Objective
I have a passion for creating compelling games that harness 3D art for immersive storytelling, fun gameplay, and enabling user creativity. I have professional experience with building avatar systems, camera systems, and 3D environments. My strength is my ability to work closely with game designers, artists, and developers on design and implementation issues, as well as to create new systems that enhance the audience’s visual experience and enjoyment. My long term goal is to design gameplay experiences that cohesively leverage 3D art, game design and storytelling.
Shipped Titles
Superstar City ( Facebook, PC, Mac )
Hangout.net ( Web, PC, Mac )
Hangout Hoops ( Facebook, PC, Mac )
Work Experience
Hangout Industries
A virtual world start-up founded in Boston. Development eventually moved to LA.
January 2008 to August 2010 - Los Angeles CA & Boston MA
Title: 3D Technical Artist
- Researched and created a spec for avatar tri-count and joint limits based on: Projected min spec, desired number of avatars in a space, and game engine capabilities ( Unity 3D ).
- Modeled and textured the first set of avatars and clothing assets with Maya and Photoshop. Worked with the creative director to tweak the avatar’s perceived age, based on our target demographic and focus tests.
- Created and maintained the male and female rigs in Maya, optimized them for mo-cap animation transfer. Helped direct mo-cap actors during the capture process.
- Prototyped and implemented the avatar customization systems in Unity. Handled all maintenance, extension and optimization for these systems.
- Prototyped and implemented the avatar facial animation system in Unity. Created a system for animating avatar facial features without using joints, and a system for designers to define facial animations and moods in XML.
- Managed two artists along with the creative director. The artists and myself were responsible for creating clothing items, hair styles, make up etc.. for bi-weekly release to the virtual world.
- Developed and maintained the standalone prototype and its features in Unity.
- Developed a room system that allowed users to create 3D rooms from an image/photo of a location. Users could walk around in a 3D space as if walking around in the photographed space.
- Developed a Camera System to track the avatars as they moved around and switched rooms.
- Modeled and textured the environment and props with Maya and Photoshop.
- Setup GI lighting and created lightmaps for the environment in Maya Mental Ray.
- Modeled and textured the environment with Maya and Photoshop.
- Setup GI lighting and created lightmaps for the environment in Maya Mental Ray.
- Created a Camera system that tracks models walking down the runway, and transitions to, or cuts to different camera locations in the environment.
- Modeled and textured the environment and interactive objects with Maya and Photoshop.
- Created lightmaps and reflection maps for the environment using Mental Ray.
- Setup in game lighting and lighting effects in Unity.
- Setup the environment colliders as well as hoop and net physics.
Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University
July to August 2007 - Waltham, MA
- Modeled the basic exterior structure of the building based on the measurements we took.
- Handled setup and optimization of our render process, GI, and passes in Mental Ray.
- Researched and implemented 360 panoramic renders of the finished space in Mental Ray. I used these renders to create interactive 360 VR elements in Flash.
- Implemented the frontend Flash web page, page navigation logic, and embedding code for the interactive elements with Actionscript.
ARB Interactive
A small media production company.
June to August 2003 - Mumbai, India
- Created 3D models for, lit and rendered three pharmaceutical product videos for USV India Ltd.
- Modeled three conference stall designs and rendered walk-through videos for USV India. One design was built at CPHI Prague '03
Education
Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University
Waltham, MA
3D Animation Certificate, Graduated September 2007
Boston University
Boston, MA
BA Computer Science, 2002 - Graduated January 2007
Software Proficiency
Unity 3D : Deep knowledge of scripting API, Physics systems, Optimization, and Art pipeline.
Maya : NURBS & poly modeling, rigging, MEL & Python scripting, expressions, UV mapping & texturing, shaders, lighting & rendering, Mental Ray, HDR workflow.
Photoshop : Texturing, Vector Art, UI Design, Concepting
Visual Studio : C#
Pixologic Zbrush : Sculpting, export and map creation.
Dreamweaver : CSS, basic Javascript, database integration
Flash : Design & AS3
SVN
Proficient on Windows and MacOS.