Rock Band is a flagship title for Harmonix. Around 2014, we were given the opportunity to bring it into the next generation with updated lighting, PBR materials, and new animations (and much more). 

It was a challenging experience, but it really changed my career path and broadened my skills across multiple disciplines.

Menu Background Art is one of my favorite things to work on in games since you get to work with every department. I was responsible for lighting and composing the shots, polishing animation poses, and setting up the states for each background. 

I contributed layout, textures/materials, and set dressing for the small club venues in Rock Band 4. The 'punk' club pictured below features a graffiti smart material that used existing art as stickers and flyers that created an overal grimey, layered look like heclub has been around for decades.

Rock Band 4 updated its propritary engine to use PBR Materials. I was in charge of R&D and training the art team on that pipeline. Using Substance Painter, I was also responsible for converting the old instruments, using smart materials and masks to quickly generate the varieties of finishes. 

For the guitars, the wear-and-tear was typically done by hand to recreate the look of a guitar that's been used for years; stripping the paint finish in the areas most played, as well as chips, scratches and fingerprints to the roughness maps.

Along with the next gen graphics came a pass at updating animation. First we needed to convert all the animations over to our new character skeletons. Once that was in, we found that some of the extreme motions from the earlier games no longer fit the vibe. 

So we pushed the animation in a more 'realistic' direction instead, with new mocap performances, ensuring bandmates wouldn't travel or clip as much. The guitar strumming and drumming animations were cleaned up as well.

The Intro to Rock Band 4 demonstrated our new lighting system and character animations. We want to capture that moment where a band takes the stage before their first song.

During preproduction, I was part of a small team to develop the look and feel of the next generation of Rock Band. These shots were early mockups for what would become the menu backgrounds and loading screens.