Over the past few years I had the pleasure to work with the amazing team at P&P Projects on the design and visual-storytelling for Grupo Vidanta’s impressive and cutting-edge Luxury theme park resort development in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico.  I contributed with hundreds of concepts and visualisations for numerous key experiences across the Park, of which I’m permitted to share just a selected handful of designs here (Look for the BON logo).

From the press release:

Partnering with P&P Projects, VidantaWorld’s BON Luxury Theme Park has redefined the art of storytelling through masterfully crafted theming and design. P&P Projects worked in close collaboration with Grupo Vidanta’s in-house design, architecture, and construction teams to create original intellectual property and design captivating ride vehicles and cohesive environments, ensuring that each attraction delivers a fully immersive experience. From the epic Tecuani Beast to the family-friendly Izari’s Flight, every detail—from vehicle shapes to the surrounding landscapes—has been meticulously designed to transport guests into the fantastical world of VidantaWorld’s BON Luxury Theme Park. By combining visionary creativity with unparalleled craftsmanship, P&P Projects has helped make VidantaWorld’s BON Luxury Theme Park a destination where storytelling and adventure seamlessly intertwine.

To get a sense of the immense and breathtaking scale of this project, check out this video introduction.

The press announcement follows:

‘Thrillseekers will soon speed along at more than 100km an hour and face the kind of G-forces F1 racers endure as Victoria’s biggest theme park gets even bigger.

A pair of new roller-coasters will push Gumbuya World into the territory of Dreamworld and Movie World on the Gold Coast, with one of the fastest rides in the nation.

And after last month splashing $2.6m on a 44.5ha rose farm next door to the attraction southeast of Melbourne, the operators’ total landholdings have reached an enormous 287ha — believed to be the biggest landmass owned by a theme park in the nation.

The Australian Amusement Leisure and Recreation Association (AALARA) this week confirmed the Gold Coast’s biggest attraction, Dreamworld, only covers about 54ha, less than a fifth of the 287ha Gumbuya World now owns in Tynong North.

They also confirmed the faster of the two new roller-coasters would be among the speediest roller-coasters in the nation at 105km/h — though still outpaced by Movie World’s 115km/h DC Hypercoaster.

Gumbuya World chief executive Ron Weinzierl said the new coasters, worth a combined $40m, were just weeks away from opening.

Mr Weinzierl said the new rides would bring their total to 13, in addition to a zoo and other nature experiences that were part of a broader plan to lure tourists to Victoria that would ramp up as the 2032 Brisbane Olympics approach.

They include a 46m-high Project Zero, which will have riders pulling up to 5gs, and a more family-friendly attraction named TNT that will hit speeds up to 67km an hour along its 453m length.

“These coasters makes us the leader in the theme park industry here in Victoria,” Mr Weinzierl said.

“And on land size we are the biggest theme park in Victoria, if not Australia.

“We are now competing up against those leading theme parks on the Gold Coast.”

LJ Hooker Pakenham’s Sam Paynter brokered the latest acquisition and said Gumbuya was also now competing with the biggest dairy farms in the region, and that any expansion to the theme park was a “massive boost for the area”.

“They’d be up there as one of the biggest landholders in the area, without a shadow of a doubt,” he said.

Mr Weinzierl said the eco-friendly theme park, which is involved in a number of conservation projects including efforts to re-establish the critically endangered mountain pygmy possum, was considering renewing some of the latest acquisition to suit native wildlife once the rose farm currently operating at it reaches the end of its lease in seven years.

“It’s an opportunity to make sure that nature and the fauna on the site stays the way it should,” he said.

“We now have 660 acres (287ha) to be developed alongside the community in as far as what we do and what we put here.”

Gumbuya World’s wildlife attractions are expected to get a lift in the near future, having recently added a tree kangaroo from Taronga Zoo, they’re now investigating bringing in meerkats and monkeys.

The park had its busiest ever February earlier this year, but new rides are expected to bring in the biggest crowds yet with up to 5000 people on peak days over summer and total visitors as high as 500,000 a year.

“I figure it will be our hottest summer yet,” Mr Weinzierl said.

Gumbuya World replaced Gumbuya Park in 2018 and with the completion of its new roller-coasters will conclude the third stage of a five-phase masterplan to overhaul it.

Phase four is expected to deliver accommodation, most likely eco-friendly spaces.

“The goal is that people will come down, spend a day at Gumbuya and then the next day go to a winery or Phillip Island,” he said.

