though, and sometimes I might give it a slightly different look. Sometimes Carey will like what I've done better than the original idea and then mold that into a his direction again, which means I get to be right in there for the deciding process for a lot of this stuff as well. It's different when you actually have a say that counts; you really want to work hard to express your ideas so that when you show someone the game, you can go "see that thing, I did that!!"

And no, I would never say "Heck."

Can you briefly explain what the term "low-poly" means and why low poly counts are important?

The term Low Poly means that an object for a 3D game must be made with a low poly (triangle) count. This is because of hardware issues. Although the 3D cards and consoles of today are very powerful and capable of many cool things, they still have a lot of limitations. For example, if you took say a model from a big dinosaur movie and threw it into the game to run on a P2 500 with 256 megs of ram and a Voodoo 3, the machine would just keel over and die! You would probably get a frame every 5 hours! So we have to build everything within the limitations of the standard level 3D card. Which means objects with fewer polygons which causes that "boxy" look on everything. If we only had one object on the screen at a time we could concentrate all our polys in that model and it would look very nice, but since we have to have many objects on screen at once, they must all share the maximum number which means we must bring down the poly count of individual models. As time goes by we will be able to pump up the polys and things will look better every year, but for now low poly is the way. But 3D games now have heaps more polys than 3D games of 4 years ago. Check out some old game and then compare it to Battlezone - you will see how far we have come. Imagine what it will be like in 10 years! We should be seeing "Jurassic Park" type models at 60 fps on high res TV's!

How much interpretive latitude do you have when creating a model from a concept drawing? Has Carey ever come down from his office and made you re-do something?

As I said before, I work very closely on this stuff with Carey. First I model an object to match the concept sketch, then once I have a model to look at we will "re-design" it together.

Arm wrestling contest: you vs. Carey. Who wins?