Scott Peterson

Work History

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  Senior Machine Learning Graphics Engineer

  Unity Technologies

  May 2019 - Present

  San Francisco
• 

  Visual Effects Art Director

  Baobab Studios

  March 2017 - April 2019

  Redwood City, CA

  Leading technical and artistic development for interactivity in VR worlds.
• 

  Head of Effects

  DreamWorks Animation

  October 2006 - January 2015

  Thrives at the intersection of supervision, technical development, and producing pictures. Empowers artists by identifying a clear vision, encouraging inter- and cross-department communication, and standardizing best practices.
  
  Responsible for leading the effects department in shows, and sometimes leading technical side-projects. Received an Academy Award for developing the studio foliage system. Foliage includes several innovations including a novel modeling tool called Bonsai, a lighting approach, and a tree representation.

  

  

  

  

  

  
• 

  Lighter

  DreamWorks Animation

  October 2005 - October 2006

  Shrek The Third (2007)
  * Dramatically increased lighting productivity by innovating aggregate normal tree canopy lighting technique.
  * Implemented physical lighting falloff for more more physically plausible lighting.
  * Acting lighter on dozens of shots.
  
• 

  FX Developer

  DreamWorks Animation

  July 1997 - July 2005

  Shrek The Third (2007)
  * Developed a surface-based hair modeling technique that brought unprecedented detail to hairstyles.
  
  Shrek 4D (2004)
  * Invented general-purpose particle processing pipeline, used by studio until 2010.
  * Co-designed and implemented set-dressing tools
  
  Shrek 2 (2004)
  * Innovated geometry compression algorithm to solve crowd render crisis on Shrek 2. Saved half a million dollars in network storage and infrastructure. Awarded Patent.
  * Developed turn-key Puss in Boots’ feather used in 5 subsequent movies.