About Professional Project

Virtually Live

Singapore

2018-2020

Art TD / Technical Art Director

- Define art pipelines for key art assets (tracks, vehicles)
- Write shader set to be used with high performance in mind (iOS/Android)
- Communicate technical art restrictions to teams (Singapore/Spain)
- Lead with examples of best practices and measured results
- Point of contact in both studios for art pipelines
- Regular CPU/GPU profiling of project and reporting of any concerns
- Resulted in bringing low performing (memory/FPS) scenes up to targets

Post FX/Lighting

Environments/Tracks

Vehicles

Custom Batching in Unity

The CPU cost of preparing objects for rendering was proving too high with our scenes when using regular Unity GameObjects. To get around this I wrote a system that collected all the static renderers and clustered them (similar to a quad-tree) so that they could be queried with Unity's Culling Group API. From this, I was able to quickly get the objects needed for rendering and make direct calls to DrawMeshInstanced() to render all instances of a mesh in 1 Draw Call. I found an added bonus was that all instances would truly be rendered in one call, whereas profiling revealed that Unity often breaks batching of a single instance type.

Bandai Namco

Singapore

2016-2018

Lead Technical Artist / Studio TA

- Establish, promote and drive the technical goals of studio titles
- Stand in as acting lead artist in-lieu of assigned staff
- Client/stakeholder meetings to present project updates
- Educate art/vfx/environment/prop staff on best practices
- Identified and pushed recruiting of some of the top talent at the studio
- Assist HR with recruitment, relocation and on-boarding policies
- Assist management with studio direction and staffing structure
- Go-to person with outsourcing for technical guidance

Ubisoft

Singapore

2015-2016

Senior Technical Artist

- Owner of data shaders for Singapore team focusing on usability and scalability
- Technical role repsonsible for art performance and budgets on Xbox One & PS4 content
- Performance profiling with PIX/Razor
- Work with artist to build shaders/tech that supports visual benchmarks
- Establish myself as the go-to guy for technical and performance related questions for the art team

AC : Syndicate

Arrived at the closing phase of the project so I was involved in a lot of performance fix-ups and general tech-art work to identify graphical issues that needed fixing.

AC : Origins

Part of pre-production team and focused a lot on shaders for the sails and also the shoreline effects, where you would expect different staining and waterlines and wetness based on the tide. Additionally, worked on shoreline assets such as reeds and floating platforms.

twofour54

Abu Dhabi, UAE

2012-2015

Head of twofour54 Gaming Academy

The Gaming Academy was an initiative of the Media Zone Authority of Abu Dhabi to stimulate talent growth in the creative industries, in particular video games and animation. I ran the course on both administrative and content delivery sides and managed stakeholder interest. This was a very involved role in which I wore many hats depending on the situation.

- Working relationship with Ubisoft Abu Dhabi to collaborate and manage course involvement
- Created a simulated studio environment for a more genuine student experience
- Represented Academy at events such as Comic Con
- Designed, maintained and delivered curriculum with a focus on industry best practices
- Student progress and expectation management through review and consultation sessions
- Outreach efforts to local universities to promote game development as a career opportunity

Flame Shark

Brisbane, Australia

2010-2012

Developer / Founder

- Company registration/setup/reporting procedures
- Project documentation development and maintenance such as technical, design and art references
- Team management and task delegation
- Heavy C# and Unity development with a focus on the mobile and tablet space
- Gameplay scripting role designing and implementing gameplay mechanics in C#
- Performance profiling for mobile devices to ensure speedy performance
- Technical artist role to establish asset pipelines and author shaders and tools to assist development

Ubisoft

Singapore

2009-2010

Assistant Art TD

- Technical role responsible for performance of AAA content on Xbox360 & Playstation 3 consoles
- Daily profiling of performance heavy assets such as environments
- Educate and delegate performance improving tasks to art team
- Introduce new staff to the internal tools, technology and processes
- Surgical scene deconstruction to (PIX) to expose hard to find performance issues
- Lighting & Environment role on many environments to assist team with milestones
- Pre-production work on ocean shading technology for Assassins Creed 3

Krome Studios

Brisbane, Australia

2006-2009

Lead Environment Artist

- Environment art roles taking on daily tasks of architectural and landscape construction
- Lead role managing team of environment artists
- Efficient modelling techniques to ensure speed of development but also rendering performance
- Profiling of environments to expose areas of low performance and delegation of tasks to rectify
- Authoring of shaders and required materials and textures when needed
- Technical skills development through the creation of tools and shaders
- Generalist role (props/textures/lighting) when the projects required

U235 Studios

Melbourne, Australia

2004-2006

Environment & Tech Artist

- Pitched projects in Lyon, France with Producer to potential investors at Game Connect 2005
- Learnt C# and HLSL as a necessity due to no dedicated tools/shader programmer
- Responsible for all art and managed/mentored other staff members
- Built all environment art including creation of all materials, textures and effects
- Managed outsourcing of assets with reviews and quality control
- Research into engine code (C++) to implement shadow mapping and other enhancements

4D Rulers

Brisbane, Australia

2003-2004

Environment Artist

First foray into the professional realm of the games industry! This was a low-budget studio charged with developing an Activision Value game. My role as an environment artists included the modelling and surfacing of world props and geometry including material creation (and all maps required). In the closing months I was also tasked with AI setup and lighting.

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