Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

Pointfit, Rounder, Sasquatch. Originally built to fit clothes to biped models, Pointfit has so many uses in day-to-day modelling that it now heads my list of essential plugs. From positioning trees on contoured landscapes to getting your edgeloops to sit right on a face. Ever wanted a model to be exactly the same shape, but with the points in different locations? Pointfit!

In your opinion: Integrated or Separated? :)

Oh god of 3D, hear my plea!! Integrate! Integrate! Let me end my daily struggle and toil flipping back and forth to Modeler, the unholy pain of trying to fit models together after resizing in Layout!! Have mercy on this poor wretch!! Integrate!! :-))

Did you model the Harley for the cover of the bike magazine as well, or just the barn?

That was a collaboration with my good friend and fellow Sydney LightWaver, Tim Cameron. He modelled the bike as only he can! I did the environment and lighting.

How did the bike project happen?

The bike project really is my good friend Tim Cameron's baby. His design and direction, his contacts and his stunning foreground object, the Skeletor bike. I did the background environment only. We both went overboard on fine detail on that one, Tim modelled threads on screws and I modelled key barrels on padlocks, geometry chips in concrete. But when it was printed full-size on the magazine cover, well it was all worth it.

What are you working on at the moment?

I've been working for awhile now on my city. This is a labour of love, the main setting for a private project I'm hoping to complete some time before the end of civilisation. Build a city! What was I thinking!!

But the tricks and techniques I've had to develop to get this thing to fit into RAM, whew, very fertile little project. Geometry light spill. Image mapped shadows. Endless weightmap gradients. Clip mapping that replaces 100,000 polys with a 1 MB image and six polygons. UV everything. Spent two weeks on road markings alone. Got my full parallax, fly-over trees from 5,000 polys down to 180 each!

Did I mention how long a render takes? 130 cars, hundreds of trees and buildings, reflections all over, a park full of trees, details, details, geometry, geometry, geometry everywhere. 230 images. Lit with shadowmapped spots. Volumetrics too. LightWave7.5, ONE MINUTE per pass!! Try doing that in MaxSoftyMentalMayaWhateverRay!!

Working at the moment on populating it with background digital people (this project is destined for live action foreground over 3D background) so I am electrified by the LightWave8 developments for easier character work and displacement capture.

What on earth possessed you to undertake as monumental a task as building an entire city?

Well a job came in that sort of got me thinking, but there wasn't enough time to do it properly. Also, it seemed that a fairly reasonable city might be quite a valuable digital asset to have. Of course, these things take on a life of their own, so soon I had a story treatment worked out and a short film to make!

In your showreel, why do some of the buildings in the city float?

The truth is these are all just work-in-progress renders. The camera paths are just quick flythroughs to see how the scene looks from various vantage points. The buildings are floating because I've built the tops, but haven't gotten to the bottoms yet! It's just that having rendered them like this, I actually quite like the look, so I think I'll build a few with jet units or anti-grav packs at the bottom...