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JOURNEY TO GAMES & SIMULATIONS

NASA | Microsoft | Amazon AWS | MIT | TYM Studio | CACC 

ROLES

Community Member | Guest Speaker | 3D Artist/Designer |  Technical Artist - CGI/VFX  | Professional Mentor | Co-Principle Investigator | Adjunct Instructor

DESCRIPTION

A journey through the passion for XR, how Immersive Technology built my career, and why I persist.

YEAR

2016-2024

GENRE

Mixed Reality | Augmented Reality | Virtual Reality | Robotics/AI | Community | Simulations | Education | MRPP | NSF | R&D | Training | Hackathon

PLATFORMS

HoloLens, Meta Quest, iOS, Android, WebVR

ENGINES

Unity, Unreal Engine

TIMELINE
2016 - NASA - Johnson Space Center - Space Vehicle Mockup Facility
Internship - 3D Hard surface

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  •  3D Hard Surface artist on pre-visuals for Mars Mission 

  • Shot VFX Footage for compositing (pre-visuals)

  • Worked with Photogrammetry (astronaut characters)

  • International Space Station - JAXA (Japan) Kibo Rack

2016 - Houston HoloLens Hackathon

  • Invited to an exclusive Hackathon (Houston)

  • Joined a team as a designer

  • Created our application to solve a real-world problem

  • Presented our application

  • Realized how much faster it was to use PBR

  • Learned more about the device capabilities

  • Took a small course with Jared Bienz

  • Gained Jared as a community mentor

  • Joined the HoloLens Developer Community

2017 - HoloLens Mentor/Hackathon Co-Organizer (Houston, TX)

  • Co-Built a six-week HoloLens Training Bootcamp (Art)

  • Organized Meet ups (Game Production Pipeline Review)

  • Co-Organized the Houston HoloLens Hackathon

  • Mentor to all teams (Art) to guide their development

  • Media for dissemination to grow Houston game industry

  • Interviewed and demoed for Ayzenburg

  • Our group was also featured in the 2017 Build Conference

  • Continued to build pipeline/optimization for Mobile Class

  • Helped open opportunity for local talent

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  • Invited to speak at the HoloAcademy to MRPP folks

  • Presented a deep dive on Art & Optimization

  • Demystified the PBR Art Pipeline for developers

  • Demonstrated best practices for overlapping skills

  • Consulted on hiring certain art specilizations

  • Demo - Envirolight and Performance Profiling

  • Gave robust feedback (1 on 1) for MRPP Projects

  • Meet & Greet with the Mixed Reality Labs Team

  • Experienced the MRL Team Demo (Lunar Lander)

ENVIROLIGHT

Envirolight was a research and development project aimed at creating IBL lighting tools for additions to MRTK.

  • Personal CGI GOALS:
  • Cubemaps for Skybox using snap shots of the room via the HoloLens
  • Convolved Cube Map technique to possibly produce global illumination/Occlusion
  • Create an approach to faking object-based shadows in the HoloLens

Much of what I aimed to deliver, in the latter part of the project, was later produced by Microsoft "Mixed Reality Lighting Tools" (See Road to MR - Jared Bienz)

EnviroLight Meets HoloLens 2 – Road to MR Link

"Road To MR" Capture

Bethesda's Fallout - Fan Art

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This style was chosen for its harsh detail... also because we love the game. The critical elements in texture that help tell the story of the asset are subjected to different lighting scenarios and tests in this app. Interactive previews of this detail are below.

2018 - Practical VR - Gateway Release
PROMOTIONAL VIDEO LINK

  • Co-Founded a college grant program for XR

  • Designed Tech Symposiums for grant dissemination

  • Designed a course curriculum for art in XR

  • Designed course content on Holographic Spatial Design (UX)

  • Lectured (adjunct) to bulid on program self-sustainability

  • Consulted with grant partners to build training simulations

  • Designed course content for game art production (XR)

  • Taught students how to build XR protoypes

  • Taught students about Team Production (Design)

  • Reported findings to NSF on desire for students to learn in XR

  • Partnered with companies, individuals & other institutions

  • Built art pipelines for optimizations (mobile class devices)

2019 - 2021 Healthcare Games Showdown

  • Lead 3D | Immersive Deign | Professional Mentor

  • Worked as a mentor/judge on a show with sponsors

  • Joined TYM STUDIO

  • Continued development on Therapon - 3D/FX

  • Technical Writing:  art specialization for AR

  • Helped design judging criteria for the teams (Design)

  • Helped Teams develop pipelines for FX/CGI in VR

  • Worked with other Professional Mentors for project feedback

  • Helped present to local government officials

  •  Presented optimization best practices on the show

  • Rapid Prototyping & spatial mapping tool

  • 3D Asset Library (10k assets) for easy deployment

  • Point cloud data scans

  • SEE PRACTICAL VR GATEWAY PAGE

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2018 - National Science Foundation
Grant - Dynamic Reality Tech
HCGS Winners: Texas Children's Hospital Team
Go to Therapon AR page

  • Lead 3D | Immersive Design | Professional Mentor

  • Houston's first game show for Immersive Tech

  • The first Hippocratic Oath for Healthcare in XR (HTX)

  • Worked as a mentor/judge on a show with sponsors

  • Helped design judging criteria for the teams (Design)

  • Technical Writing: Onboarding for Art in XR

  • Technical Writing: Onboarding for Spatial Design

  • Technical Writing: Onboarding for Enterprise in XR

  • Interim Team artist for teams that needed balance

VISIT THE PAGE

2020 - XR Showdown

VISIT THE PAGE

2020 - Documentary Interview with TYM Studio "Mentor Moments"
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2022 - Amazon AWS - RE: Invent - Robotics
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  • Hired on to the B12 Tech Art Studio

  • Environments and Integration (Unreal Engine 4)

  • Worked with CGI for AI/Machine Learning

  • Generated synthetic data with level design

  • Co-Designed CGI pipelines for procedural generation

  • Technical Writing: Shader Research & Development 

  • Technical Writing: Source Control R&D

  • Technical Writing: 3D Optimization/Integration

  • Produced solutions for lighting in simulations

Visit: Amazon AWS Robomaker
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Cambridge, Massachusetts

  • Invited to speak and mentor teams at MIT

  • Presented the anatomy of design in user stories

  • Defining art in story for First Time User Experience

  • Discussed tools to measure for viability in design

  • Rapid Prototyping and resources for it

  • Expressed standards of art in engine

  • Technical Art solutions for VFX/Dynamics

  • Technical Art solutions for shaders and materials

  • Produced solutions for 3D integration

  • Mentored several teams; 100+ tables (600+ participants)

2024 - MIT Reality Hack XR
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2024 - Microsoft - Mixed Reality Team - William's Bay
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Redmond, Washington

  • 3D ARTIST V - Generalist, Technical Art, Environments

  • Modeling, 3D Sculpting, UVW

  • Materials, Smart Materials, Shader Graph

  • Houdini-to-Unity Integration

  • Substance-to-Unity Pipeline

  • Terrain Tools; Height Maps, Brushes, Layers, Texture Paint

  • Technical Art solutions for VFX/Dynamics

  • Testing and Protoyping Immersive Art for performance on the Meta Quest 3

2024|2025 - Return to School
Master of Fine Arts - Digital Arts | FX & CGI
 DigiPen Institute of Technology
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