Ian Sachs

Work History

• 

  Engineering Manager

  ROBLOX

  January 2021 - Present
• 

  Industrial Light & Magic

  April 2014 - Present

  

  

  

  

  

  
• 

  Principal Engineer

  Loom.ai (Acquired by Roblox)

  September 2017 - January 2021

  San Francisco Bay Area
• 

  Senior Innovation Engineer

  Adobe

  June 2013 - August 2017

  San Francisco Bay Area

  Bridged the gap between research and engineering for a range of projects in audio, computational photography, and computer vision. Prototyped new features and applications including a new "selfie" app (see video).

• Creator of Insta Etch A Sketch

  Independent iOS App Development

  June 2011 - June 2014

  San Francisco Bay Area

  Developed a novel algorithm for converting photos into Etch A Sketch drawings in C++, written about in Wired (https://www.wired.com/2013/01/insta-etch-a-sketch-app/). Additionally licensed the algorithm to Target for their 2015 "Wonderland" Popup, as seen on ABC
  
• 

  R&D Engineer

  Industrial Light & Magic

  May 2006 - April 2013

  - Contributed to the development of Plume, ILM’s CUDA-based in-house GPU smoke simulator/renderer ranging from implementing higher order advection methods, to designing and implementing regression tests, to overseeing Plume’s infrastructure development.
  - Designed and implemented a new fluid control algorithm called “shape constraints” in C++, using Stanford’s PhysBAM API, which was central in the highly choreographed water effects work for The Last Airbender.
  - Implemented python-scriptable MPI-based parallel FLIP-style fluid solver in Boost.Python and C++. Used on multiple productions, including for molten metal effects in Terminator 4.
  - Developed grid-based surface tension approximation for FLIP simulations, used to generate realistic splash effects for The Last Airbender.
  - Collaborated directly with artists and involved in the entire development lifecycle from conception, to implementation, to documentation and support.
  - Built Levelset post-processing tools used for the Maelstrom sequence in Pirates of the Caribbean 3.
• 

  R&D Artist

  Giant Killer Robots

  December 2002 - April 2006

  - Spearheaded fluid fire research for the Fantastic Four’s human torch effect.
  - Developed a distributable Kolmogorov spectrum-based technique for adding turbulent detail to fluid simulations using fftw and OpenGL in C++.
  - Designed and implemented a Maya plugin to control flame visibility using a signed distance function.
  - Built custom fluid emitters using Maya’s plugin API to handle emission from textures, particles, and images.
  - Explored the use of the CFL number in controlling artistic qualities of fluid simulations.
  - Conceived of, designed, and built Trackula, GKR’s realtime interactive rigid body matchmoving system (Maya plugin), cutting matchmove times by as much as 80%.
  - Employed design patterns and test-driven development methodologies to build libGkr, GKR’s first programming library.

  

  

• Software Engineer

  Nextag.com

  July 2002 - November 2002

  San Mateo, CA

• Software Engineer

  Della.com (WeddingChannel.com)

  1999 - 2002