Tony Chai

Work History

• 

  Partner Technology Manager

  YouTube

  December 2018 - Present

  Los Angeles, CA
• 

  Technical Director

  Walt Disney Animation Studios

  March 2010 - December 2018

  Greater Los Angeles Area

  Technical Director
  Creative Legacy with Walt Disney Imagineering, Virtual Reality
  Created a cross-studio pipeline with Walt Disney Imagineering to deliver animation mapped onto robot animatronic rigs and renders used in projection screens for the Disney Parks. Assessed risk of total render hours and disk space allocation to measure complexity and fit within budget scope. Created an Unreal Engine pipeline to visualize future theme park rides with our published animation. Co-created a Unity pipeline for Disney’s first VR short, Cycles, shown at SIGGRAPH 2018.
  
  General Technical Director
  Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (2017), Moana (2016), Zootopia (2016)
  Led technology initiatives between Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and ILM to share processes and techniques between our studios. Prioritized software tasks based on risk vs reward for production needs. Designed asset conversion process to support older data from previous productions. Mentored other Technical Directors to complete pipeline/support tasks.
  
  Effects Technical Director
  Big Hero 6 (2014), Frozen (2013), Wreck-it Ralph (2012), Tangled Ever After (2012)
  Product Owner of effects’s code repository, handled code reviews and design decisions for new contributions. Automated fx templates to run based on certain conditionals from front-end departments (animation/layout), saving hundreds of hours. Developed tools in Houdini/Maya to support heavy fx datasets for lighting.
  
  Lighting Assistant Technical Director
  Prep and Landing: Naughty vs Nice (2011), Tangled (2010)
  Pipeline data management between lighting and effects. Developed publish process for lighting to pick up GL visualization of procedural elements. Rendered lighting shots and composited stereoscopic shots.
  
  Stereoscopic Artist
  Lion King 3-D (2011)
  Stereoscopic compositing. Created depth maps in the original artwork layers to final shot.

  

  

  

  

  

  

• Founder

  Chai Productions

  January 2003 - July 2011

  Founder of Chai Productions, an independent group dedicated to producing viral videos and other multimedia on the internet. Released videos combine video editing, music, graphics, and animation.

• Software Developer

  soVoz

  October 2009 - February 2010

  Worked on interactive 3D simulation/gaming content for a wide variety of applications, such as using an elliptical exercise machine as a virtual locomotion controller for a motorcycle racing game.