I was born and raised on a tropical island in the Caribbean. My mother is a teacher and my father runs a computer business – so I’ve always been immersed in technology and learning from a very young age. I’ve been doing 3d modeling for about 15 years now, which means I started when I was around 10 years old, or in 5th grade.
I have a driving passion to build my own aircraft and spacecraft, so when I was growing up I played a lot of flight and space sims, like Jane’s WW2 Fighters, Freespace 2, and Homeworld. I always wanted to build stuff, but I couldn’t because we didn’t have the tools and my family wasn’t the most handy. So putting models into video games was the next best thing.
I started by modding, or modifying, Homeworld, then Freespace 2. I tried a lot of software packages – this is what I consider to be my formative phase, where I went through and grabbed demos, trials, and whatever I could get my hands on. I went through Max, Maya, Blender, Winds, Silo, Softimage, and a few others. I ran into a lot of difficulty learning these software packages, and what I ended up learning on was a low polygon modeler called Milkshape 3D. I saved up my allowance/odd job/whatever money, bought a $20 license, and started modeling.
I started with simple primitives, pulling and dragging vertices around. If you can imagine a sphere that has a big chunk of it stretched forward, that’s basically what I was starting with. It was during this phase of my development that I learned what polygons were, how they work, and some of the limits you had to understand when using them. When I remember how long it took me to figure out why some of my polygons were invisible in game (their normals were reversed), well, it’s fun to think about.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any images from my earliest, earliest experiments in 3D. What I do have are some of my earliest models though, done when I was in middle to high school. The end goal of all of these was to put them into a game engine, but to be totally honest I found that to be a huge pain and I mostly contented myself with making cool 3D models.
when did I do 1kp? http://www.1000planets.com/mars_colony_page1.php
I was starting to approach the limits of what I felt I could do in Milkshape, so I was constantly on the lookout for software to replace it. Again, I tried a bunch of the big ones – Maya, Max, etc. At this time I was thinking that I might want to become a video game developer on my way to building an airplane, so I knew that Maya and Max were what was used professionally. In my mind, if I wanted to be a game modeler, I had to learn them.
But then I found this awesome program called Sketchup, and although I didn’t know it at the time, it was my first introduction to CAD and CAD-style modeling. I went on a binge of spaceship modeling, always advancing my skills. I did a more detailed interior layout of the 1000 Planet Habitat Modules, and basically did everything I could to push Sketchup as far as I could go. I even got an architectural internship in high school, where I used it to render one of their buildings for a major client. Heck, I even developed a technique for UV mapping in Sketchup, making it suitable for game use – something that as far as I know, no one else had done before or since.
I thought Sketchup was the best thing since sliced bread. I’d tried all the other applications, and none of them were anywhere near as intuitive – and that was important to me, because if it wasn’t intuitive or fun, I didn’t want to use it.
I was doing gameplay design for a mod project based on Battlestar Galactica, called Beyond the Red Line. It was there that I met a Finnish man who went by the name of Lt. Cannonfodder. He introduced me to modo. At first, I was resistant – I thought Sketchup couldn’t be beat. We even agreed to have a modelling contest, to see which program was faster. But with his prodding, I eventually got my hands on it and some tutorial videos.
Holy cow. This was awesome. This was faster than anything I’d ever used before, and more importantly, it allowed me to do UV unwrapping fast and easy. The other software I had tried felt like I was fighting it the whole time – modo felt like it was actually working with me, to speed me up. I loved it, and began to learn as much as I could on my own about subdivision modeling and advanced CG techniques. Then I left for Rochester, New York, to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology for college.
I entered as a New Media Design student, still on track to become a game artist. My plan was to do that, and then work on airplane stuff on the side. I was a frequenter of Homebuiltairplanes.com, where I was quickly learning how little I knew about structures and real-world objects.
I continued for 2 years in NMD, picking up a lot of knowledge about CG art; I’d say the best thing I picked up from this program was an understanding of advanced Photoshop and Illustrator techniques, as well as a good grasp of post-production programs like After Effects and Premiere. This is where I learned a lot about how to make CG videos and make them look good.
However, the program also strayed heavily into website design, building, and programming, which I found to be less enjoyable. I also was re-evaluating what I was doing; going in a “safe” direction so that I could pursue my passion on the side didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. I was in college, so I was there to learn, and what I needed to learn most of all to build an airplane was how to actually build something in real life. I was still researching things on my own, but that was taking too long and I had to learn about this CAD thing that I kept hearing about.
So I did some research, and found out about RIT’s Industrial Design program. It was a toss-up at first, between ID and Aerospace Engineering. But after talking with some of the advisors, I realized that ID would be a better fit for me.
The first year was great, though a bit daunting; I hadn’t really made stuff before, and here I was being thrown in with a bunch of folks who had been doing it for the last year, some of them for their whole lives until that point. But I put my head down and tried to learn as much as I could. The best thing I did was take some SolidWorks courses, and finally be introduced to just what CAD modeling was. I soaked it up as fast as I could, and that summer I went to work in the UK and develop a cockpit for the e-Go Aircraft. I got even better at SolidWorks and parametric modeling, and even taught myself Rhino on the job, since many of the modeling techniques apply between both programs.
Fast forward to the end of college, and I had a solid understanding of NURBS, B-Rep, subdivision, and polygon modeling. I went to an IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America) conference in Philadelphia around the beginning of August, three months before I graduated. I talked to everyone who would listen to me, toting around a book of Mass Effect concept art and talking about how game art and real world objects aren’t so different and are beginning to merge.
Four or five months after that, I got a call from someone I talked to that day, named Andrew Serbinski. He runs an industrial design consultancy in western New Jersey called Machineart, with a second company making aftermarket parts for BMW motorcycles called Machineart Moto. He was impressed with my modeling capabilities and wanted to set up an interview. We met, spoke, and a few weeks later I was packing all my belongings into the back of my Toyota Matrix, heading down on the 3 or 4 hour drive to Frenchtown, New Jersey.
It was there that I learned even more about modeling and CAD. I thought I had a handle on it, until I saw what these guys were doing – 3D scanning motorcycles and rebuilding surfaces on the computer. I learned so much vital stuff that I somehow missed in school – draft angles, clearances, production tolerances. It was amazing. But I was very isolated, and getting depressed about living so far away from civilization.
A friend of mine set up a design conference at my old school, called “Thought @ Work”. I went and did two hour long talks on 3D printing, scanning, and the techniques that we used at Machineart to produce products. It was there that I met some of the Fusion 360 guys (awesome folks), and when I went home after speaking with everyone, I was inspired to follow up on a job application that I had sent out about a month ago.
The application was to a company called Lagoa, who are developing a browser based CAD modeling and rendering solution. I wrote a sample article, and they liked it, so they flew me out to Boston for an interview. I got the job and gave Andrew my two weeks notice soon after.
Working in Lagoa’s marketing department, I learned a lot about what it took to market a company, and got great experience talking with customers. I ended up doing product demos for potential clients – so the sales representitive would set up a Go to Meeting appointment, and I’d hop on and show what the software could do.
Unfortunately, Lagoa had issues penetrating the market, and after 8 months they closed the Boston office, letting myself and my five coworkers go. It was then that I decided this was the best time for me to go into business for myself like I’d always wanted. I had money saved up, a couple prospective clients, and a burning desire to grow as much as I can.
Now, I’m out on my own, trying to help other people along the path that I’ve walked by sharing my experiences and knowledge. Hopefully it will help you learn faster than I did, and have a better understanding of what it means to be a self-starting designer/modeler in the world today.