Experienced (10+ years) 3d game artist (vehicles/hardsurface/enviro)

ValN84

Hi,

My name is Valentin Nadolu and I'm a 3d artist with 12 years of experience in AAA games and other real-time type projects. I've worked for 10 years at AMC pixel factory in Bucharest starting as a 3d Vehicle Artist, then Lead 3d Vehicle Artist and even as Project Manager for a while. After that I've worked for INDG in Bucharest on 3d configurators for Yamaha and Honda. For the last 4 years I've also been teaching Maya, Substance and Unreal Engine 4 at a university level.
I'm very passionate about mechanical stuff in general and vehicles in particular. I like the technical aspects of 3d rendering and love efficiency so I can do a variety of technical work, from writing scripts in MEL/Python to developing custom pipelines with documentation that maximize efficiency.

I am looking for freelance offisite work in my area of expertise, I can provide 40hrs/week availability and invoices for all of my works (have my own EU registered company).

Software proficiency:
Autdesk Maya (expert)
Autdesk 3ds Max (advanced level)
Zbrush
Adobe Photoshop
Substance Designer and Painter (expert level, I also teach Substance)
Quixel Suite
Any 3d baking software you could think of (xNormal, Substance, Faogen, Handplane, etc)

If you'd like to read my full resume, please use this link. 
My Artstation can be found here.
Here are some highlights I'm most proud of, in chronological order from the oldest to the newest. Clicking the links will take you to my Arstation page for that project for more images.

1.Mercenaries 2: World in Flames car: Veloce

This project was my first major AAA title as Lead Artist at AMC pixel factory.
My favourite car I built was the Veloce. I built it without a concept, I was only provided with a description: "Create a mid-engined supercar, the fastest car in the game. Main inspiration, something between a Bugatti Veyron and a Keonigsegg". I chose to stray from the Veyron idea, in my eyes the Veyron looks like an oversized, overweight Passat so instead I tried to put a bit more italian pazzaz into the design with typical Lambo proportions.

The team created over 100 vehicles for Pandemic Studios, most of them with very little reference, mostly a simple concept or a few words describing the vehicles. The civilian vehicles were mostly handled by AMC while Pandemic took care of the military ones. I was unofficially in charge of the civilian cars’ final look.

Since Pandemic was working in XSi and AMC used Maya, we had to convert everything and also do the game engine specific setup in XSi: damage, LODs, etc. I also wrote a bunch of MEL scripts to ease the process.

Here are a bunch of other vehicles I've modeled and textured for this game:

Spectrum Elite

Spectrum Sport

Valorous

Inferno

Gopher

2. Test Drive Unlimited 2: Lancia Delta Integrale EVO 2

For this project, the Vehicle Team at AMC has created quite a lot of vehicles. The project was a quite difficult as we had to create highly realistic exteriors and interiors sometimes without blueprints or other precise reference. 
The Lancia Delta Integrale EVO 2 was the only car I had the pleasure of creating from start till finish as most of the time I was busy managing the team and doing QA.


3. High poly model: Honda Valkyrie Rune 

This is a high polygon model of a Honda Valkyrie Rune I did while working at AMC pixel factory back in 2009.

I wanted to test my ability to work with complex scenes and geometries on a longer term project.

4. Substance Painter Study: Planerod IAR-80

Loosely based on the IAR-80, a Romanian fighter plane from the Second World War. Converted to a salt flats racer. Features the original 14 cylinder radial engine with a gearbox that drives the stub wing mounted solid aluminum wheels. The rear wheel is taken from a larger bomber and features a regular tire. Everything was put together on a tight budget, hence the weird method in which the front wheel hub assembly bolts on what remains of the original wing. Heavy usage on the corrosive and abrasive salt flats means that the hotrod got painted over multiple times, hence the rough paint job. Also, nobody really bothers to clean up the salt buildup.The high resolution model has ~1 million triangles and it’s created in Maya using Creases and Smooth Preview. Baked in Substance Designer, painted in Substance Painter in about 16h: one 4k texture plus a smaller alpha for the glass.

5. Zbrush work: Leather Chair

Zbrush + Maya + Substance Designer bakes and Substance Painter final textures. Done in 16h.

6. 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle: Substance Painter

A well used 1968 Chevelle COPO with some non-OEM stripes and SS roof vinyl. 
Modeled a long time ago in Maya, baked and textured recently in Substance Designer and Painter. 

7. Jet Truck salt flats racer

Here's a truck I made using one of Scott Robertson's sketches. Modeled in Maya (32k low poly with 1 segment bevels and weighted normals, no high poly model), textured in Substance Painter and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 3 Beta. 

8. Personal Project: Unlikelydrop.com

unlikelyDrop.com is my blog dedicated to unusual or rare lowered and stanced cars.

I post original content in the form of virtual tuning done in Photoshop, 3d or by compositing 2d and 3d.