Christopher Rogers |
chrisrogers3d(at)gmail(dot)com http://chrisrogers3d.com |
Position Sought:
Technical Artist / Tools Developer
Applications:
Programming Skills:
30+ years 3D graphics and animation programming including:
VEX for Houdini (2017)
About Me:
As a technical artist, I really like to help artists get their job done as efficiently as possible at the best quality possible. I write tools for artists in Maya, and link all of these tools to the asset and production tracking systems, often working with producers as much as artists. I also love visual technical problem solving and technical asset creation and in general, learning new things.
Relevant Work Experience:
September 2022 - Current
Technical Artist
RSTLSS.xyz
Remote
RSTLSS is a metaverse fashion company. I am creating clothing sims using Marvelous Designer, Houdini, Substance Painter and Photoshop and making GLTF files and ThreeJS javascript pages to view the GLTF clothing sims. I use a lot of Python to automate producing and verifying thousands of NFTs. Recently I have been researching using USD/MaterialX to go from Maya/Houdini to Unreal5 and ThreeJS.
Contract Tech Artist
Mystic Moose - PlanetMojo
Remote
I worked at PlanetMojo.io as a tech artist primarily on rendering 10,000 unique Mojos with Unity HDRP. I ingested art assets and wrote the tools to assemble them and the database code to make 10,000 unique ones, and finally rendered all of the NFT images and animations. It was mainly tools in Unity, shaders in Unity, tools in Maya and using Houdini for LODs.
August - September 2021
Contract Tech Artist
Nexus Studios
Remote
I worked on an 8 week project for the team at NexusLA including production art tasks, procedural modeling of a building, ingesting assets, lookdev and lighting.
May 2019 to May 2021
Technical Artist (Contract Worker - PRO Unlimited)
Facebook Reality Labs
Menlo Park, CA
I was a technical artist on the Horizon team at Facebook for a 2 year contract. My primary tasks were related to measuring and optimizing performance of art assets on the Oculus Quest using Unity and a proprietary lighting engine. I wrote tools to gather and report the data and helped artists and rendering engineers apply that to art assets to make them more performant. I did a lot of tech art generalist tasks but also did R&D with realtime character rigs in VR, shaders, light baking, vfx, art workflows and animation tools in VR.
March 2019 to May 2019
Staff Technical Artist
Warner Brothers Games
San Francisco, CA
I wrote shaders for AR face filters for Wizards Unite, fixing and updating animation tools and setting up some character pipeline stuff for a new game.
June 2018 to March 2019
Contract Software Engineer
Anki, Inc.
San Francisco, CA
On the animation tools team for the robot Vector, I helped the animators with animation tools in Maya and Python, scripts to test animation on the robots, tools to optimize the animation file sizes, and maintaining legacy projects such as an artist tool in C# and robot simulation tests in C++ using Webots. I also did some R&D involving computer vision, animation, augmented reality, Vector’s Python SDK and physics simulations of robots in Maya and Unity.
February 2017 to September 2017
Senior Technical Artist
Wavedash Games
Oakland, CA
Tech artist generalist at startup Wavedash Games. I rigged several characters, modified lots of existing rigs, profiled the art assets, wrote VFX preview/authoring tools, character pipeline tools, documentation, shaders, and worked on lighting for characters and environments for a Unity game on the PC.
May 2015 to Feb 2016
Contract Senior Technical Artist
Play Studios
Burlingame, CA
I provided Unity pipeline tools involving:
Photoshop to Unity (live art updates on device for artists)
Modo rigged character to Maya rigged character
Maya character animation to Unity animated characters
June 2013 to August 2014
Senior Technical Artist
KIXEYE
San Francisco, CA
At KIXEYE I focused on pipeline tools involving Maya, Perforce, JIRA, Python, Unity, C#, Unreal and Physx. I used and wrote profiling tools on windows, did some R&D related to destructibles, did some vehicle rigging for Unreal, fixed bugs in the effects tools, wrote server and client side asset management tools and wrote Maya modeling tools.
September 2012 to April 2013
Senior Art Technical Director
Lucasarts
San Francisco, CA
My focus was pipeline tools, asset management and production tracking. I wrote Python code that made use of PyQT, Maya, Mari, Perforce, and Shotgun. Specifically I collaborated on a system to go from an outside vendor checking assets into our perforce, rendering a turntable in Maya, making a version in Shotgun, exporting FBX’s and making an Unreal package automatically.
May 2012 to July 2012
Contract Senior Technical Director
Bento Box Interactive
Playa Del Rey, CA
Maya to Unity tools in MEL and Javascript. Asset debugging. Outsourcing documentation. iOS Unity performance profiling. Unity shaders, particle effects. Data driven story playback tools in Javascript.
August 2011 to March 2012
Senior Technical Artist
Superbot Entertainment
Culver City, CA
Tools programming, performance monitoring, debugging and adding features to the game tools in C#. Python/PyMEL/MEL scripting, build scripts, technical art asset creation.
