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Objective
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I am seeking a full-time position as a mid-level programmer. My main interest is in character animation and physics technology applied to real-time systems and games.
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Summary of Qualifications
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- Passionate about creating quality character mechanics
- Very strong C/C++ programmer
- Very strong math and physics background
- Established games industry experience
- Two shipped titles (Ratatouille and Wall·E)
- Experience with multiple platforms including PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii
- Experience with character animation, state machines / behavior graphs, combat, and controls
- Experience working with Havok and the Havok content tools
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Experience
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| March 2008 - October 2008 |
Digital Domain |
Los Angeles, CA |
Games Programmer - Thundercats Game and Film (test completed, project not green-lit)
Responsible for implementing and co-designing rapid prototypes, with a strong focus on player interaction and full-featured combat. Developed the tools and pipeline to create the prototypes and managed the art content. Managed the overall technical architecture, design, and implementation of the character system. Additionally responsible for developing tools for XSI to help with film production.
- Established the use of Virtools for creating rapid prototypes and extended its functionality by creating many new reusable features including an animation state machine, animation blending, animation driven events, custom collision detection, and physics-based movement and navigation.
- Designed and implemented the state machine to enable non-programmers to create prototypes.
- Improved throughput of animation assets by working with animators to develop tools and established a pipeline to bring new assets into the prototypes.
- Noted to have been vital to the success of the render farm, used for the simultaneously ongoing film production, and supervising the team that created it, making it operational in less than 2 weeks, and maintaining its integrity over the course of the project. This tool saved artists from waiting for renders locally and allowed them to focus on creating new content.
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| June 2006 - March 2008 |
Heavy Iron Studios, THQ |
Los Angeles, CA |
Gameplay Programmer - Wall·E (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)
Responsibilities included implementing player moves and navigation in the shipped title Wall·E, communicating problems with design and proposing new solutions that fit with the intended design, and working with animators to create a fluid and responsive feel for the player characters.
- Extended the low level animation implementation to support significantly more complex blending and transitions.
- Reported in yearly performance evaluation to exceed expectations in functional / job competency, communication skills, inter-department satisfaction, teamwork, initiative, quality, and productivity, specifically as maintaining a high level of productivity without sacrificing quality and demonstrating a willingness to go beyond the requirements to produce intended results.
- Implemented procedurally animated and IK treads for Wall·E, player-controlled glider physics, ragdoll physics and a method to get up from ragdoll and transition back into key-frame animation as well as the pipeline to bring Havok ragdoll rigs into the game from Maya
- Recognized as top performer in a company meeting for efforts in creating flight mechanics.
Tools / Engine Programmer - Ratatouille (Xbox 360, PS3)
Responsible for maintaining and implementing new features in a custom in-house editor. Supervised the work of other programmers working on the editor and liaison to artists and designers who needed assistance with the editor. Responsible for evaluating profiling tools, and using them to improve the stability and efficiency of the code base. Also took on responsibilities that involved major changes to the entire codebase for both the game and editor.
- Noted for exceptional teamwork, "performs well beyond expectations with his teammates. He is immensely agreeable, unhesitant to put in extra effort under pressing circumstances. He is also eager to share his knowledge with his coworkers, and actively engages them as both a learner and a teacher."
- Fixed many threading and performance issues, including rewriting the memory manager for Ratatouille (shipped on Xbox 360 and PS3) to address thread safety and fragmentation issues, and gave peer presentations to inform the team of its features and utilization.
- Actively pursued ways to improve the efficiency of editor usage by learning what was consuming the most time for the users and making sure the features or bugs that had the biggest effect on performance and stability were given highest priority, and personally made sure users were noticing an improvement.
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| 1998 - 2006 |
Independent Game Development |
Chico, CA |
Independent Game Programmer
Developed a passion for creating games early and began creating 3D engine features including terrain with LOD, water with waves and refraction, particle systems, physics and animation. Took a special interest in animation and developed an open source skeletal animation library called "Animadead" (http://animadead.sf.net). Also spent time competing in game programming contests, and a student-run production-like class for game development. Created a game as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 called Bronze Age, and was responsible for character movement and combat.
- Designed and implemented the entire Animadead library and it was recognized as being preferable to alternative open source libraries on flipcode.com for being extremely light weight, clean, and well designed. It included several features that made it easy to use including a flexible and extensible hierarchical system for blending animations, native exporters from Maya and 3D Studio MAX, and an animation driven state machine, as well as several game demos to showcase the features.
- Animadead published in Software Developer's Journal as library of the month in June 2005.
- Animadead was also used by a group of students from the University of Ulm, who created a game called Animal Race, using Animadead, G3D, and ODE
- Won first prize in a game programming contest at CSU Chico for creating a 3D racing game (judged by SciTech Software Inc., a local software company).
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Education
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BS Computer Science, California State University, Chico 2006
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