Mason Sheffield

Work History

• 

  Director of Lab Technology - Lowe's Innovation Labs

  Lowe's Companies, Inc.

  July 2015 - Present

  Seattle, WA

  Exploring the future of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and 3d printing/scanning.
• 

  Senior Technical Artist

  Sledgehammer Games

  February 2013 - July 2015

  San Francisco Bay Area

  
• 

  Senior Character TD/ Technical Artist

  Trion Worlds, Inc.

  May 2008 - December 2012

  Redwood City, CA

  Shipped the critically acclaimed Rift MMO Game and it's sequel Rift: Storm Legion.
  Developed tools and technologies using Python, C++ and Maya's Mel language.
  Led development of an enhanced shader pipeline for artists with deep Maya integration.
  Led Team of 10 artists in optimization pass for Rift: Storm Legion world models and collision.
  Created destruction VFX using baked simulations and run time physics
  Developed Maya Exporter plugins.
  Written preview shaders and preview tools
  Led the studio transition from Maya 8.0 to Maya 2012
  Developed many polygonal modeling tools.

• Owner/ Game Developer

  Nosam Games

  June 2009 - December 2011

  Cupertino, CA

  Created the R/C helicopter simulator "Heli Flyer" for the iPhone. Heli Flyer was the first R/C helicopter simulator on the platform and has been praised as a "realistic experience" by real helicopter pilots. I initially created Heli Flyer using my own custom game engine, but ported it to Unity before releasing it on the App Store. Original engine was written in Obj C and the Unity code was in JavaScript

• Co-founder and VP

  Quick Pay Corp.

  December 2009 - January 2011

  Menlo Park,CA

  I co founded Quick Pay corporation. I designed,developed, and launched the QP parking app, as well as the supporting website, web portal and payment system. I was the sole software developer/designer for the first year and with my partner grew the company from an idea to a working business. The qp app allows you to instantly pay for street parking with your phone. The company has since received $3.5M in venture capital.
  I used HTML, PHP, Javascript, MySQL, Obj C for development
• 

  Lead Character TD - Godfather 2

  Electronic Arts

  March 2007 - May 2008

  
  Developed a system called the “Parts System” that enables artists to create character assemblies that can generate hundreds of varieties of characters using shared assets. The system allows characters in game to swap geometries, textures, and tints. The entire system is controlled through a custom Maya UI that simplifies access to the complex system. The system was created for characters but is so flexible that it was also used for the vehicle pipeline as well.
  

  

• Lead Character TD –“The Godfather for Xbox 360 and PS3”

  Electronic Arts Inc.

  December 2006 - 2008

  
  Responsible for directing the technical aspect of character creation for this next-gen title. Led R&D efforts concerning rigging and modeling workflow and pipeline solutions for upgrading existing character assets as well as the animation pipeline for xbox 360. I led 5 modelers, and coordinated with various engineers to bring next gen characters to life in the Godfather world.
  
• 

  Character TD –“The Godfather” –Xbox and PS2

  Electronic Arts

  January 2005 - December 2006

  
  Responsible for skinning characters. Skinned scores of characters and prepared them for integration into EA’s Renderware game engine. Responsible for managing and maintaining the artist side of the “Mobface” custom player character system.I have written many tools to help the animators as well as the modelers. I am an expert user of MEL language in Maya.Developed tools for skin weights and reducing joint counts for our characters. I have also written many batch scripts for automating tedious tasks.
  
• 

  3d Artist Intern

  NVIDIA Corporation

  2004 - 2005

  
  Created high-res 3d models and environments w/textures in Maya and Photoshop to demonstrate the latest graphics processing hardware. Created 3d demos to accentuate new real-time shading techniques for Nvidia’s newest GPU, the Geforce 6800 Ultra.
  
• 

  student

  Cogswell Polytechnical College

  2001 - 2003

  
  Graduated Cum Laude