Rochester Institute of Technology

Senior Artist at VR Startup

Mountain View, California

Producing assets, designs, layouts, levels, and prototypes to support our larger project goals.

VR Startup

Senior Artist

Digitally painted a set of backgrounds featuring landscapes and several abstract settings which were used for  a 2D animation. Divisions between foreground, mid-ground, and background elements were preserved to create parallax effects during camera movements. Styles and perspective were matched between each scene.

Freelance

Background Painter

Along with producing environment art, I took on the role of organizing and optimizing art content while aligning efforts between the art and engineering departments.• Designed, prototyped, and produced the environment for the VR game, Home a Drone, aligning my efforts to meet a series of tight, often unpredictable deadlines.• Optimized performance across art assets to meet strict VR standards. Researched and prioritized options for each deadline by making use of light probes, light baking, LODs, billboards, occlusion culling, and by reducing mesh and material counts.• Organized scene and file structures within Unity to stabilize content growth and provide clear, consistent communication between departments. • Coordinated with our engineers to ensure art assets were implemented as intended.• Identified and completed crucial tasks that remained unclaimed late in production while working to balance art styles and provide marketing renders.

Construct Studio

Environment Artist

Continued working with Construct, eventually moving out to SF (May, 2018) to join the team in person.• Designed and produced a large number of low-poly, VR-friendly assets for an update to "The Price of Freedom". Assets were created with PBR texturing in a photo-realistic style.• Programmed modular UI for the Maya plugin of our "Vera" software using Python with Qt bindings. Worked together with our engineers to ensure stable, efficient communication between their data and my interfaces.• Produced concept art and rapidly prototyped environments in Unity for a number of VR/AR client projects and studio marketing materials.

3D Generalist and UI Designer

Worked remotely to provide 3d modeling, texturing, concept art, and interface programming.• Produced an environment kit and several assets for the VR game, "The Price of Freedom".• Designed and produced a pair of full-scale banners for conference displays.• Programmed interfaces in Maya's Python API, then researched and learned to use two Python based Qt bindings alongside coworkers to produce an interface for our VERA project.• Created rough concepts for various potential projects.

3D Generalist

- Worked remotely to design and produce a pair of realistic hand and arm models with clean topology representing the main character in the VR game, "The Price of Freedom".

3D Character Artist

Invited to the 2013 and 2016 Game Developer's Conferences as a Conference Associate where I worked alongside members of the gaming industry and aspiring students to create an enjoyable experience for the thousands of attendees that showed up each day.

Conference Associate

Commissioned to sculpt a series of composers as reliefs on medallions that Robin 3D prints and uses for his glass molding process. I developed workflows for the rather niche process and provided Robin with a means to create his ideas.I was initially working from Rochester where Robin lives and carried the project home to Texas with me.

Freelance for Robin Lehman

Relief Portrait Sculptor

A research grant project headed by Shaun Foster which aims to learn, apply, and create bridges between various devices and programs such as Kinect, UDK, brain sensors, flash, and a multi-touch surface.I headed up one of the grant’s projects, designing and creating a game that used the Kinect to control a flying character in the Unreal Engine using the UDKinect plugin. Modeled assets in Maya, imported them into the Unreal Development Kit, and used it’s Kismet programming to run the game.

RIT Kinect Surfaces

Kinect to UDK Project Lead

We created a virtually playable golf game that took place on a 3D course designed using buildings from around campus. The art team modeled and organized all the 3D assets and, in addition to the campus level, designed and created two more mini golf levels with a Van Gogh theme.I was a modeler on the art team. I modeled and UVed 3D replicas of campus buildings for a large course and other assets and structures for two mini golf levels. The project was exhibited at RIT’s Innovation and Creativity Festival and GDC 2011.

Ben Miller

Ben Miller