Headline

Staff Production Engineer / Technical Artist / Shaders

About

I am a technical artist with over 15 years of experience in VFX and animation. Super passionate about shaders and workflows, I enjoy the benefits of proceduralism, the craftwork of texture painting and lighting, and automating for pipeline efficiencies with an eye on UI for ease of artist use. I pick up new tools quickly and love experimenting with different approaches to solve some of the most difficult challenges. I have helped my employers design new processes as well as deliver many assets for productions. CG Specialties: Lighting, Shading, Compositing, Rendering, Programming. Tools: Python, Maya, Houdini, USD, Renderman, Nuke, Unreal

Location

Boulder

Work experience

Staff Production Engineer at Industrial Light & Magic, Apr 2023 - Present · 3 yrs 3 mos, Remote, Working with the CG Pipeline group within ILM R&D, specializing in USD backend and tools/workflows for Solaris (Houdini)

3D Business Development, Demo Artist at Adobe, Mar 2022 - Apr 2023 · 1 yr 2 mos, Demo/Teach/Evangelize Substance Tools and Workflows Specialty in USD, Substance Automation Toolkit

Senior Set Shade TD at Pixar Animation Studios, Apr 2021 - Mar 2022 · 1 yr, Shading Characters and Sets for "Lightyear" (June 2022) - Contributed to Houdini heightfields workflow for set dressing asset generation Tools: Katana, Flow (USD), Perforce, Houdini, Maya, Substance

Unreal Fellowship V4 | Winter 2021 at Epic Games, Mar 2021 - Apr 2021 · 2 mos, I had the wonderful experience of learning Unreal Engine with an amazing cohort for the Winter Fellowship. Produced the short "Uncanny Valley"

Senior Materials/Shading TD at Blue Sky Studios, Jul 2009 - Apr 2021 · 11 yrs 10 mos, Greater New York City Area, Shading & Materials: Creation of material scripts (shaders) and look-dev character assets and environments. This involves using both script-based procedural patterning techniques as well as texture map painting. Our role involves working closely with the art director to develop the final look and feel of each asset within a film. My tools are currently Houdini / Renderman and Substance Software Dev: I also help develop and maintain core pipeline tools that make our job easier/faster. I have redesigned some of our core technologies, writing plugins and scripts as and when needed. Highlights: - Designed/Coded a randomized variant generator tool and workflow for Solaris (Houdini). It allows a single shader and can generate multiple combinations and recipes to create multiple looks. - Development and maintenance of the fur to materials asset pipeline - Write various functions for our studio render engine so we can accomplish complex fur and procedural geometry coloring tasks under the hood. - Pipeline redesign of our image review workflow to integrate into the asset tracking software Shotgun (Autodesk) and utilizing RV as our main review tool. Ice Age Scrat Tales (2022) - part of the team to develop our new renderman eye shader. Nimona (2023) - lead character look-dev, pipeline and shading workflow development Spies in Disguise (2019) - lead character look-dev, software/tech development Ferdinand (2017) - lead character look dev Ice Age 5 (2016) - software dev for fur coloring pipeline Peanuts (2015) - lead character look dev: Snoopy, Woodstock, Lucy, Sally. - software dev for mtl/fur pipeline Rio 2 (2014) - character and set software dev Epic (2013) - character and set lookdev: Nod, Jinn characters, Bomba's house set, Palace forest set Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) - set lookdev, character and background character work Rio (2011) - set and background character work

Education

B.S., Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder

M.S., Digital Imaging and Design, New York University