Goal: To develop a scalable technology business, taking maximum advantage of my software design and visual art skills.

Skills

• Digital Visual Effects
  • Visual Effects Society Award Winner in 2006 for "Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue (IMAX) Project."
  • Emmy Award Nominee in 2005 for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Graphic and Artistic Design."
  • Ten years of experience with end-to-end production of complex, realistic animated films; my work has aired on global networks including CNN, the BBC, ABC, NBC, and the Discovery Channel (sample video available at www.maasdigital.com).
  • Familiar with all stages of the production pipeline, including previsualization, modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, rendering, compositing, editing, compression, and DVD authoring.
  • Familiar with the physics of exposure, dynamic range, light response of emulsions/CCDs, SDTV/HDTV standards, and the human visual system.
  • Areas of specialization: visualization of large datasets, visual effects animation, pipeline and tools programming.
  • I am an expert in Pixar's RenderMan technology and a regular RenderMan beta tester.


• Software
  • Eight years of experience with software design and implementation, mostly at the library and kernel level on Linux, with some GUI work on Linux and Windows.
  • Competent in several languages: C++, Python, LISP, some x86 assembly.
  • Familiar with high-performance IPC, I/O, 2D/3D graphics, concurrent and distributed processing techniques, especially on Linux.
  • Experience writing and debugging event-driven, non-blocking, soft real-time, multithreaded, and distributed software.
  • Contributed a complete driver to the Linux kernel (dv1394) and substantial portions of a second driver (raw1394).
  • Contributed enhancements to the open-source ffmpeg library to enable encoding and decoding of DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD video streams, with performance comparable to state-of-the-art commercial codecs. I have detailed knowledge of DV, DVCPRO50, and DVCPRO HD at the bitstream level.


• System Administration
  • Intimately familiar with small- to medium-scale Linux network administration (~30 machines).
  • I have developed and maintained systems for render farm management and networked storage (NFS and Samba).


• Language
  • I can speak, read, and write Mandarin Chinese. My background includes four years of clasroom study and 16 months living and working in Taiwan.   Edited Sample
  • I am a proficient writer of technical English. Sample

• Undergraduate
  • BA, Cornell University 1997-2001
  • Independent major in "Digital Cinema"
    • focused on visual perception, cognitive psychology, computer science, and film
  • GPA: 4.1 of possible 4.33
  • Cornell Presidential Research Scholars program, 1997-2001
  • Phi Beta Kappa 2001
  • Merrill Presidential Scholar 2001


• High School
  • 1995-97 Ithaca High School (skipped last two years)
  • Perfect SAT scores (800/800 math/verbal)

Maas Digital, LLC (1999 - present)

I operate as a freelance digital artist and technical director. Most of my projects involve 3D animation production, although I have also taken on several software development contracts. I have hired and managed a team of up to four people to handle larger projects.

Below are some highlights from my work under the Maas Digital banner. For a complete list of projects, see http://www.dcine.com/sightings.html

• March 2007 - Present
  • Digimax Inc 太極影音科技有限公司 (Taipei, Taiwan): Supervised Digimax's R&D Technical Directors to create special visual effects for animated film projects, including the stereo 3D version of Adventures in the National Palace Museum and the NASA/JPL IMAX co-production Quantum Quest.
  
  
• March 2007
  • Cornell University: Created a 60-second animated scene visualizing Narwhal whale echolocation and feeding for the HDTV documentary Sea of Sound.
  
  
• September - October 2006
  • Digimax Inc 太極影音科技有限公司 (Taipei, Taiwan): Consulted for Digimax on-site for 3 weeks to advise them on lighting/rendering pipeline issues, to investigate possible bugs with RenderMan, RAT, and the Alfred render farm manager, and to work on a shot for their National Palace Museum project.
  
  
• September 2006
  • NASA/JPL contract: Completed a 3-minute visualization of the Phoenix Mars mission. This animation made use of a sophisticated global-illumination lighting pipeline and seamless whole-planet terrain generation.
  
