Work on:
3D Ultra Pinball: The Lost Continent

All images/animation's for Private non-commercial viewing purposes only.
© Copyright 1997 Sierra Online\Dynamix All rights reserved.

This page details some of the work I did for COMPUTOONS® for Sierra\Dynamix's new pinball game, 3D Ultra Pinball: The Lost Continent.The project ran between January to mid July 1997. COMPUTOONS® was sub-contracted by Dynamix to create the 3D graphic elements and animation for the game.

We provided all of the 3D game graphics and animation. Consisting of more than 15 levels, it was huge project generating many gigabytes of game data and rendered frames.

My primary job was as an animator, but I also did much of the model and set building as well as lighting. The final level of the game, the Volcano level is almost entirely my modeling , texturing and lighting. Robert Terrell of COMPUTOONS® was responsible for the modeling of the characters and dinosaurs. All of the work was done with 3D STUDIO MAX software, along with Adobe Photoshop and Fractal Design Painter.

The other artists on the project were Dennis Clevenger (modeling, texture maps and 2D animation) , Burt Jarvis (modeling), and Dave Manuel (texture maps).

The opening Temple level for Pinball 3. Burt Jarvis built the general shape of the set, while I created the lane returns, bumper, gem lights, etc. Robert Terrell sculpted the organic Dinosaur head sculptures. I finished the surface textures and lighting. A large part of this project was the creation of the elaborate sets and models. Although the game view is stationary, the models are detailed enough to hold up in close-up.

Top View of the same set. You can easily see the degree to which the set was "cheated" to look good to the camera view. This is very similar to real set or miniature construction. You never spend time and money building something the audience will never see. You can see the same thing on my Raisins page with the "Star Truck" set.

Pinball 3's Valley level 2. This is a final rendered frame prior to handing it off to Dynamix. After we finished our work with 3D STUDIO MAX they added additional 2D graphics on the floor or game board area. Again, this frame was the result of a lot of work of many people besides me. Burt Jarvis built the basic structures, Robert Terrell created the characters and ground plane maps, while I finished the set details(textures) as well as the lighting. I also did the game element and character animations. The game elements were the pinball flippers, bumpers and crumbling statues. The character animations all began with a start or 'home' position so that after each short cycle, they could return to the starting position without jerking . Each character had a number of short animations that the programmers at Dynamix could set to randomly play or specifically play at pre-set intervals.

The Volcano starting level. The 'Dinobot' seen in the corner is from a later level, and eventually comes back to the beginning. This was a personally more rewarding level to work on for me, since I was able to build, texture and light virtually every set. I started with this level, and once it was finished, it served as a guide to the look in the subsequent levels. And best of all, once you build a number of pipes,lights, bumpers and what not, you can more quickly assemble the new levels. But each level did have enough variety to set them apart.