Waylon Brinck - Technical Art Director
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I was CG Supervisor (equivalent to Technical Art Director) on Medal of Honor, released in October 2010. In the following screenshots and videos, I contributed to the following:
![]() Promotional image for MOH, captured in-game Medal of Honor Launch Video. All footage is created in-game, using our custom renderer. (Only motion blur was done outside the engine) ![]() A set from the Gardez level ![]() A scene from the MOH launch video, using only in-game post process
As CG Supervisor on Medal of Honor, I filled many roles. Below, you'll see some highlights from my Technical Art work.
Our first upgrade was to the lighting system. We switched to a radiosity renderer, implemented a fully-dynamic shadow casting sun light, and switched to a pre-light renderer (which allows many more dynamic lights.) ![]() (Mouseover for a "before" shot)
We also made many improvements to the render and postprocess pipeline: Dynamic Iris, Filmic Tonemapping, Color Look-Up Table, Atmospheric Scattering, Sun-Based "God Rays" (as opposed to screen-space), and Daytime Bloom (simulates "Glare").
![]() (Mouseover for a "before" shot)
Ultimately Epic added many of the same features to the core engine, but our implementations have some performance and quality advantages, and of course are better-tuned for the visual style of Medal of Honor.
A number of real-world optical devices used by the US military appeared in our game. I created many post-process effects to simulate the look of the real-world hardware.
![]() Night Optics Devices (Click image for next optics mode) ![]() Sniper Rifle view, with distortion, blurring, scene reflection, and tinting. ![]() ACOG scope view, with lens reflection, and peripheral vision blurring and vignetting. ![]() Health Indicator (tuned for performance, and based on heavy playtesting! Note the distortion effects where the blood is thick)
I also created the majority of the surface shaders in the game. (We had a very "UberShader"-heavy workflow, with lots of material instances and switches to turn on features as needed.) Here are some of the more interesting shaders I created.
![]() I created a versatile weapon shader that can convincingly mimic multiple surface types by reflecting the lighting and environment in a rich way. In the image above, compare the various types of metal to the rust and the wood. ![]() We had many natural environments, so we needed a versatile (yet efficient!) terrain shader. I created an ubershader that allowed our artists to iterate quickly, and add convincing blending detail as needed. ![]() Our skin shader is versatile enough to support lots of different skin tones. But a character is more than skin - our cloth shaders have a number of edge fuzz and deep scattering effects to keep them from feeling plastic. The eyes have a complex reflection and a built-in Ambient Occlusion mask that animates when the character blinks. ![]() Hover your mouse over the image to compare our skin and cloth shaders against standard Phong shading. ![]() Detail on the skin shader. Note the following. 1) Environment reflection (Visible on the edge of his face) 2) Softer sunlight terminator (visible above the brow) 3) A novel Sub-Surface Scattering technique (visible along the light terminator, particularly in the wrinkles under the eye). ![]() Medal of Honor had a lot of environments with melting snow. This shader, which is applied to a solid mesh, convincing blends the edge of the mesh against the ground or any other intersecting objects (like the pile of rags). The snow also includes a slight sparkle that's visible when the camera moves, and "Light Bleed" to mimic sub-surface scattering. Back to Portfolio waylonb@gmail.com   |   Curriculum Vitae |