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Who is Dayton T. Neuburger?

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A callback to the past...

Hey all! I'm Dayton and welcome to my biggest personal project yet! I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge a piece of my life history by telling a story and move on from there.This story starts back in 2004. I'm 10 years old and at my Uncles place for a family gathering. As the evening progresses my cousin arrives and plugs in his original Xbox. I was blown away, the thing was a beast and wow, that incredibly vibrant and radioactive introduction to the dashboard was incredible. Of course, now I wanted one.Suddenly, at what one could only consider the speed of light; I was sitting on the couch.Before I could ask him what he was going to play, he's sitting down on the couch next to me, controller in hand as he's loading up a game about a.. robo-cyborg? Either way, grew up on PS1 with Turok Evolution. I was ready for a Sci-Fi FPS.Before the menu reveals itself, I go to the washroom. While I'm gone, he enters the single player menu selecting the first mission. I arrive back and he's hitting start and a timer counts down with a now iconic sound effect. We fade to black and a loading screen initiates. This is when I heard a beautiful hum.. no.. chant? It sounded like monks, and yet it felt alien and mysterious.

Both of us growing eager and more excited as the screen fades from black with a low, reverberating hum echoing through the sound system. Oof.. shivers..The camera begins panning up and into vastness of space and we see... Halo.

In those moments, I was captivated. My mind flooded with ideas, creativity was running rampant. I was hooked.Since then, I always had to play Halo; and I was lucky. My parents gave me the gift of being able to enjoy this franchise to it's fullest, and I'll always be grateful for that. Infinitely.Later in my childhood, after completing all of the games available in the franchise at the time; I came across a community known as "the Machinima community."How I discovered it was through Deus Ex Machina. A cliche, yet memorable Halo Machinima created and directed by DigitalPh33r, or later revealed to be Jon CJ Graham. It was watching his stories and creativity that inspired my want to do the same. Years went by and I made tons of mega amateur stuff, some of which as uploaded to the YouTube channel Machinima! That was a very cool experience for my younger self.It was in that community I met some incredibly talented and interesting people that I ended up creating tight knit bonds and friendships with.Eventually in 2014 a group of some of my closest friends came together. We all grew up with Halo, and loved Machinima as an art form, our coming together was the most natural next step for all of us.We began creating a Halo Fan Film about the Master Chief's struggle with his own humanity. Long story short, the film didn't take off as we would have liked, which in the long run was fine. However, the project was a blast to create and I'll always cherish it and the memories I formed through it. Below you'll find two pieces of concept art created for the film by Jason Brown:

After things wrapped up I found myself growing a lot, I think everyone did in their own ways. We all split off and discovered our paths newly. For me, I always knew I wanted to learn animation, as well as understand and work with 3D models. That project was the perfect introduction to that. Heck, if possible, even make video games. Eventually I declared it to myself that one of my dreams was to work on the Halo franchise professionally.After working through some transitionary troubles in my youth, I went to University for Game Design and Development at VFS in Vancouver, Canada. It was as if I was on a mission, one that started when I was a kid... and I didn't even realize it.A year later I graduated, had brand new connections and was sent on a path that culminated in creating this passion project. My tribute to Halo, a tribute to my childhood.

Now that school was complete, I was on the hunt for work. That didn't stop me from working with the tools I fell in love with while at School at home. So, I bought and built a new workstation and began learning more about UE4. Creating lighting scenarios, renders, materials, following tutorials and learning the engine in an overall sense.While I was doing this, I began to create the Bumble Bee Lifepod from Halo Combat Evolved. This was the first 3D model I really committed to outside of School, and it was a very interesting process.Below is a Marmoset Render of the original model I created. It wasn't great, but it was foundational in my journey going forward.

