Lit with SES1 Kit. Low poly model was built for AGI’s analysis and visualization software for the space, defense and intelligence communities. All modeling and texturing, as well as normal baking was done in Modo.

Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket, represents SpaceX’s entry into the heavy lift launch vehicle category.

Memideo Productions of Philadelphia, PA, offers a wide assortment of professional video production services for the Delaware Valley.

My dilemma was further complicated since I wanted to keep my modified configs, key mappings, plugins, scripts, and assets wherever I used Modo, whether at home or work. After a little research on the Luxology forums and through search engines, I came up with the solution. I decided to buy an 8GB USB thumb drive and lift the desktop strings from my Modo Software.

There were a lot of tutorials on how to do this as a server setup using python scripts and also as a USB thumb drive, but only in the Windows environment. The Mac OSX platform did not allow environment variables to be defined in the target path of an alias which meant that I had to find a different way to achieve the same result. Below is the process that I used in order to accomplish this task using the powerful unix shell that Mac OSX is built on.

Before starting to create the script, you need to set up the file directories on your USB thumb drive to house the Modo Application and supporting files. I set up my directory tree as follows:
(Please note: My shell script is designed for this file tree hierarchy. You will have to edit the script if you want a different file tree system)

USB Thumbdrive Root/
    Luxology/
        Applications/
        AppSupport/
            Configs/
            Plugins/
            Scripts/
        Content/
            Assets/
            Samples/
        System/
            dblog/
            license/
            main/
            preferences/

Once you have the directories in place, copy over your modo501 app into the Applications folder, along with your assets, plugins, scripts, license file, etc. Now it’s time that we can start building our script that will launch Modo from the USB stick. The process is pretty simple, see below:

1) Open a terminal and navigate to the root level of your USB thumb drive.

cd /Volumes/[USBdriveName]/

2) Create the modo Launcher shell script file.

touch modoLauncher

3) Open your favorite terminal editor and paste in the script. I used Pico.

pico modoLauncher

4) Copy and paste the script below: (NOTE: You will need to edit the thumb drive name with that of your USB thumb drive. You will also need to edit the temp directory path. I place my temp folder on my desktop since I don’t want my USB stick to fill up with large quantities of temp files as I render.)

#!/bin/sh

open /Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/Applications/modo501.app/ --args "-dblog:/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/dblog/ModoDebugOut.txt" "-debug:verbose" "-license:/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/license" "-config:/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/main/temp.cfg" "-path:prefs=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/System/preferences" "-path:temp=/Users/[YourUserName]/Desktop/AutoSave" "-path:user=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/AppSupport/" "-path:content=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/Content/" "-path:asset=/Volumes/[USBdriveName]/Luxology/Content/Assets"

5) When finished editing the script, writeout the lines on exit and save the script. Next, you need to make the script an executable file.

chmod a+x modoLauncher

From now on in order to launch Modo from the USB thumbdrive, simply double click the modoLauncher shell script on the root level of your thumbdrive. The terminal should open and execute the open command on the modo app passing the argument parameters through changing all your paths to launch modo from the USB stick.

Enjoy your Mac OSX version of Modo on the go!

Designed the logo for the Heal the Burn foundation.

Heal the Burn foundation’s mission is to educate, support and care for those who have been affected by the physical and emotional trauma caused by burns. For more information or donate to help people who have had life-altering burns, please visit healingtheburn.org.

Designed the logo for the Classic Game Junkie repair shop.

Classic Game Junkie buys, sells, trades and repairs classic and modern game consoles, from Atari 2600 to Playstation 3, they carry and repair it all! And yes, they can also repair the Red Ring of Death on your xbox 360s! Classic Game Junkie’s Facebook page

Unlock the magic of Taddo Promotional Cover Art

Project parameters were to create a compelling promotional piece that can be mailed to corporations highlighting Todd Kupper’s (A.K.A. Taddo) magic for business events and trade shows.

I originally put together five concepts, but in the end, the “Unlocking the Magic” key plate was what the client associated his corporate identity with. However, at that point the concept was in it’s infancy, and only the visual of a keyhole was sketched.

Seeing how Taddo’s existing logo’s font style was very circular in it’s character’s geometric forms, I started to conceptualize the key plate with his logo and fitting the keyhole in one of the letters.

I got to work in Adobe Illustrator drawing out vectors trying to match the curves of several key plates that found my fancy. Once I was happy with the original form, I tried to fit the logo and the keyhole within it. I ended up realizing that the hole had to be in the center of the plate and thus the letters had to be slid slightly to adjust the fit.

I then built the model in 3D using Luxology’s Modo 401. I created my UV maps, and then imported them into Photoshop to create my diffuse color, reflection, bump, and spec maps. All other material properties were defined in modo with procederals, gradients, and an AO pass render that I baked out via the UVs.

Final rendered key plate was layered onto a wood door texture image with minor coloration and sharpness tweaks done in Photoshop.

I did all the 2D design and type setting in Adobe Indesign. The final promotional card was printed by KVL printing along with a standard envelope printed with a 1 color logo and return address.

Foldover Promo card:
4/4, 120# satin cover bright white, 14 x 5 score & fold to 7 x 5

A7 envelope:
1/0, PMS, 24# cougar white

Recently I designed the 3D cover artwork (Globes and Space imagery) for a new Virtual Globe developer’s book authored by Patrick Cozzi and Kevin Ring.

The textures were obtained from NASA Blue Marble Next Generation w/ Topography and Bathymetry imagery set via the NASA Visible Earth website. I rendered the 3D earth completely in Luxology 3D modeling software, Modo 401. Minor post processing was done in Photoshop CS5. The 2D layout design was done by Francis X. Kelly in Adobe Indesign CS3. The book can be purchased through Amazon, and will be printed summer of 2011.

My imagery was also highlighted on Luxology’s online user gallery as a portfolio highlight image I titled “Gaia” after the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth.

This project was a great collaborative effort on the part of the whole AGI production team.

AGI presented my colleagues and I with the problem of trying to visually represent all of what the company does in a quick, precise, and easy-to-understand video for the AGI home page on the internet. The goal was to help potential customers to see the value in the software from a business solution perspective and how it can apply to their unique fields of expertise. We needed to target the messaging to everyone from the engineer using the software, to the business acquisition officer purchasing it, to the four star general in the military deploying it. We also needed to target the Space, Defense, and Intelligence communities respectively.

This was a daunting task at best. However we rose to the challenge wholeheartedly! We had very little in the way of material to help us, and a very limited budget. We even had to build our own green screen studio and lighting rigs from scratch in true Do-It-Yourself (DIY) fashion.

In the end, we were very proud of our final product:

Conceptualization and story boards were done by Glenn Warrington, Fran Kelly, and Jason Martin.

Video production was done by Kel Elkins and Branden Coker.

Coreography was done by Kel Elkins, Fran Kelly, and Jason Martin.

Acting/modeling was done by Callie Snow from MeetCallie.com.

Visual elements both 2D (such as the GUIs and Text) and the 3D animation (earth, UAV, facility, satellite) were modeled, textured, and animated by Jason Martin using Luxology Modo and Adobe Photoshop / Ilustrator.

Final video composting, time line creation, and green screen keying was done by Branden Coker via Adobe Premiere / After Effects.