August 2005 to March 2010
Senior Technical Artist
Sony Computer Entertainment America
San Diego, CA
Technical Artist on the MLB game for PS2, PSP and PS3. Created character modeling tools (MEL), pipeline tools (MEL, Perl, C,C++), texture tools (Javascript for Photoshop and C) and web based asset tracking tools (HTML, SQL, Perl, Javascript). Examples include automated hi-res scan re-meshing tools, blendshape character modeling tools for both in-house artists and the in-game "create-a-player", procedural modeling and rigging tools, conversion and export scripts, and web server based asset management tools. Also optimized the existing pipeline, wrote artist documentation, assisted in problem solving, and verified assets were created correctly.
June 2002 to June 2004
Freelance Web Developer
Goldfinger Creative
Atlanta, GA
I programmed HTML, Flash and Perl for Web clients.
June 2001 to June 2002
Freelance Animator
Mutagen Visuals
Atlanta, GA
I created motion graphics sequences using Maya and Shake for business and entertainment clients.
October 2000 to February 2001
Freelance Tools / MEL Programmer
Giant Studios
Atlanta, GA
I programmed various system and graphics related tools using MEL, Tcl/Tk, Perl, C and C++. I helped problem solve with Maya, Shake, XSI and Mental Ray. Maintained and secured Linux systems. I worked on projects including a MEL script to paint spring values on a softbody dynamics pelting system, movie playing tools using C, 3D file format translation tools in Perl, and project management tools in Perl and Tcl/Tk. Used Shake and fixed broken Shake scripts.
June 2000 to June 2001
Freelance C++ Programmer
ABI Multimedia
Athens, GA
I created a multimedia (image, Flash with transitions and AVI) advertisement display engine using C++ running under Linux and a content distribution system using Perl and Apache. I designed and implemented the entire system.
December 1998 to September 2000
Freelance Web Developer
Clients included Georgia Southern University, Earthlink and ManufacturingQuote.com
October 1999 to May 2000
Web Programmer
Mindspring Web Design/Earthlink Web Development
Atlanta, GA
Worked for Mindspring's Web Design department as a Perl programmer and Linux system administrator. Programmed webserver and database backend for outside clients of Mindspring's.
March 1998 to September 1998
UNIX and Windows NT System Administrator and Tools Programmer
Computer Art Department, Savannah College of Art and Design
Savannah, GA
Administered 100 Unix (Irix and Linux) and 30 Windows NT machines for the Computer Art Department. This included troubleshooting, new system setup, software updates, writing system tools such as automated software installations and user account management using Tcl/Tk and several 3D graphics related tools such as a Maya (on Windows NT using VC++) plugin to export data to the game content creation package Motivate and a Softimage plugin (on Irix) in C++ to export RIB files for use with Renderman.
July 1994 to February 1995 and December 1996 to June 1997
Freelance 2D/3D Character Animator and Modeler
Digital Post and Graphics (later Modern Digital)
Seattle, WA
I did 3D character animation and modeling for one of Sierra Online's King's Quest video game introductions. I used Alias to do the modeling and most of the animation on the project, and 2D animation using Photoshop for Microsoft CD-ROMs.
October 1995 to June 1996
Freelance 3D Character Animator, Modeler and Tools Programmer
Zombie Virtual Reality Entertainment
Seattle, WA
I was a 3D character animator and tools programmer on ZPG. I created animations in Maya and wrote tools to render these to spritesheets. Also, I wrote a 3D animation previewer using OpenGVS, an asset browser using shell scripts and Apache on an SGI and a Renderman shader that shaded like a woodcut.
March 1995 to September 1995
3D Modeler and Tools Programmer
BOSS Game Studios
Redmond, WA
I modeled environments for game prototypes. I animated some enemies. I also wrote some system tools and a Renderman Shader for molten metal effects rendered in Blue Moon Rendering Tools.
March 1992 to June 1994
Graphics Lab Technician
University Computing and Networking Services
University of Georgia
Athens, GA
I worked in the university visualization lab. My tasks included system administration on SGI computers, using, learning, and teaching Alias, assisted in some industrial design and scientific visualization, and output services including color printers, 35mm film recorders and BetaCam video cassette recorder.
June 1987 to December 1987
Freelance Programmer - Application Developer
Savannah Psychological Associates
Savannah, GA
I created a software application on the Apple2 to evaluate a psychological test called the MMPI. This involved writing the specification, creating the database, creating the user interface, writing the program logic, performing most of the quality assurance and maintaining the application for about 1 year.
Education:
1990 to 1994
Sculpture Major
University of Georgia
Athens, GA
Studied sculpture and computer art.
1986 to 1990
Statesboro High School
Statesboro, GA
Studied art with a college preparatory diploma.
1980 to 1986
Marvin Pittman Laboratory School
Statesboro, GA
Intensively studied in a gifted art program under Dr. Rosalind Ragans, 1990 National Art Educator of the Year. Won a District Grand Prize in the Science Fair for a computer programming related project and attended a gifted math camp at Duke University.