Mr Weinzierl added the attraction was already expecting a “bonanza” when Brisbane hosts the Olympics, and Gumbuya World would be among the attractions working to lure international crowds to Victoria.

An AALARA spokesperson said the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane presented “amazing opportunities” for the wider theme park industry and that they were working with the federal government towards a “bright and exciting journey” to the international event.

 Link to article (Paywall)

The recent system upgrade has finally allowed me to start putting 3D Coat through its paces in an integrated visualisation workflow. I’ve owned a copy for quite a few years however my previous system seriously limited its utility. Any moderately detailed voxel or surface sculpt would leave my old system dead in a ditch.

After an initial thumbnail establishing the overall composition a brief exploration of the visual language of the architectural forms, I dove into 3D Coat to create a collection of assets from which I could construct the interior. Through a heavy use of the symmetry tool and of Stencils (both my own and those created by others) using the Extrude tool I created the secondary and tertiary details, as well as the damage and weathering.

These assets were then individually exported as obj’s, reducing the polys in the conversion from voxel objects by 80 to 90 percent (depending on the level of detail).

Additionally, I created a rough and ready sculpt for the head and torso of ‘Cthulhu’ who will be seen emerging through a doorway. I didn’t need to invest too much time in the detail or fidelity of this sculpt as he would be quite distant and shrouded in mist.

These assets were then imported into Blender with the positioning and POV of the camera referencing my initial thumbnail.

To reduce the file size, system load, and render-times (as these are very poly heavy assets) I created Collection Instances for duplicates. For the material I wanted the cavities to be accentuated and to suggest the buildup of grime and dirt. For the materials, I created a Vertex Color instance under the Object Data Properties tab, shifted over to Texture Paint workspace, set the Object Interaction mode to Vertex Paint, and selected Dirty Vertex Colors from the Paint menu. This creates a Dirt Map based on the Cavities.

In the Shader Editor I created two copies of the Principled Shader – one for the overall material and another for the colour and properties of the Dirt Map. A Mix Shader was used to combine them, and Attribute and Color Ramp nodes were used to specify the Cavity Map and control its scale and edges.

The rest is playing with lighting with a mix of warm local and cool ambient lights, and volume shaders to create areas of mist and fog. The figure in the foreground was created in Makehuman and posed in Blender. Rendered in Cycles with a ‘Clown pass’ created with Workbench to make masking and separating easier in Photoshop.

Maybe I’ll post some demonstration videos next time I use this workflow.

A personal project and ultimately a test-bed for further experimentation with incorporating Unreal Engine into a Concept Art and Previs workflow.

A design for a small, agile 2-seater scout ship that’s capable of VTOL, and both atmospheric and space flight. Inspired by Friendship Swallows and a nod to Daniel Simon’s excellent vehicle design for Oblivion.

More to follow as and when time (for personal projects) permit.

This video is a part of a demonstration that I created for my concept art and previsualisation class in the School of Design at RMIT University Melbourne.

These videos in total demonstrate a relatively simple and straightforward environment concept art workflow in students new to concept art from thumbnail iteration and selection, to a final, polished deliverable that involves the use of Blender for blocking out purposes before taking a completed render into Photoshop for completion.

The completed image is featured in my work portfolio on this site.

I’ve long been a fan of Dan Simmons’ seminal science fiction series – The Hyperion Cantos, which spans four books, hundreds of worlds, and almost 300 years, interweaving a diverse range of influences from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the poetry of John Keats, the works of Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Jack Vance, Philip K. Dick and William Gibson among others including radical theological thinkers.

In my spare time I’ve been trying my hand at a series of style frame concepts for an imagined intro to a series based on the first book of these works. One location to depict in the intro is the the seat of government for the Hegemony or WorldWeb, and a Ecumenopolis (a planet covered by a single city). The WorldWeb emerges from the scattering of humanity to hundreds of planets from the dying Old Earth, and is a collection of over 200 planets connected by ‘farcaster portals’ and ‘fatline’ provided by the mysterious AI TechnoCore, facilitating instantaneous travel and communication between worlds. Tau Ceti Center is linked to a number of other worlds by the River Tethys, which is connected via giant farcaster portals.

Work undertaken so far in Blender. Background cityscape is created using renderings of the diffuse and alpha layers of the city from an orthagonal view. These are then mapped on to planes.

Many of the later buildings are courtesy of CGTrader, and are in the process of being modified by me. Ground plane is courtesy of Google Earth. Smaller buildings are simple meshes distributed on the ground plane as particles using weight painting. Still some work in Blender in preparation for a polish pass in Fusion and Davinci Resolve, and in Photoshop.