iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 19m

A sneak preview of what's cooking. The dinosaur is my own "Crooked rex" model that you'll have seen a lot if you follow me. I assembled the environment from a Poly Haven, Megascans, & Fab assets, as well as trial and error with different snow mesh generators and particle setups.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 4h

I'm at the point of pixel fussing, but I've settled on a decent snowfall effect in Blender. Basic icosphere particles (see those in front of the dinosaur tail) were creating overly uniform streaks. Turns out the key was actually modelling a simple snowflake (see other renders).

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's not quite there, but it's getting there (this is more of a lighting test, not the final scene)

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The sky boxes on the new Katina stage in Star Fox multiplayer are too pretty. I keep getting distracted and shot down because I just want to gawk at the nice clouds.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Happy 121st name day, Tyrannosaurus rex! You have been a professionally and creatively lucrative animal for me. 🦖

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

There is now less than a month left to see our Future Fossils Megalosaurus skeletons at Blenheim Palace! Access to the gardens is included as part of most of the ticket types. The Palace and Gardens themselves are quite spectacular, and worth a visit in general.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

After playing more of the game, I have found that these may not be the most representative screengrabs. In proper cutscenes with more clearly directed lighting (as opposed to outdoor incidental conversation, like this shot here), path tracing for the most part is hugely superior.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A full resolution look at some the texture work I did for my "Crooked Rex" character earlier this year. This was a big personal leap in both overall fidelity and physical material complexity for me.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

To reiterate from the other site: this is the most convincing that a Tyrannosaurus rex has ever looked, across the board. Kieran knocked it out of the park with this one. Gold standard stuff.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Five weeks until the Ocarina of Time remake. Gonna be sharing random anecdotes until then. My earliest memory of the original was me as a toddler watching my cousin play it on the N64. I had a fixation on windmills at that age, so he took me on a "tour" of Kakariko Village.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'm like a year late to the game, but I got around to playing and completing Metroid Prime 4. If Prime 1 is a 10/10, I'd say Prime 4 is like a 7.5-8? I enjoyed it a lot more than I had feared given the negative buzz fandom buzz. I'd say that overall I prefer it to Prime 3 too.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Playing with different raytracing options in the Witcher 3 Remastered. I think the "basic" raytracing effect looks great, but path tracing (the alleged higher option) feels off. It makes for nice close shadows in some scenes, but has a smoothing effect that feels unnatural to me.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's probably silly to complain, what with them being you successsfully selling merchandise and all, but I miss my army of tiny 3D printed Triceratops. A small quantity of unpainted stock remain, though. If anyone is interested in procuring one, get in touch! (UK only, sorry!)

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A little look behind the scenes of the design process of the Future Fossils Megalosaurus! I started out by sculpting a generalised naturalistic reconstruction of the skeleton, much as I have done in previous works. 🧵(1/3)

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I have always disliked the way in which some people are shallowly dismissive about realism in art, and unfortunately, the rise of genAI content that mimics realism (albeit badly, and without any of realism's actual merits) has only made these sentiments worse in recent yearss.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Some more snaps from today 🦴🦴⚙️🦿

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Visited our Future Fossils Megalosaurs at Blenheim for the first time since we installed them last month. Because of how we engineered them to be lightweight & articulated, they sway in the wind. When you catch it in the corner of your eye, it gives them a little flourish of life.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It feels kind of surreal to see my design/model/render on a bus stop!

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Link's original Ocarina of Time look will always be a sacred classic in the context of the original game & its promo art. But I really love when costume design is used as an opportunity to add detail reflective of a character's culture & history, so I really do gravitate towards the remake design.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Anyway, speaking of great character design in a recently announced Nintendo Switch 2 game from a series that turns 40 this year: ASDFGHJKL OH MY GOD HELL YES!!!!!

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The promotional images for OoT remake Link with the physically accurate rendering do have an uncanny feel, but in game, the real-time shaders/lightning normalise the "greeble" and look much better. I'd even go so far as to say that this is the *second* best Link has ever looked.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

In case I didn't say it explicitly enough already, I think that the Ocarina of Time remake looks gorgeous. There's so much careful and considered attention to detail in the art direction. My inner child is also euphoric that we're getting a Zelda game that looks like this.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I was never a Mario kid (it's just an approach to game characters/worlds/visuals that never appealed to me). Instead, Zelda, Metroid, and Star Fox were the "The Big 3" Nintendo series that I paid attention to growing up. So having these in quick succession feels kinda magical.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The very aggressive snappy posing of Samus in the Metroid Ravenous animations has a lot in common with Miguel O'Hara in Across the Spider-Verse. It's a killer vibe to have given the whole vampiric aspect.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

If the Ocarina of Time remake, looking more or less like it does, had been shown during 2013-2014 when we were in kind of a drought period of Zelda news and had no real clue what was then only known as "Zelda U", the fandom would have been totally euphoric. Just saying...

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Between Star Fox back in July, Ocarina of Time remake in a few months, and Metroid Ravenous early next year, I am feeling fairly well fed by Nintendo right now.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Extremely fun attention to detail. In the original game, this puzzle was just kind of a floating ladder stapled to the wall.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I know some folks aren't hot on Link's design, but this is a cool detail. Stuff like this highlights why "hire this man" memes & AI comparison snark hold no water. If you don't like the design, fair enough, but it's wrong to act like there isn't clear & considered art direction.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

If the discourse around the Ocarina of Time remake has proven anything, it's that the Zelda fandom has an extremely short memory. If something exactly like this had been revealed say, 12 years ago, the universal response would have been quite different.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Ultimately, the Ocarina of Time remake looks like the best possible version of exactly what I expected it to be. But the thing is, what I expected it to be was also less interesting than than what it could have been.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Unreal "hire this man" memes are the obvious joke to be making right now, but given that the contrast isn't cranked up to a million with the most ugly saturation you've ever seen, I do genuinely feel like the Ocarina remake has dodged that aesthetic.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Half of the visual criticisms of OoT remake I do very much agree with, but the other half are classic cases of conflating "thing: different" with "thing: bad" without stopping to look and consider further.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Scrubbing fast to hide the in between roughnesss, but the core poses are getting there... If I can pull this study off, I'll be more confident with trying some wholly original gesture animations.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

It is a known fact that if you ever rig up a 3D T. rex for animation, you simply *have* to attempt a study of this shot. I don't make the rules.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Always a little frustrating when a new paper that really should have cited one of your past papers just doesn't, especially when your paper provides key contextual insight that could potentially entirely reframe the new paper's results and fundamentally question its conclusions.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

You can spot some of the skeletons I made for the game near the start of this trailer! I really like how the environment and lighting artists have dramatically staged them. Follow the link to wishlist the game and learn more.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I'm going to have to remind myself to update this render every time I'm able to publicly show a new skeleton model. There are more to come... 🦴🦴🦴

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Miscellaneous 3D bones 🦴🦴🦴🦴

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

3D musculature of various reptiles, extinct and extant.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

New favourite detail in Star Fox - The Great Fox has a mini fridge, and Fox pulls out a cold one after you clear Solar. There are tons of little moments like this that really add personality to this story, really feels fresh despite technically being the fifth game release that follows it.

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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Finally did a perfect all medals run in Star Fox, with the true ending. Extremely satisfying... Now for expert mode. It's such a good game. I already had fondness for the original, but the remake really has brought it to a new level for me. I hope there will be more to come...

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