Bhavesh Pandey

Work History

• 

  Founder

  GRID labs

  August 2023 - Present

  London, England, United Kingdom · Hybrid
• 

  Houdini Technical Lead

  Double Negative

  January 2020 - Present
• 

  Senior Pipeline Developer

  Misc Studios

  August 2021 - July 2023

  London, England, United Kingdom

  
• 

  Senior TD, FX

  Framestore

  April 2018 - January 2020

  London, United Kingdom
• 

  Senior TD, FX

  Industrial Light & Magic

  April 2017 - April 2018

  London, United Kingdom

  Developed tools for instancing and volumetric deformations for destruction and explosion effects.
  
  Created a library of Lava simulations complete with secondary elements such as embers, smoke and fire, which were used in Jurassic Park to dress up the sequences and also as hero effects. The instancing tools were used to then set-dress the scenes and offset the lava library elements as required.
  
  Created custom DOP microsolvers for physically correct heat diffusion models for cooling lava effects. These tools were used extensively to create lava simulations which needed the lava surface to stretch and solidify as the lava cooled.
• 

  Senior TD, FX

  Double Negative

  March 2016 - March 2017

  London, United Kingdom

  Developed a suite of fur tools and SOP abstractions for Houdini.
  Developing workflows, prototypes and helping other TDs in picking up the tool sets and workflows. Show specific tool development and technical help.
• 

  Bournemouth University Masterclass 2016 - Advanced procedural techniqu

  Bournemouth University

  July 2016 - July 2016

  Bournemouth, United Kingdom

  Presented a master-class at Bournemouth University NCCA on
  Advanced Procedural Techniques.
  
  The content involved VEX (Vector expressions), VOPs (Vex Operators),
  Houdini techniques, procedural articulation of physical phenomenon,
  mathematics and some of the more advanced Linear Algebra topics such as
  transformation matrices and quaternions etc.
  
  These topics were covered in theory as well as visually by means of live demo
  of these techniques.
• 

  Senior Houdini TD, FX

  MPC

  January 2016 - March 2016

  London
• 

  Senior Houdini TD, Creature FX / Techanim

  MPC

  November 2014 - December 2015

  London, United Kingdom

  The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau)
  
  Oversaw all the Houdini tasks for Creature FX across multiple sequences and ensured all the tools, setups and tasks remained bug free and finished without issues.
  
  Responsible for creating Creature FX setups/tools in Houdini and integrating these with the MPC’s Houdini Pipeline which is at very young stage nevertheless growing steadily and fast. Creating setups which scale efficiently and procedurally for the Crowd Creature Fx for entire sequences.
  
  Developed an entire Fur tools suite for Houdini, used on multiple sequences and provided support for all the tools for the Creature FX department.
  Created generic procedural Fur-Water Interaction tools/setups which are Deterministic, Efficient, Interactive, Art-Directable used across multiple sequences.
  
  Did workshops/demos demonstrating Tools/Workflows/Setups to Multiple departments (Creature FX / Tech-Anim, FX, Software)
  
  Responsible for training / guiding other TDs in using Houdini setups, making OTLs and debugging tools etc.
  
  Responsible for creating Efficient-Smart High Fidelity Force Occlusion/Attenuation computation modelling tool in Houdini. This is responsible for adding a very detailed and art-directed layer of control in any simulation where Forces are occluded and hence attenuated.
  
  Responsible for creating a High Fidelity and Efficient Unified Wind/Force Modelling tool, complete with various controls for Art-Directing Forces-Objects(Could be character or FX objects). Also integrated with the Force Occlusion computations so forces get attenuated based on whether they are occluded by any Objects/Characters in a realistic manner.
  
  Responsible for Delayed Load / Instancing tools which allow for per-point varying instances using Houdini’s OTLs and Python Modules. This ties in nicely for quickly and efficiently setting up QC renders.
• 

  Effects Technical Director

  Prime Focus World

  October 2011 - August 2014

  London, United Kingdom

  Hercules (Brett Ratner)
  Massive To Houdini tool to read massive simulation data and create skeletons in Houdini. This was used for creating dust and ground interaction effects such as gravel etc for the agents from Massive simulation.
  Python based tool for creating Arnold Procedural instances of fire/smoke simulations spread over large terrain with attribute based variation mapping features.
  
  White House Down (Roland Emmerich)
  Bespoke Cluster set-ups for pyroclastic explosions and fire simulations, pyroclastic shading, spearheaded the use of Deep image data for volumetric effects along with CG and Compositing Supervisors and tested deep image setups for some shots which benefited from deep image compositing.
  
  The Last Stand (Kim Jee-Woon)
  I was tasked with creating smoke trails and setting up explosions and interaction of smoke with
  these explosions (explosions pushing the smoke and shock-waves etc).
  Shading /shader augmentation of for smoke and/or fire and setting up technical
  passes for smoke for the compositors.
  
  Resident Evil: Retribution (Paul W.S. Anderson)
  Responsible for Fluid simulation and debris for some shots (Axe men shots).
  
  Dredd 3D (Pete Travis)
  Responsible for some art directed smoke simulations including, lighting, shading and rendering these.
  
  Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem Singh)
  Houdini-Naiad TD responsible for all the Art-Directable and controlled Fluid Simulations (FLIP
  and Augmented Paint driven FLIP solver), waves, ripples (augmentation of solvers as well as
  custom solvers) and CG character - Fluid interaction using Houdini, Naiad and / or combination of both. Post-Processing Naiad sims, surfacing and prepping particles for rendering as points with Mantra.
  Developing workflows for better integration of Houdini-Naiad.
  Developing I/O digital assets facilitating I/O of data (Meshes and particles) to or from Houdini-Naiad.
• 

  Houdini Effects Artist

  redchillies.vfx

  December 2009 - August 2010

  Worked on effects RnD for the film project “Ra1 (Ra One)” as a Houdini Effects artist.
  My work over there includes effects, tool development (Effects centric) and testing.
  I assisted my Supervisor with setting up the Workflow and Pipeline in Houdini for the specified film project (primarily using Python and HScript or sometimes a combination of both) and checking the workflow scripts (Python) for bugs and fixing them.