Afghan Flyover - Solomon Jagwe

Fact File Name Solomon Jagwe Product Vue 5 Infinite, 3DSMax, ZBrush, MotionBuilder, Photoshop "A 12 million polygons landscape - Vue Infinite was perfect for that challenge!"

Click to see the complete video Demo>TAC Intro 2006

Solomon Jagwe is a 32 year old Artist from Uganda. He came to the US In 1996 to further his art studies, and became a permanent resident in 1999. Solomon used Vue Infinite to create a highly detailed landscape for a military flyover animation.

From Dad's old radios to 3D art

"I have been a traditional artist for almost my entire life. While in Uganda, I sculpted in clay, wood, metal and painted in oils. I also loved making mechanical military crafts out of any dumped material. I sometimes got in trouble for recycling my Dad’s old radios without permission…"

"I transitioned to digital arts in 1990 working with only a keyboard and Microsoft Paint in Windows 3.1. I remember fondly sitting by an old dual floppy boot, 640K RAM, IBM XT, with a flickering monochromatic monitor in a small windowless back room, powered by a series of car batteries..."

"In 1996, for the entire flight to Boston, I stared at an animation playing on the small LCD screen, wondering how on earth it had been done. I realized that this was exactly what I wanted to do: to create objects in 3D and use them to tell stories."

"The first time I saw Vue was on Cgtalk.com at the end of 2005. I downloaded the demo and decided I liked it enough to purchase a copy for myself. Ease of use, wind, animated water, a powerful ecosystem, global illumination, radiosity, etc... Man, I knew I just had to get myself a copy!"

Project's Story

"The Afghan flyover project was created for the US Military. After the attacks on the US on September 11, the US military sought out the perpetrators using the Eagle as a symbol of US Military Might. The eagle had to fly over the landscape and attack military bases in Afghanistan. We were given some photos of the Afghan terrain as reference, and went straight to work. The project was slated for 6 weeks - the part I worked on took 3 weeks."

"The terrain had to be highly detailed and large enough for a high speed chase and flyover. We tried to do the landscape in Maya, but the detail wasn’t up to par and Maya couldn’t handle a vast landscape with 12 million polygons. Vue Infinite was perfect for that kind of challenge. It helped us save a lot of time!"

"I used Zbrush to further edit the landscape. I exported portions of the terrain to Zbrush as OBJ files, painted them, and then exported them back to Vue, complete with detailed maps."

"I used some satellite shots, edited in Photoshop, for texturing the landscape."

"I used Motion Builder to import FBX files created by another teammate to bring the animated Characters into 3DS Max. I exported the animated characters with the invaluable Max to Vue exporter. The hardest part was incorporating the animated units, buildings and vehicles. I encountered some scaling issues, and the objects always seemed to show up somewhere in the sky..."

Characters in 3DS Max animated with Motionbuilder.

Imported in Vue thanks to the Max to Vue exporter.

Final render in Vue.

Natural Power

"I love the EcoSystem technology, which makes Vue very powerful and capable of handling millions of polys. I also love the atmosphere feature as well and the ability to convert any object you import into a VOB file for later use. Oh, and thanks for the VOB Max exporter. Invaluable!"