The Games Pack
Though I played a large part in all of Vectorform's work for Microsoft's first flagship store, my favourite aspect was producing 3D illustrations and animations for the Microsoft Surface games. These in-store experiences included music mixing, drift racing, word play, and tower defense games.
Drift N' Drive
Working predominantly in Lightwave 3D and Photoshop, I modelled, textured, shaded, lit, rendered, and composited four worlds for the racing game Drift N' Drive. Though the experience was originally designed for the Microsoft Surface (a low resolution display in the 4:3 aspect ratio), the Surface 2.0 built by Samsung featured full HD resolution and significantly improved visual fidelity. All of the assets I created were mastered at 4k resolutions, ensuring they not only looked great on the target device, but were usable in future experiences that needed more flexibility, and marketing materials that needed higher resolution.
Landscape composites were split into layers to allow for easy building on the device, sandwiching the player vehicles between the ground and overhanging elements, along with additional lighting effects on top. I also created the player elements, from vehicles to on-screen steering wheels.
Lighting and effects were designed in Lightwave, with additional atmospheric effects added in Photoshop. Vegetation was predominantly modelled using ngPlant, while the procedural road systems were a combination of Illustrator pathways and image based surface mixing in Lightwave.
The Results
The games were played for years on the Microsoft Surface, both in Microsoft stores and on client machines around the world. It's always fun to see someone excited about some new tech, and you realise they're playing your game!