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The Valiant

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
  • Role: 3D Generalist / Technical Artist | Ionart Studios
  • Core Stack: Houdini, Redshift, Maya, MEL Scripting, HDA Development
  • Main Focus: Character Pipeline and Animation Ingest, Custom HDA and MEL Tooling, Lookdev and Shading, Rendering and Technical AOVs

This project was the official cinematic announcement trailer for KITE Games' strategy title, featuring intensive character animation and detailed visual effects.
Operating within a Maya to Houdini to Redshift pipeline, I took full technical ownership of the animation ingest and character cache preparation workflow.
I was responsible for ensuring that all character caches, custom animations, hair grooms, and secondary simulations transferred flawlessly from Maya into Houdini, creating a stable, fully optimized foundation for the lighting and rendering stages.

MY TASKS
  • Animation Pipeline and Tooling: To streamline the massive volume of character data moving between Maya and Houdini, I developed a suite of utility tools.
    This included writing custom MEL scripts on the Maya side for clean exports, and engineering dedicated Houdini Digital Assets (HDAs) to automate the rebuilding, alignment, and assignment of character caches, dynamic hair simulations, and clothing setups.
  • Asset Ingest, Lookdev and Shading: I managed the technical setup and material conversion for incoming 3D assets.
    I rebuilt and optimized complex shading networks inside Redshift, ensuring that both characters and environment elements maintained consistent lookdevelopment under varying production lighting setups.
  • Set Dressing and Scene Assembly: I assisted the layout team in environment assembly and set dressing within Houdini, ensuring all background and foreground elements aligned precisely with the choreographed character performances.
  • Render Optimizations and Technical AOVs: I played a major role in organizing the final render passes and layer breakdowns.
    I structured highly detailed utility AOVs and custom passes to provide the Nuke compositing team with maximum flexibility and control over the final integration.
  • Review Media I supervised rendering and assembly of the daily playblasts and review cuts, maintaining a clear and structured technical overview of shot progress for internal reviews and director feedback.
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