Providing Innovative 3D Artwork, Web Design, and Software Solutions

"Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can't. You are right either way." -- unknown

About: rick@EnchantedGoods.com

First of all, I am actually a software developer and have been since the early days of the Sinclair & Apple II. In fact, my first 2 programs were an adventure game for the Sinclair (the actual Sinclair not the Timex variety that came out later) and a BTUH calculation program for the Apple II (contract job for a refrigeration store) both jobs done back in 1982. Since then I've probably written hundreds of programs in all sorts of different languages from 6502 & 68000 assembly to C/C++ and now mostly in Java. I can't summarize all the projects I've worked on but will say they varied from Games in disk magazines, to BBS doors, to working on the software for the Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. I even wrote and worked on an Enterprise Intranet Server for a few years.

Let me step back and discuss my interests in 3D (Which is what my hobby is now). When the Amiga came out back in 1985 I was especially impressed with its ability to handle graphics and animation and did some work with Imagine 3D soon after its release. Unfortunately as the Amiga disappeared I got out of 3D graphics for a while :-( and spent more time on Web/Java and Internet Security programming technologies...

After the personal PC's started breaking the 1ghz barrier, and memory prices fell, and with the release of todays 'power video cards' I decided to get back into 3D graphics and tried my hand at rending some fun images/animations. Well, it wasn't hard to see that some of those 'publically available models' were not optimized for rendering. A simple graveyard scene I was trying to do with only 10 objects and some grass had close to a million polygons! Took the computer a while to chew on that just for rendering a scene...

I decided to use some programming know how (including all the tricks I could find reading every tutorial about 3D, model design and polygon optimization) to produce a few high quality low polygon models. You've probably seen that most of the plug-ins that do this 'automatically' for you don't "know" about which lines represent which muscles/skeleton and can end up creating ugly optimized models.

I'll be the first to admit this is more of an 'art' than a science and the best way is by manually manipulating vertex positions and carefully reducing inappropriate edges or (basically building models from scratch). I've been successful at producing excellent quality models with 1/2 to 1/10 the number of polygons of those I saw publicly (as I add my projects you'll see some of these tricks and will be able to download the models as well).

My plan is try to release my models in 3DS or MAX (and maybe DFX) format and have at least 2-3 flavors of each:

1. Low-Polygon Model:  Fully optimized acceptable for gaming/real-time animation or fast rendering

2. Medium Resolution:  Fine for background ares of scenes (speeding up rendering times).

3. High Resolution Model: These version will typically have over 5 times the number of polygons of a low resolution model with a lot of detail good for professional animations/artwork

If the model can be animated, I'll try to also include version with bones. Lastly, all models are also scaled to as close to actual size  as possible (based on 3DS Max unit of measure system) for easy import into a real-world scaled scene.

Being a big sci-fi fan, I hope to produce a lot of original models with an Alien theme. After all, who doesn't like aliens? they're so cute and cuddly...

I hope you enjoy our site and come back often to see some of our latest projects...

Rick Rojas
rick@enchantedgoods.com