WORKS OF KOJI HASHIMOTO

My HD DemoReels on YouTube.

2010-02-27T03:25:00.008+09:00

I recently uploaded my Demo Reel on YouTube. Enjoy!

Warner Bros Games / Watchman: The End is Nigh ( XBOX360, PS3, PC )

Character modeling works for the Video game

I did modeling / rigging / skinning on one of the player character "NiteOwl", the last boss character "The Twilight Lady", and also a lot of enemy characters.

NiteOwl (one of the main player character of this title)

8,992 polygons (Triangle)

Textures

2048*2048 x2(Head to body, Cape)

1024*256 x1(Belt)

Twilight Lady (the last boss character of this title)

14,874 polygons (Triangle)

Textures

1024*1024 x2(Head, Skin part)

1024*2048 x2(Costume, Hair)

512*1024 x1(Lacings of the costume)

512*512 x1(Eye)

They have Diffuse, Specular, Normal textures.

The textures were made with maximum size firstly, after that they were changed into suitable/necessary size by game designer.

In game, they were shrunken into half to quarter size mostly.

Only for PR visual works, they were used with original resolution.

AQ interactive / BulletWitch
I produced this big monster named "DragonBats".

AQ interactive / Lost Odyssey

I produced a lot of props for this title's in game pre-rendered cinematics.
You can see what I did at the article of this below.
I couldn't up a static image of the "Mono-rail" in the cinematic, but I did that as well.

Watchmen: The Twilight Lady

2009-07-26T06:40:00.075+09:00

She is an in-game model.

These images were captured from real time game engine.

She is "The Twilight Lady", the last boss character of "Watchmen: The End is Nigh part 2 and The Complete Experience".As you can see, she is "The Dominatrix", the queen of queens.

14,874 polygons (Triangle)

Textures

1024*1024 x2(Head, Skin part)

1024*2048 x2(Costume, Hair)

512*1024 x1(Lacings of the costume)

512*512 x1(Eye)

They have Diffuse, Specular, Normal textures.

The textures were made with maximum size firstly, after that they were changed into suitable/necessary size by game designer.

In game, they were shrunken into half to quarter size mostly.

Only for PR visual works, they were used with original resolution.

The facial animation skeleton system.

Basically, all characters in the game shared same structure with above.
This skeleton system was managed separately from "Main-Body" skeleton system.
It means, we had simple skeleton system firstly, and it already started to work in our unique game engine.
It was named “Kappow editor”, a engine developed by Deadline Games.

I didn't want to break whole of the animation system in the game.
So I had a idea of this “separated facial skeleton system”.
This could manage totally separately from body animation system.

Facial animations could be managed totally independently, so we could tweak the facial animations quite safely, without to worry to break the main body animations.

In the image above, all of facial skeletons are very long.
Why all skeletons are long is, the game engine didn’t support “translation” animation on skeleton at that point. So, all animations needed to be managed with only rotation animation of skeletons.

It was obviously a big limitation for me at first time, but I realized positive side of it soon.

It was, “we could use same animation data for all of generic enemy characters”, even they had different face. To move these skeletons into suitable location in each of faces, the animation worked without any problem.
As a result, we could save a lot of animation works and memory space.

Main characters used same skeleton system as well, but they had unique animation data, to give uniqueness.
But even though, how many kind of animation sets for facial for whole of the game was, only 4 kinds. NiteOwl, Under Boss, Twilight Lady, these unique 3 main class characters, and all of rest of enemies. Very less numbers.

Images from ZBrush.

When I started to model her, only a rough “standing pose sketch from front side” was a reference what I could have.It was looks cool, but not enough information, of course.
Also the concept art haven’t approved with Warner and DC yet.

It means, to start to her was obviously contained risks. But even though, we/I needed to start to do it, because of the deadline of the project.

Firstly I needed to think on the design of back side of her costume. I discussed with the art director and a concept artist of our team, and then we decided to give “lacing details” and the tight waist belt that has iconic “lighting” mark at a belt loop.On her face, also it hadn't designed at all, so I created her face with my idea.

Luckily, the response from Warner and DC was good, they could be satisfied with the model.
They just said "nice model!". It was really happy for me.

Watchmen: The End is Nigh

2009-07-07T18:38:00.045+09:00

He is an in-game model.

These images were captured from real time game engine.

He is one of the main character of Warner Brothers Games "Watchmen: The End is Nigh", "NiteOwl".

This project was packed with the movie, and released before the movie, from Warner Bros.

NiteOwl (one of the main player character of this title)

8,992 polygons (Triangle)

Textures

2048*2048 x2(Head to body, Cape)

1024*256 x1(Belt)

They have Diffuse, Specular, Normal textures.

The textures were made with maximum size firstly, after that they were changed into suitable/necessary size( half to quarter size).

Only for PR visual works, they were used with original resolution.

I made a basic "Hi-res" model in “modo” with Sub-surface modeling technique.

I thought, instead of using ZBrush modo was better to give "solid-layered structure having costume".

I gave the layers very carefully with actual geometry, except "scales", then I brought the "freezed high poly model" into 3ds.

And then, I gave scales with Bump Mapping with Material setting at specific surfaces.