After I was complete the model, UVs and Textures; I wanted to try using the asset library, Quixel Megascans. At the time, you had to pay for assets, or use points. So, I bought points and with them, assets. Now that I had what I needed, I began populating the scene.Below, you'll see the original Unreal Engine 4.20 renders of the Project I made as it progressed;

Soon after getting to this stage, I got a job at with a VR Realty company and focused on work. At the time I wasn't skilled with what is commonly called work/life balance, so practicing at home was a struggle for awhile. Nonetheless, I did, except I was convinced I wanted to focus on Level and World Art. This is when I went head first into Unreal Engine for a long while.I began teaching myself more by watching tutorials from people like Unreal Sensei, Blender Guru and a few others. This is when I started grasping he whole spectrum of the 3D world. While doing this, I worked on little scenes with some free marketplace assets that were available.Soon I would realize I didn't just want to work within the engine, I also wanted to get back into 3D modeling. This is when I began to alter my career path and take on new teachings. Eventually my contract at the company ended and I focused on 3D modeling outside of the temporary jobs I working.About a year later I found myself at Electronic Arts. While I was there I realized that I wanted this project to be complete; so I came back to it.I began to build out bolder ideas. Thinking why not rebuild the whole level instead of it being a simple scene/shot? Of course, I was getting ahead of myself, and began to document some of the ideas I had, as well as gather reference. I ended up choosing to rebuild the first half of the level itself, leaving the other half open to possibility.Eventually, Unreal Engine 4.26 is released, and along with it, a water system. This is when, after 10.5 months of getting back into 3D modeling, I began re-building the Lifepod using a High/Low poly technique. You can see the results of this process below:

After completing this, I went over my modeling process with a friend I graduated University with, as well as a new friend I made while at EA.I realized there were certain areas of the mesh that needed improvement, as well as my process overall. This is when I thought about rebuilding it from a mid-poly perspective vs HP to LP. However, I would come back to this later, if I didn't, the project wasn't going to get complete in any other areas had I gone too deep into perfectionism.This is when I went on the hunt for a one-to-one replica of the original level and ended up getting one from Sketch Fab. I began building out the environment again, and from the perspective of the first half of the original level. This includes everything from the screenshot below.Note: You can click the image to go to the SketchFab page.

Importing this mesh into Unreal Engine 4, I used it as a sort of blockout for the Landscape I'd now begin to carve out, as seen below:

Now that the landscape 1st pass was complete, it was time to dive into a 2nd pass. This would include distant mountains... and a Halo Ring.I could have gone into Maya and Zbrush to build out my own mountains; or even World Machine. However, since I already had some on hand from Brushify creator Joe Garth; I opted to use his.For the Halo Ring, I went to SketchFab to find 3D references and discovered a model by Aegis Wolf. I'd use this to start, altering its textures a little bit in Substance Painter and its material assignments in Maya. However, I had my plan to build my own ring soon. Overall, the 2nd pass turned out well I think.

While I was satisfied with the general look, feel, and atmosphere of the level so far; something was missing.. well a lot was missing.Firstly, the lack of stars in the sky was odd looking, and the lack of rocks and trees made the open area look.. empty. This had the scene composition lack of lot of refinement.At this point, it was time to take a look at models, composition, textures, post-processing, and lighting again.I really have to nail the look and feel of the first level on the ring. In my mind, that means making sure the rest of the core assets are finished; like the Forerunner Bridge, Beam Tower, Gateway, and of course, the Halo Ring itself.Below are some screenshots from the original Halo Combat Evolved and the fan remake titled SPV3. These are here to demonstrate the overall level as it was before the official remaster. SPV3 is included simply because it's a very special project and plays off the original visuals quite well; definitely in my PureRef board.

Before diving into new assets, and even remastering some already complete assets- I wanted to implement RVT support on my Landscapes Master Material, which ended up being pretty easy. I think it's important that the assets I'm using on the surface blend with the material itself. Rather than having harsh edges, we can have a really nice gradual fade.In order to do that well, I did some R&D and came across a method that would work perfectly with the Quixel Megascans that I'm using for some of the set pieces. So I implemented everything required into the MS Master Material.

Now that Real-Time Virtual Texturing support is complete, its time to begin taking inspiration from 343i's new release: Halo Infinite. This games Art and Design direction calls back to Halo's history without being an identical carbon copy of Bungies original style.This is where a 3rd pass of models, composition, textures, post-processing, and lighting comes into play. This update is still being worked on, so expect to see this project finished by Late-Summer 2022.