Here is my path in art and self development, from very recent and down to the very beginning.
2026
At the end of the February 2026 I closed my trusty Georgian individual entrepreneurship and moved to Serbia - new labor law in Georgia is not clear and seems to be filtering out everyone with income below ~4K USD/mo from the country, so only the best can stay. I'm not the best (yet? XD), so I will try my luck in Serbia...2024 and up
My current projects for Unreal Engine 5.5+, started in October 2024 - UNIBLOCKS FREE & PRO:
2023
UNIBLOCKS for Unity (HDRP), started somewhere in autumn. Few months after release on Asset Store in summer 2024 this project was put on pause due to the lack of sales and many technical blocks in porting it to URP & Buil-in versions of Unity engine, where main income is made:
2022
Russia attacked Urkaine again, this time at full scale. In 3 weeks I sold all my home stuff with a discount, borrowed two grands from frend to buy gaming laptop and in the middle of March 2022 fled to nearby Armenia and later to Georgia (where I'm staying for last 4 years with visaruns). Since 2021 there was developing issue with my eyes - can't work more than 3-5 hours (pushing above that leads to migrane for 2-3 days; diplopia, caused by age) so being crippled is a challenge, but manageable - thanks to my humble semi-passive income (Asset Store + FAB) it allows frugal life but this is freedom and at least some form of resistance. Still have not enough money to migrate further to earn new passport somewhere with years, but I will do my best to overcome odds and do it.Development of Buildmark was stopped, but looking how much effort and time next "quick" project took (UNIBLOCKS) I probably should took the risk and continue Buildmark development...
2020
Started creating my own game, finally - Buildmark (Build + benchmark). Since 2012 I wanted to create just a simple graphics benchmark, but you can't release non-gaming application on Steam (3D Mark is exception there) so there is a need for a game. I have tons of ideas about full-scale virtual world building, but there was a need to cut all this cool stuff to fit this dream project into something one person can do (and I've added way to many features anyway, to cut year later). Since 2021 it's available on Steam via Early access program. Note that most of those screenshots are from unreleased beta version so please don't buy it on Steam or you will be dissapointed (but there are some videos from it on Youtube):
2019
More work on Real Materials series - created artistic promo screenshots & video:
2018
Worked as freelancer for Sinespace - first was main island for newcomers, with news, tutorials and ratings. Hope you liked it, even if lightmapped lighting and light probes were disabled on live version to make it load faster *sigh*:
Second was Business Welcome Centre map (2018-2019):
And the third one was personal home map (2019). While it looks okay-ish it was not modular so I did a poor job for SineSpace here - it was impossible to change it into something different on the fly:
Also, added free material pack to Real Materials series on Asset Store. It took me only 3 years *sarcasm* to realize how mandatory is to have free assets on the marketplace to be discovered by customers.
2017
In January I created small Fallout of Equestria themed map (it's for MLP culture layer). Used various free & paid assets from Unity's Asset Store (SEGI for ligthing - voxel-based GI):
Discovered Sinespace virtual world for myself and tried to create an test map there. Unfortunately there was some kind of issue with lightmaps and lightprobes in SineSpace client, so all that lighting on the screenshots didn't work on live servers:
Project Sansar was in open beta - promised to be next Second Life, but like Blue Mars it doesn't felt right the way it was managed - people in charge didn't use it themselves, so it was annoyingly slow walking simulator (probably to prevent nausea for users of VR headsets). To motivate creators start using Sansar there was a map competition, with very good prizes (up to $15K for the first place). I tried my best with "CITY PARK" map but didn't won anything (it was looking nice but completely lacking of any kind of scripted activities/things to do beside pushing few objects with rigid body physics):
Also kept working on improving and expanding Real Materials series - more photos to make new metals & dielectrics, bit better demo scene with the ocean and new cool shape for material dummies:
In the December 2017 Unity announced Neon challenge with good money prizes ($20K for the first place). I tried my best, but was not good enough - managed to create few weird scenes with techdragon (also, a cringy video is still on Youtube):
2015
First I tried to create and sell my fist "Real Materials" pack in Unreal Engine 4.7 - made stunning copper materials, but was rejected with reason "We don't think that anybody will buy your bare metal materials, good bye.":
Next best thing to try my material pack idea was Unity's Asset Store - made it there just fine (still there in 2026!). First demo map was futuristic:
My workspace from that time:
2014
Some tests works with my old Cryengine 3 scene in Lumion 3D v.5:
2013
In Cryengine 2 (Sandbox 2 map editor) - "Future campus" sketches and some other stuff.
An idea of a benchmark app, made in Cryengine 3 SDK v3.5.8 (before cubemap reflections was limited to ugly 256x256px!):
2012
Some tests of graphics on Unity 3.x + 4.0 beta:
Some tests works (with same scene) done in Lumion 3D v.4.0:
2011
Some modding for Cryengine 3 - AmmoMOD for Crysis-2 game:
In Cryengine 3 - some random stuff with Crysis-2 game SDK (plus some video):
2010
This year started with me diving in to a Blue Mars virtual world (Cryengine-2 based!) - it was out of closed alpha, open to participate as a developer. I was already familiar with CryEngine 2 editor (Sandbox 2) so after ~4 months of active, obsessive development I've got a map there. And doing this realized that Blue Mars is not viable project - people in charge have no experience creating and using their own virtual world tools, key decisions were disconnected and obviously unfit, CryEngine 2 potential was barely used. Here are quite a few screenshots of my map for this long dead virtual world:
And here some artworks on walls from artist Mexanist and X-Rom:
In Cryengine 2 - an sketch of multiplayer map (had idea about this map since Source engine!):
2005-2008
Source engine experiments - were my hobby in realtime graphics begins, actually! Made a remake on map CS_Abascond for Counter-Strike Source CS_Abascond_PRO and other random stuff. Learned 3D modeliing in Softimage XSI. Tried to create a 3D gallery of my old 2D art. Learned how to create realistic metals in Source Engine (even written tutorial about this):
1997-2008
Tried to draw in 2D, first paper, later did some effects for scanned images in Photoshop and somewhere in this period got a tablet to draw digitally. Will post some old stuff here, need to remember, sort and re-value that period - DragonArt web portal managing, depression, big ambitions and lack of drawing skill ... yep, this period needs re-estimation.1983
I was born in Moscow, USSR, in a working class family. Drawing childish stuff with sis became a fundament for the rest of the things to follow ).