Olivier Beierlein

Work History

• 

  Principal Technical Artist

  Epic Games

  January 2023 - Present

  Wellington, New Zealand
• 

  Look Development Supervisor

  Wētā FX

  December 2021 - December 2022

  Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand
• 

  Lead Shader TD

  Wētā FX

  September 2018 - December 2021

  Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

  - Leading teams of Shader TDs on shows
  - Responsible for the creative and technical solutions to achieve the delivery of all the assets on a show at the desired quality, on schedule and on budget
  - Design of custom solutions to address show specific issues
  - Constant communication and cooperation with LookDev production, VFX Supervisors, and the lighting department
  - Technical support and guidance for the team
  - Look Development of assets
  - Specialized (but not exclusively) on hero characters and creatures, especially with fur or feathers
  
  Projects:
  
  "Avengers: Endgame" (feature film)
  - Acting as lead
  - Designed a system for efficient ingestion of assets lookdev from other vendors into our pipeline
  
  "Godzilla vs. Kong" (feature film)
  - Acting as lead
  - Look Development of Kong and all the creatures in the Hollow World (Nozuki, Yoshuma, Rock Titan, Lizard Titan)
  
  "The Christmas Chronicles 2" (feature film)
  - Acting as lead
  - Set up a system for easily creating lots of wooly wardrobe variations for elves
  - Look Development of all animals on the show (Jola, the Jackalotes, the Reindeers)
  
  "The Suicide Squad" (2021) (feature film)
  - Look Development of various gory assets
  - Look Development of the extreme closeup of dead Starro's eye
  
  
  Currently in production (acting as lead on all):
  
  “The Lord of the Rings” (TV series: season 1)
  
  "Umbrella Academy" (TV series: season 3)
  
  “Peacemaker” (TV series: season 1)
  
  
  Software: Linux, Katana, Nuke, and lots of in-house tools (Manuka, ...)
• 

  Senior Shader Writer

  Wētā FX

  July 2015 - August 2018

  Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

  - Senior Shader Writer and Shader R&D Programmer on the following feature films:
  
  "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip"
  "Furious 7"​
  "The Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies"​
  
  
  - Lookdev Artist on
  
  "Rampage" (in production)
  "Game of Thrones" (season 7, episode 6)
  "War for the Planet of the Apes"
  "The BFG"
  "Furious 7"​
• 

  Shader Writer

  Wētā FX

  May 2012 - April 2014

  Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand

  Shader Writer and Shader R&D Programmer on the following feature films:
  
  "Dawn of The Planet of The Apes"​
  "The Hobbit : The Desolation of Smaug"​
  "Wolverine"​
  "Iron Man 3"​
  "Man of Steel"​
  "The Hobbit : An Unexpected Journey"

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
• 

  Shader Writer

  Rising Sun Pictures

  November 2011 - May 2012

  Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

  "Gravity" (feature film)
  
  - Implementation of an atmosphere scattering shader in VEX for the re-entry sequence
  - Look Development and lighting of the Tiangong space station and its Shenzou escape pod
  - Look Development and lighting of the earth and its atmosphere (seen from space)
  - Look Development and lighting of the earth landscape (seen from within the atmosphere)
  
  Softwares : Houdini, Mantra

  
• 

  Lighting Department TD

  Dr. D Studios

  August 2011 - October 2011

  Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

  "Happy Feet 2" (animated feature film)
  
  - lighting technical support
  - scenes debugging
  - shader code optimisation
  - rendering optimisation
  - development and maintenance of rendering tools
  
  Software: Houdini & 3delight.

