Jan 14, 2013.... Game Character Academy Officially Open! Enroll today!

Judd Simantov and myself have officially launched our online school for game character artists and game character technical artist. Find out more information at our website and feel free to contact me for any information!

Game Character Academy

-Rich

July 27, 2012.... Diamant Modeling Tool 1.0 Released

Diamant Modeling Tool 1.0 is officially released! Its been a long road getting this up and running. The current version supports Maya 2011, 2012, and 2013 for both x64 and 32 bit windows. I am going to be looking at both linux and mac versions in the near future as well. Until then, please visit the official website for Diamant Modeling Tools!

GET DIAMANT TOOLS HERE!

-Rich

Feb 13, 2012.... Diamant Modeling Tool Alpha 1.0!

After years of working I have finally finished the Alpha version of Diamant Modeling Tool for Maya 2011 and 2012. This is a full rewrite of what was in the past called Diamant UV. I have renamed this tool to Diamant Modeling Tool since it has evolved into so much more than just an automatic UV tool.

If you have or have not used Diamant UV in the past, you need to try this new version out! Every aspect has been vastly improved in terms of functionality, speed, and stability. I am very proud to finally get this version out to the public. It really has been years of my free time in the making.

Before an actual website is available, I am posting the link on this site. In the future it might live elsewhere. Until then, please enjoy and send feedback!

-Rich

Nov 7, 2010.... Blizzard Entertainment!

I have accepted an offer as the Lead Character Modeler at Blizzard Entertainment on their Next Gen MMO team. I have been there for a month already and am having a great time. Its an amazing team with so much talent on it. I can't wait for everyone to see what we are working on!

-Rich

April 28, 2010.... Been a while!

Uncharted 2 has been out for a while now. Hopefully everyone is enjoying it! If you haven't played the game I'd recommend it! Its a lot of fun!

The gallery is updated with my work from U2 as well. There is also a book coming out from Ballistic publishing with the art of Uncharted 2. The quality is pretty amazing!

I spoke at GDC this past year again on the character pipeline of Uncharted 2. The slides are available below if anybody wants to check them out. Besides that, I am hard at work on many different things. If you haven't checked out Diamant UV I'd recommend doing that too. I'm in the process of rewriting the core for more stability, features, and speed. Tools3d.com

Uncharted 2: Character Pipeline

-Rich

December 4, 2008.... Uncharted 2 and Updates!

Uncharted 2 has been officially announced! Hopefully you guys got to check out the teaser trailor up on gametrailers. If not, click here. In other news, Naughty Dog is looking for a fulltime Character Artist to join the team as well as a contract junior level character artist. If anybody is interested check the website for submission details.

Tools3d has been up for a while with the beta of Diamant UV. Its a pretty powerful uv editor for Maya. With the next release, which should be soon, it will feature a set of modeling tools which I'm very excited about along with a bunch of other enhancements and updates. Please join the beta. Its free and worth it. I'll be posting some video's of tutorials soon after the next release.

Christophe Desse is also doing a Gnomon Master class which will be covering the basics of Diamant UV along with the modeling and texturing process of a custom model he built. Its a pretty cool class which is very informative on several different levels. You can find out the information here. The dates are Dec 12th -19th.

-Rich

RD File Browser 1.0 and GDC slides

-Rich

March 1, 2008.... GDC has come and gone!

So I just got back from GDC about a week ago. I did two talks, both of which went well. I have gotten a lot of requests for the GDC slides as well as a tool I wrote called RD File Browser, which I showed and demo'd in one of my talks.

For those who didn't get to check out the demo of RD File Brower, you can download it up top and play around with it for free. It's a great tool that lets you view pics of obj's plus much more. There is little documentation really for it and no support. However, it's pretty easy to use and pretty stable, so you should not have any problems. Feedback is welcome.

My UV tool has been put on hold due to GDC so I'm getting ready to jump right back in. There are a couple features which I really want to add before it's released. It also will be released under a separate website which I will disclose when it's ready. I'm pretty excited about it!

Besides that, we are all hard at work at Naughty Dog on our next project. We are also ramping up across the board so if anybody is interested, check out Naughty Dog's site and apply. It's a great company!

That's all for now. Any questions about GDC or my browser, feel free to ask.

-Rich

October 10, 2007.... Its been a while!

Hi everyone. Its been a while since my last post. I have been working very hard on Uncharted : Drakes Fortune for the Playstation 3. Everyone at Naughty Dog is extremely happy with the game we've worked so hard on. Soon everyone will get to enjoy all our hard work and dedication. Soon After I will be posting work in the gallery section with all the art I have produced for the game. Over the last year I have also learned mel scripting and the Maya API. I have several scripts that I will be posting on my site for free along with my best and most useful plugin, the auto uv mapper for maya. Forget all those stand alone apps. If you use maya, you need to use this tool. It will be a lifesaver! I am hard at work finalizing everything and hopefully within the next 3 months I should have the first beta out for everyone to try. More to come later!!

-Rich

September 24, 2006.... update!

So a lot has happened since my last update. I have been promoted shortly after my last post to the Lead Character Artist at Naughty Dog. Its going great so far and hopefully soon we will be able to release some new information on our game. There is a trailor out on Naughty Dogs site that people can check out. It is much older and everything really does look much better now. I have also had the honor of being featured on mudbox's website as well as my image being used to promote thier software. I also have a full interview in the July issue of 3dcreative magazine. You can download a small version of the interview HERE! Besides that I am hard at work on a series of DVD's that I will explain more in detail later!

May 14, 2006.... little update!

Its been a little while since I've last updated this page. Since that time I have been honored to Judge two art contests. One from http://characterdesigns.com and the other from http://www.graphilla.com. I've also recently changed jobs and am now part of Naughty Dog. So far its been an amazing experience. I'm in charge of creating the main characters for our next generation PS3 title. You can find some information online along with an E3 2006 video and still images. I'll be updating the gallery with my newest work as soon as its available!!.