DEVELOPER DIARY 6: HARRYBALLZONYA

Hello, This is Harry Ballzonya, also known a Harry B for the more PC, an alumni of the BCIT digital animation program. I'm a modeler on the Firststrike team, and responsible for the Lambda Shuttle and some other models not yet finalized and ready for public scruitiny.
What I do seems very simple; obsess over 3-d mesh development and optomization to get what I think of as the perfect balance between mesh and texture complexity. Lower poly meshes make for lumpy models, but faster unimpeded gameplay. Higher quality textures produce beautiful results, but can only really be viewed on well tweaked high-end machines.

 So my work is to make things that all people can visually enjoy regardless of what level of detail their computers are capable of achieving. My strong belief is that the background suspends the cynicism of the average player, which is why I applied as a background static artist, but was quickly drafted into the vehicle modeling group.

While both models appear to be textured, I'm rather brutal with my use of bumpmaps and the textures are only really there to display the readiness of the UV unwrap.

I'm also wearing a Troubleshooting/Quality Control team jersey, because anyone can produce a good looking, textureless model, but it takes alot of work to produce a properly optomized, Within-tri-count, non colliding/artifacting mesh, and UV unwrap.

As a part of such a great team, I give alot of input. Some of my most far-fetched ideas seem to have taken root, when I thought they would be only good for compost. When I have a problem, they're very quick to give help, and vice versa, if I can help.

Harry