  
• February 2006 - March 2007
  • BBC contract: Added DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD support to the open-source ffmpeg DV video codec. Submitted DVCPRO HD to maintainers in January 2008.
  
  
• April - November 2005
  • Disney: Completed 12 minutes of computer animation at 4K resolution for the George Butler IMAX film Roving Mars (produced by Disney, Vineyard Productions, Kennedy/Marshall, and White Mountain Films). I served as visual effects supervisor and technical director, leading a team of four digital artists for seven months. We were solely responsible for creating almost one third of the 40-minute film, from storyboarding sequences to delivering final shots for film recording. We used a custom Lightwave- and RenderMan-based pipeline to create Martian scenes of unprecedented realism and accuracy.
    • This work received a Visual Effects Society Award in 2006 for "Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project".
  
  
• October 2004
  PBS (NOVA/WGBH): Created several new animated shots of Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity for the NOVA program Welcome to Mars (directed by Mark Davis). These shots featured my first use of actual terrain data returned from the Mars Rovers.
  
  
• March 2004
  • Scientific American: I created the cover image for Scientific American magazine, March 2004.
  
  
• July - August 2003
  • PBS (NOVA/WGBH): Created 6 minutes of original animation featuring the Mars Exploration Rover for NOVA's Mars: Dead or Alive, a one-hour documentary directed by Mark Davis (MDTV). The animation focused on engineering challenges such as landing site selection, parachute design, and rover hardware.
    • This work earned an Emmy award nomination for "Outstanding individual achievement in a craft: Graphic and Artistic Design" in 2005.
  
  
• June 2003, September 2003, January 2004
  • TIME Magazine: Created three two-page spread illustrations of the Mars Exploration Rover for TIME Magazine.
  
  
• May - June 2003
  • NASA/JPL contract: Lengthened original Mars Rover video to 10 minutes, adding several new shots, and rendered Mars sequences at HDTV resolution. This updated video has been featured on national and international news programs, including CNN and ABC, and in science museums around the world. Available at http://www.maasdigital.com/gallery.html.
    • This video is on semi-permanent exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum (Washington, DC).
  
  
• April 2002 - January 2007
  • Ecliptic Enterprises, Inc: Digitized and edited video sequences from the RocketCam^TM line of spacecraft onboard imaging systems. Videos available at http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/gallery_rocketcam.shtml.
    • Digitized and enhanced STS-112 Space Shuttle External Tank camera footage to restore details lost when SRB separation motors damaged the camera lens.
    • Digitized and edited MER-A ("Spirit") and MER-B ("Opportunity") RocketCam^TM videos. Digitally enhanced and recovered video from the partially-failed second-stage camera on MER-B.
  
  
• June 2001
  • Custom device driver development: Wrote a Linux device driver for high-performance, dropout-free transmission of DV streams (IEC 61883-2) through OHCI FireWire cards. This driver was incorporated into the main Linux kernel sources, and is currently being used around the world by application developers and individuals.
  
  
• June - August 2000
  • USC Institute for Creative Technologies: Co-developed HDR Shop, a high-dynamic-range image-processing utility. Ported HDR Shop from Windows (MFC) to Linux (GTK). Developed an interactive OpenGL-based demo of Paul Debevec's reflectance-field lighting technique for SIGGRAPH 2000. Administered ICT's Linux network and guided new equipment purchases.
  
  
• March 1999 - April 2000
  • NASA/JPL contract: Created a six-minute, 100% CG video illustrating the Mars Lander 2001 mission - stills and clips available at http://dcine.dyndns.org/NASA/2001. Subsequently produced two additional minutes of animation in only ten days; the result was broadcast on CNN, the BBC, and other world-wide networks.
  
  

Internship - work included previsualization, 3D modeling, FX animation, and compositing for a TV special (Tom Clancy's Netforce) and TV spot ads (Jergens Snow Dome, Budweiser Bud Ants).

Internship - work included 3D modeling, lighting, and FX animation for an animated TV series pilot episode (Vortex).

3D animation for various clients, e.g. SRN: The Satellite Recovery Network infomercial.