Corona, California, United States
Working to constantly improve the film and cinematic process. Focused on simplification for the user, and the developer, to cover the 85% and still making sure the other 15% can be accomplished. Let artists do art and let the tech support them without getting in the way.
- Core Technology Team. Jack of all trades supporting all departments with workflows and tools. - Provide tools for optimizing the export of XGen groom and animation from Maya for use in Unreal 5 as groom and shot caches. - Created core Maya package for managing plugins, menus, and versioning. - Part of “Core Team” responsible for designing Unreal Cinematic workflows, data pipelines, remote workflows, and DCC integrations.
- Designed and implemented core systems and artist toolsets for a groom agnostic hair rendering and animation pipeline targeting Maya, Houdini, and Katana. (Belaro) - Created a backend pipeline and rendering solution for instanced, animated, and modifiable crowds. (MobBoss) - Worked closely with FX, Environment Modeling, and Lighting artists to create a flexible rendering solution for mass instancing of geometry. (Scatter) - Improved render performance by developing a render-time auto-instancing solution for complex Katana scenes. - Led software development initiatives as subject matter expert on procedural geometry and complexity management as primary point-of-contact. - Primary studio liaison to Autodesk, Pixar, and Redshift for XGen integration, workflows, and rendering. - Setup new Surfacing department, establishing role in pipeline, developing workflows, and working with artists to learn new pipeline tools. - Established a new system for managing shaders during the transition from mtor to monolithic shaders. - Lead integration of XGen into the hair and environment pipelines. - Act as mentor/adviser on various film and pipeline related issues.
- Lead architect of XGen, studio's solution for arbitrary instancing used for hair, fur, grass, leaves, trees, layout, stitchwork, and much more. Now licensed as part of Autodesk Maya and used by dozens of studios. - Developed proprietary interpolation schemes patented by Disney - Created and delivered XGen training for artists and developers at Disney Animation, Pixar, ImageMovers, Digital Domain, and DisneyToon Studios. - Co-developed Bonsai, a next generation forest/tree/foliage generation, animation, and rendering systems. - Wrote underlying image toolkit used by all (non-mac) tools. - Lead technology contact for hair and foliage within pipeline. - Software Supervisor for Lookdev/FX group managing 20+ people during Meet the Robinsons and Bolt. - Nominated three times for an Academy Science and Technology award (XGen, iGroom, Bonsai).
- Led object oriented redesign of large legacy CAGD system - Real-time geometry computation, direct haptic rendering, visualization - Optimization of OpenGL, Motif to tcl/tk, geometry consolidation, user support - Guide graduate students