FX Technical Director

Selected Works

A series of cinematic studies done entirely within a Houdini-centric pipeline. I was responsible for all aspects of production, from environment creation to final rendering, exploring both CPU and GPU-based workflows.

KEY CONTRIBUTIONS

  • Pipeline: Assembled and lit scenes in Houdini (Solaris) with a focus on USD workflow implementation.

  • Environment: Generated terrains in Gaea and vegetation in SpeedTree, creating complex biomes.

  • Character FX: Handled character groom and cloth simulation using Marvelous Designer and Houdini Vellum.

  • Rendering: Explored multiple render engines (Karma, Redshift, Arnold)

Game Cinematic VFX

  • Crowd Pipeline: Engineered a performant crowd system using Houdini to drive particle movement, baked into Vertex Animation Textures (VATs) for massive scale. Included Vellum cloth simulations for flags integrated directly into character animations.

  • Hero Combat (Mobile): Directed and created Hero ability VFX for an unreleased mobile 4x strategy game. Focused on gameplay clarity and strict mobile performance budgets (overdraw/draw call management).

  • Marketing Assets: Created high-fidelity VFX for marketing videos, pushing particle counts and emitter complexity.

  • Optimization R&D: Conducted technical benchmarking comparing Nanite vs. Traditional LOD workflows for crowd rendering to define the project's optimal path.

Realtime VFX

My goal is to create complex technical logic behind artist-friendly interfaces. I build engine-agnostic tools that handle the heavy lifting, from massive city layouts to prop placement. allowing artists to focus purely on creativity rather than manual repetition.

TOOL SUITE

  • OSM City Generator: A hierarchical tool that ingests OpenStreetMaps data to generate realistic road layouts, which then drives a nested Building Generator HDA to populate the city automatically.

  • Wave Function Collapse (WFC) Dungeon: A level design tool utilizing WFC algorithms to generate infinite, logic-valid dungeon layouts.

  • Scatter Systems: An optimized instancing tool from city generation to organic set dressing.

  • Production Utilities: A suite of "Quality of Life" tools that tackled repetitive manual tasks.

Procedural Tools

AI

  • Generative Pipeline: Engineered custom, modular ComfyUI workflows for image and video generation. Integrated multi-model architectures utilizing Qwen, Z-Image, and Flux for stills, alongside Wan 2.2 and LTX-2 for video generation. * Video Generations: Proficient in high-end video generation tools including Kling 2.5/2.6 & O1, Veo 3.1, and Seedream Pro. Utilized Nano Banana Pro to refine motion consistency and visual fidelity in cinematic shots.

  • Pipeline Automation: Built custom ChatGPT agents to streamline pre-production logic. These tools automate the flow from scenario creation to generating syntax-perfect prompts tailored for specific AI models, significantly reducing manual iteration time.

  • Model Training: Trained custom LoRAs to ensure stylistic consistency and character fidelity, bridging the gap between generic model outputs and specific project art direction.

  • Audio Integration: Implemented ElevenLabs pipelines for high-quality audio generation and voice generation.