Michael LaniganTechnical Artist • 3D Generalist • Motion Designer
Cardboard Creator
Houdini, Unity, Photoshop
The Cardboard Creator is a procedural model generator I developed for Vine Worlds, a game made for the Vinesauce Is Hope charity event. The charity is in support of Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation (PCRF) and raised over $230,000 in 2021, and over $1M raised total. The Cardboard Creator was used to generate the hundreds of playable characters and NPCs for the game in an efficient way.
Showing off the Holographic Shader inside of Unity. AstroToad character design by Izzy Deadjet.
Adjusting various attribues of the cardboard creator inside of Houdini. Shows of animated image sequence support, vertex colors assigned to different pieces, front/back art toggle, cardboard edge expansion, thickness, and more. Crossroads Frog designed by Sctulei.
Bulk proccessing an entire directory of images and generating meshes for export. The file processing was coded with Python and embedded inside a Houdini digital asset. The HDA is also supported inside Unity via Houdini Engine for easy asset creation.
The mask painted to designate the holographic areas of the art.
Original art. The alpha of the image is used to generate the surrounding 3D cardboard mesh.
Unity shader created with Amplify Shader. Vertex colors are used to designate which part of the model is cardboard, front art, or back art. The holographic shine is a gradient map assigned to the view direction and masked with a manually painted texture.
Different gradients can be used to designate rarity of the character. (Uncommon, Rare, Ultra Rare)
Credits:
Vine Worlds and the Vinesauce is Hope PCRF Charity Event was a huge collaborive effort with many people involved. AstroToad character designed by Izzy Deadjet. Crossroads Frog designed by Sctulei. Project leads, Narry and Great Sphynx. Additional character designs by many other artists listed in the link below as well as art provided by the community.
Vine Worlds Dev Team Credits
Vine Worlds and the Vinesauce is Hope PCRF Charity Event was a huge collaborive effort with many people involved. AstroToad character designed by Izzy Deadjet. Crossroads Frog designed by Sctulei. Project leads, Narry and Great Sphynx. Additional character designs by many other artists listed in the link below as well as art provided by the community.
Vine Worlds Dev Team Credits