Tony Chai

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Experience	Walt Disney Animation Studios http://www.disneyanimation.com/ March 2010 - December 2018 Technical Director Creative Legacy with Walt Disney Imagineering, Virtual Reality Created a cross-studio pipeline with Walt Disney Imagineering to deliver animation mapped onto robot animatronic rigs and renders used in projection screens for the Disney Parks. Forecasted total render hours and disk space allocation to bid complexity and fit within budget scope. Created an Unreal Engine pipeline to visualize future theme park rides with our published animation. Co-created a Unity pipeline for Disney’s first VR short, Cycles, shown at SIGGRAPH 2018. General Technical Director Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (2017), Moana (2016), Zootopia (2016) Led technology initiatives between Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and ILM to share processes and techniques between our studios. Prioritized software tasks based on risk vs reward for production needs. Designed asset conversion process to support older data from previous productions. Mentored other Technical Directors to complete pipeline/support tasks. Effects Technical Director Big Hero 6 (2014), Frozen (2013), Wreck-it Ralph (2012), Tangled Ever After (2012) Product Owner of effects’s code repository, handled code reviews and design decisions for new contributions. Automated fx templates to run based on certain conditionals from front-end departments (animation/layout), saving hundreds of hours. Developed tools in Houdini/Maya to support heavy fx datasets for lighting. Lighting Assistant Technical Director Prep and Landing: Naughty vs Nice (2011), Tangled (2010) Pipeline data management between lighting and effects. Developed publish process for lighting to pick up GL visualization of procedural elements. Rendered lighting shots and composited stereoscopic shots. Stereo Artist / General Assistant Technical Director Lion King 3-D (2011) Stereoscopic compositing. Created depth maps in the original artwork layers to final shot. soVoz http://www.sovoz.com Software Developer - Virtual Locomotion Controller October 09 - February 10 Worked on interactive 3D simulation/gaming content for a variety of applications, such as using an elliptical exercise machine as a virtual locomotion controller for a motorcycle racing game.
Education	University of Pennsylvania, Penn Engineering/Penn CIS Masters of Science in Engineering in Computer Graphics and Game Technology 12/2009 Relevant Courses: Computer Animation, Computer Graphics, Game Design and Development, 3D Modeling, Physically-Based Animation, Engineering Entrepreneurship University of California Irvine, College of Engineering Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering 03/2008 Honors: Dean’s Honor List 04-06 Relevant Courses: Graphics (OpenGL), Algorithm Design, Electronics, Computer Architecture
Technical	Languages: Python, C++, Qt, OpenGL, MEL, HTML Applications: Unreal Engine, Unity, Houdini, Maya, Nuke, RenderMan, Android App Development, ZBrush, Adobe Premiere/After Effects/Photoshop, Arduino Microcontroller, VICON Motion Capture
Projects	Maya Plug-in Wrote a Maya Plug-in that automatically rigs a biped character. Based on Baran’s SIGGRAPH 2007 Pinnochio paper [Automatic Rigging and Animation of 3D Characters]. Motion Capture Experience with UPenn’s SIG Motion Capture Lab. Captured various self-motions in VICON Nexus and used the exported BVH data to design a character controller. Rigid Body System Wrote an impulse-based rigid body system, including broadphase and narrowphase collision detection/resolution, contact resolution, gravity, and friction. Narrowphase collision detection based on SIGGRAPH 2003 paper [Nonconvex Rigid Bodies with Stacking]. Curve Editor Wrote a curve editor for Bezier curves, Hermite curves, and B-splines. User can edit/drag control points to see how it affects the interpolated points accordingly. Automatic Guitar Tuner Designed and invented an automatic guitar tuner that twists the pegs of a guitar to the correct pitch when plucked.
Additional	Member of The Animation Guild Union Local 839 IATSE Member of ACM Special Interest Group in Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) Panel member of Music Teachers’ Association of California (MTAC) Certificate of Merit Languages: Fluent in English and Chinese, Basic conversational in Spanish Overseas Living Experience: USA, Taiwan, Japan, China

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