Al Howe
3D Project List

imstar*

imstar* was a very fun project to work on. As the lead technical artist, I created the male and female avatars, facial morphs, and body morphs. The avatars were customizable, with numerous facial and body controls. The facial animation was quite difficult because it needed to be easily updated if changes were made to the avatar's face.

The project included designing many facial and body animations, plus hundreds of articles of clothing, hairstyles, and cosmetics. The project also included designing a hi-res marketing model for advertising.

It is unfortunate the project was cancelled due to funding issues.

This is the full marketing model that was designed. It was based on the original model with many modifications to make a great looking high-poly model. The maps were also much more detailed. Her face morphs were maintained through the process so her look could be modified for future marketing.

Several examples of the high-poly model with different face morph settings.

This picture shows multiple versions of the low-poly model with random features and skin color. Each face is shown with the neutral smile, and then how it looks with the full smile.

The following pictures show many of the accessories designed for the chat game. The pictures are Shoes and Hair; Hawaiian Halter and Surf Shorts sets; Skirts, Shorts, and Pants; and Jackets and Shirts.

Many body and facial animations were used in this project. The body animations were taken from stock moton capture animation. The model was rigged with a Biped and character studio was used so the motion capture could be easily loaded and edited. The facial animation was motion captured off a model in a studio and loaded on to a custom facial rig with a custom importer. Both required editing to make them look good: some simple, and some extensive. Below are images of several animations I worked on.

Below are several of the game's animations on the in-game model. These animations were fixed up and rendered in 3ds Max.

This animation shows several of the facial animations in action.