Skills

Custom shader authoring across Unity Shader Graph, HLSL, and Unreal. Focused on solving performance and visual problems that off-the-shelf materials can't address.

• Alien Age — Water, Fog & Tile Shaders Water surface (world-space UV, eliminates tiling artifacts on irregular terrain); volumetric fog (depth texture sampling, height-responsive density); environment tile color-variation (world-position seeded, eight tileset varieties from three source meshes)
• Snuggles the Unicorn — Wing Vertex Shader System Replaced 32-bone-per-enemy wing rig with a GPU vertex shader; per-instance phase randomization via Material Property Blocks so every enemy flaps independently — zero extra draw calls
• Snuggles the Unicorn — Character Status FX Shader Single overlay shader handling all character status states (burning, frozen, impact flash); toggled by bools from gameplay script via a helper component; multiple states simultaneously active
• Relic — Atmosphere Shaders in Zero Engine Atmospheric scattering faked with depth values and fog density curves in an engine with no atmosphere or post-processing system; pushed past documented engine limits by working directly with the chief engineer on engine-level changes

Particle systems, timing, and gameplay-driven effects. Emphasis on effects that communicate gameplay state clearly and hold up on target hardware.

• Alien Age — Beam & Lightning VFX Beam pickup/drop and cloud lightning — continuous energy column from discrete particles; timing synced to gameplay events without hardcoded delays
• Snuggles the Unicorn — Gameplay VFX Fuel refill timers driven by gameplay script via shader parameters; enemy spawn effects; collectible pickups; character celebration states
• Grapple Star — Ship & Pickup VFX Ship boost effects with reactive jet trails, collectible pickups, environmental ambience
• Destiny 2 — Ambient Life — Beehive & Ambient VFX Interactive beehive obstacle prototype with destruction states and swarm VFX response; sea monster ambient effects

Rendering pipeline setup, lighting, and post-processing — including full pipeline conversions and camera compositing for complex rendering requirements.

• Alien Age — Full Lighting & Post Full lighting and post-processing setup; all environment materials and lighting authored from scratch
• Snuggles the Unicorn — URP Rendering Conversion Full standard-renderer-to-URP conversion: every shader rebuilt from scratch, batch material conversion scripted, lighting and post-processing rebuilt, outsourced store assets cleaned up to match pipeline
• Grapple Star — Depth-of-Field Transparency Fix Dual-camera Cinemachine composite: background renders with full post-processing including DoF, foreground camera renders VFX layer with post-processing disabled — sharp foreground particles over blurred background, correct depth relationships preserved
• Relic — All Visual Systems All visual technical systems in Zero Engine — FX, lighting, atmospherics, materials, rendering and asset pipelines; worked with chief engineer on engine-level rendering changes

Character rigs, animation retargeting, and constraint systems — built to survive production realities like mid-development model redesigns and repeated asset updates.

• Snuggles the Unicorn — Puppet Rig & Retargeting Constraint-based retargeting system for mid-production character redesign — old skeleton drives new skeleton in real time, full animation library transferred immediately; scripted constraint rebuild utility; biped-to- quadruped mech kitbash with aim constraints and bob dampening
• Destiny 2 — Ambient Life — Shipped Ambient Characters Modeled, rigged, and animated shipped characters: owls (Farm social space), sea monster (Titan); reactive NPC prototype with custom animations and VFX
• Earlier Work — Jerry's Rig — Solo Animation Solo animation production, full pipeline ownership: script, storyboard, and animatic; character concept, model, textures, rig (abAutoRig), and animation; environment concept, models, textures, and lighting

Editor tools and pipeline scripts written to solve specific production problems — documented so non-technical collaborators can use them independently.

• Alien Age — Foliage Placement Tool Editor-time placement tool (collaborated with engineer): runs distribution logic in-editor, bakes as placed instances — zero runtime cost. Documented so level designers could regenerate placements independently after level changes
• Snuggles the Unicorn — Rig Rebuild Utility Scripted constraint reconnection that rebuilt the full rig from saved configuration in seconds; Maya compositing helper scripts
• Lego Fortnite — EUW Editor Tools EUW animation range validation tool (batching, progress indicator, CSV export, configurable options); asset audit EUW with mesh LOD and triangle count enforcement at check-in via extended C++ submit validator
• Destiny 2 — Ambient Life — Debug Config Tool Debug config tool letting testers trigger public event completion at any reward tier on demand — adopted independently by the audio team

Test systems design, escaped defect analysis, automation tooling, and coverage strategy. QA background is central to the tech art approach — catching systemic problems before they ship.

• Lego Fortnite — Automation Triage Tool Python tool built with Claude Code in one day: pulls daily test results via API across PC, console, and Switch; generates self-contained HTML report with cross-platform comparison, trend tracking, and Jira-linked failure notes. Turned daily triage from an assembly task into a reading task
• Lego Fortnite — FX Coverage Framework Traced escaped defects to a systemic gap in FX test coverage; built distributed test suite across platforms and scalability settings; packaged as team-specific guides so coverage scaled with content volume without scaling centralized QA load
• Destiny 2 — Ambient Life — Test Engineering QA to Test Engineer progression on live service titles; content workflow mapping to find systemic failure points; runtime memory analysis in high-risk areas

Procedural placement and variation — baked at editor time for zero runtime cost, with visual variety that reads as hand-crafted.

• Alien Age — Tree Sizer/Rotator/Tinter Editor-time foliage placement with randomized position, scale, rotation, and color at placement time — three rock meshes and three tree meshes produced eight distinct tileset varieties with no additional asset authoring
• Grapple Star — Procedural UI Animation Procedurally animated 2D elements in the Level Select UI scene

UI built from scratch — scripted canvas, data-driven content population, and dynamic state-driven elements integrated with gameplay systems.

• Grapple Star — Level Select Screen Full scene built from scratch: 3D objects, particle systems, procedurally animated 2D elements; scripted UI canvas with clickable planet selection; text fields and scene elements populated and toggled based on selection state. Concept art by Rowan Sherwin
• Grapple Star — Dynamic Targeting Reticle Reticle appearance driven by gameplay state (target availability) rather than sprite swapping

Scripts written to solve specific production problems across C#, Python, Blueprint, and Claude Code collaboration. Not a software engineer — a technical artist who reaches for code when it's the right tool.

• Alien Age — Python — Maya & Pipeline Maya scripts for compositing and asset pipeline tasks; foliage placement tool (collaborated with engineer); Tree Sizer/Rotator/Tinter script
• Snuggles the Unicorn — C# — Unity Puppet rig constraint rebuild utility; controller aim script; status FX helper component; gameplay-to-shader parameter bridge; batch material conversion script for URP migration
• Lego Fortnite — Blueprint & EUW — UE5 Animation range validation EUW with batching, progress indicator, and CSV export; asset audit EUW with LOD/poly enforcement; extended existing C++ submit validator — no prior UE5 Blueprint or EUW experience before building these