I have worked within the Rendering, Lighting, Sets, GT(production engineering) and Tools (R&D) departments. My main contribution is in the Lighting department pioneering what we call a Lightspeed Technical Director. This position involves writing lighting tools, optimizing the lighting rigs and debugging/fixing problems in lighting, rendering and frequently shading or other areas of the CG pipeline. This also involves shading, compositing and managing large volumes of data (crowds). GT is General Technology(general production engineering), and Tools is our R&D department.
CG Supervisor
Industrial Light & Magic
1990 - August 2004
San Rafael, CA
Set up the technical aspects of a new show including: pipeline development required, look development for characters, budgeting and crewing with the Producer, tech development with the VFX Supe, review of shot work, etc.
Programmer
Alias Research Inc
September 1988 - May 1989
Toronto, Canada Area
Program to deform a 3D mesh into 2D for painting. Program to sew together disconnected 3D elements derived from 3D printer.
Research Scientist
NYU Computational Neurosciences Lab
1987 - 1988
New York, NY
My main contributions were programs to support so-called 'brain peeling' in which digital brain tissue, reconstructed from slices, would have successive layers stripped from the 3D surface and deformed/flattened into 2D images. Also programmed a conformal mapping system to project the 2D images from the retina to the visual cortex.
Programmer
Omnibus Computer Graphics
1985 - 1987
New York, NY
Various graphics programming tasks but the main project was writing a new renderer with Dave Gordon. I was responsible for anti-aliasing.
Programmer/Animator
Digital Effects Inc.
1982 - 1985
New York, NY
Technical support for artists working on commercials. Ultimately wrote an animation system for the then new SGI Iris. The company dissolved before it was complete enough to use.