  
• 

  Rendering Technical Supervisor & Shader writer

  Delapost Paris

  January 2010 - August 2011

  Paris, Île-de-France, France

  - Creation of the company's Renderman pipeline
  - Development of all the shaders (hard and soft surfaces, fur, lights, ...)
  - Set-up of the fur exporting and rendering workflow
  - Responsible of every technical aspect of rendering
  
  Projects:
  - "Wedel: Penguins in Heaven" (TV commercial)
  - "Opet: Oilman" (TV commercial)
  - "Feu Vert: Erde" (TV commercial)
  - "Delapost Intro: Grey Cat" (in-house project)
  - "Technical Test: Chrysler" (in-house project)
  - "Wedel: Meerkats" (TV commercial)
  - "Wedel: Penguins Kite" (TV commercial)
  
  Software: Maya, Shave & a Haircut, Renderman Studio, Renderman Pro Server, Nuke
  
  As PRMan 16 was released I rewrote the whole shading pipeline in RSL2 to take advantage of the new features:
  - physically plausible shading
  - multiple importance sampling
  - spherical harmonics environment lighting
  
  I also improved our fur shader and added more options to simulate bounce light and occlusion in fur for cheap, or to simulate fur on hard surfaces:
  
  - implementation of the user-friendly Marschner fur shader
  - per-frame automatic texture baking of global illumination on a surface and at the tip of the fur, and interpolation of the value along the curves
  - fake fur: realistic fur anisotropic specular behavior on hard surface
• 

  Rendering Technical Supervisor & Shader writer

  Delapost Paris

  January 2010 - January 2011

  - Creation of the company's Renderman pipeline
  - Writing of all the shaders (hard and soft surfaces, fur, lights, ...).
  - Set-up of the fur exporting and rendering workflow
  - Responsible of every technical aspect of rendering
  Softwares: Maya, Renderman Studio, Renderman Pro Server, Nuke:
  - "Wedel: Penguins in Heaven", commercial.
  - "Opet: Oilman", commercial.
  - "Feu Vert: Erde", commercial.
  - "Delapost Intro: Grey Cat", in-house project.
  - "Technical Test: Chrysler", in-house project.
  - "Wedel: Meerkats", commercial.
  - "Wedel: Penguins Kite", commercial.

• Rendering TD

  IVDEO

  June 2010 - June 2010

  Tours, Centre-Val de Loire, France

  "La Femme Loire" (commercial)
  - shading, lighting
  
  Software: Maya, Mental Ray
• 

  Lighting Artist, Rendering TD, Pipeline TD

  Delapost Paris

  October 2008 - December 2009

  Paris, Île-de-France, France

  - Creation of the company's 3D asset management system in Python and MEL
  - Rendering TD
  - Lighting Artist
  
  Projects:
  - "Era" (TV commercial)
  - "Stargate Amusement Park, Dubai" (TV commercial)
  - "Lulu Vroumette" (pilot for an animated TV series)
  - "Duplo" (TV commercial)
  
  Software: Maya, Mental Ray
  
  I then helped the studio transition the rendering pipeline to Pixar's Renderman (Studio and Pro Server) as we started working more and more on fur.
  
  Projects:
  - "Feu Vert" (series of TV commercials)
  - "Kredit Bank" (TV commercial)
  - "Panasonic: Robots" (TV commercial)
  
  Software: Maya, Shave & a Haircut, Renderman Studio, Renderman Pro Server, Nuke

• CG Artist

  Tra-Fx

  August 2008 - September 2008

  Paris, Île-de-France, France

  "Seine Maritime, Covoiturage" (short movie)
  - rigging, animation, shading, lighting
  
  Software: Maya, Maya Software Render

• CG Artist

  IMDEO / IVDEO

  July 2008 - July 2008

  Tours, Centre-Val de Loire, France

  "Malbate" & "Mecamarc" (web commercials)
  - animation, shading, lighting, compositing
  
  Software: Maya, Mental Ray, Fusion
• 

  Rigging & Animation Artist

  Delapost Paris

  May 2008 - June 2008

  Paris, Île-de-France, France

  "La Danseuse" (in-house project)
  - Development of an automatic rigging system in MEL
  
  "Darty: Beijing Olympics" (TV commercial)
  - Rigging, animation
  
  Software: Maya
• 

  Character FX Artist

  Mac Guff

  August 2007 - November 2007

  Paris, Île-de-France, France

  "Dragon Hunters" (animated feature film)
  - Cloth simulation and shot sculpting
  
  Software: Maya, Syflex

  
• 

  Wētā FX

  ? - Present