At the end, I baked Normal map with it, then the normal map was generated very cleanly in one time.

Just at the skin part of his face, I used ZBrush.

On the "Grappling-Gun", I used same pipeline except ZBrush process.

Disk-in-Tray image

On the image above, I didn't make Rorschach.
What I did is "posing, placing, framing, lighting and capturing"

to have cool pictures for game interface.

Enemies

They were called “Bikers” in this project.
Actually they are first enemies in this game, in production wise and also level wise, both.
When the “easy variants generating system” was proved with them (Warner people could be very happy with the variations of them,) then we decided to use same way for other enemies.

They are called "Knot-Tops" in our project, because of thier hair style. They are baced on characters in original Watchmen comics, so DC and Warner people really wanted to have them in game.

They are called "dominatrix", simply. They also had similer system with Knot-Tops and Bikers.

For this project, I made a lot of "enemy character" models other than main characters.
Like Knot-Tops, Bikers and Dominatrixes.

At quality wise, off course "unique main class characters" looks much nicer than "enemy characters".
But technically, giving enemy characters in game were much tougher.
Because of to reduce production time, we needed to have “easy variants generate system” for enemy characters.

They were built separately at each body part, for instance arms, torso, lower body…And they can swap very easily in game engine, and we could save the variants.
For it, every part should be connected each other naturally, and needed to be "weighted" carefully too. Otherwise, each parts makes big gap between them. I used easy way to manage this.
And I gave “facial animation system with skeleton” for all of characters in game.

Scarlett and Johnny: private study

2009-06-30T22:13:00.005+09:00

Private study part 2, "Scarlett Johansson".

Basically I did same way with the "Johnny".

I used “Mental-Ray” in 3ds max.

Firstly I built basic model in "modo", and then gave details in Z-Brush, at the end I baked the Hi-res model into a render Mid-res model in 3ds as normal maps.

And they are basically "render straight" images.

Lost Odyssey: Environment & prop works for cinematic

2009-02-11T07:26:00.008+09:00

I did them for "Lost Odyssey " in game cinematic movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv1ehI1nxT4&feature=related

Originally they were quite Low-res "in game" models, and needed to change into "Hi-Def" super detailed normal bumped textured models for the pre-rendered cut scene.

Especially, strange shape having tower what is named "Madouki" doesn't have any detailed design but needed to be "iconic item" in game world, so to be honest, I designed half of this...

Tool: XSI

at April 2007

Faith and a .45

2009-01-10T20:13:00.007+09:00

This is the first project at Deadline Games for me.
Unfortunately, this project was not released.
Because of the company couldn’t get a publisher. Too bad...

Basically, all of characters were modeled by me.

Tools: Modo, 3dsMax and in-house game engine

at Oct 2007

Vampire Rain: Coronel

2008-10-15T20:56:00.002+09:00

This image was made as a PR picture for "Vampire Rain" of AQ interactive.

Tool: Maya

Bulletwithch: Dragonbats

2008-02-29T05:23:00.004+09:00

This is also one of my work in BulletWitch. This "monster" is called "Dragobats", that was made as Middle boss of this title. This has 245skeltons, and 100,000polygons as Realtime character.
Why we could use such number of data is, because this was a quite huge(250m) monster, and in this stage, he was the only enemy in game.
All of "eyes" could move indipendently as skined character, and they attacks as"flying eyeballs".
You can see the movie of this at
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=i7aV4G_GqWA

Tool: XSI

BeatDown!: Characters

2008-02-29T04:21:00.006+09:00

At this project, my responsibility was "rebuilding of character's quolity".

When I joined the team, the title was already in the middle of process.

And the director needed to change all character's proportion firstly.

Because for his eyes, they were looked like "Japanese" in generally.

So firstly I changed their proportion into "Westerner" like, and designed 3 basic proportion, Big guy, Midium guy and Fimale.

Secondly I started to design them, I could have "script" of in game story, so I imagined their "looks" from it.
But at time wise, it was super tight. I upped few of my original drawings, actually they looks cheap but I drew them 1 character in 1 day each. Concepts was much more important than each quality, at that point.
In average I produced each of characters with 1 month, from concept design to finish the models with skinning and facial morph targets(with Softimage!).

And also, they had “injury expression system” at faces and upper body with separated complicated UV coordinate system. I never want to do same thing in Softimage again that was crap…with XSI would be OK to do it.

BulletWitch: Alicia

2008-02-28T07:28:00.002+09:00

XBOX360 title "BulletWitch" of AQ interactive.
This image was made for cover image of Japanese game magazine that named "Fami-tsuu XBOX360".

So, the big space at above of her head was prepared for the Logo type of the magazine.

Tool: 3ds max

Shinobi: Hotsuma

2008-02-28T06:53:00.002+09:00

This picture was made for Sega's PS2 title"Shinobi",
and used for Billboard of SEGA booth E3 in Los Angels.

You can see the movie of this game at here.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=eFAEWrzJt3o

I also worked as a camera and lighting artist at the scene of "dancing with sword" in this movie.
and, "long haired" final boss was built with me too.

Tool: Softimage3D