Wen Tien

wenjamin@gmail.com

 

Objective

Full-time lead software engineer position or pipeline consultant in cinematic production.

Education

2002-2004           University of Southern California

·          M.S. in Computer Science

1997-2001           University of California, Los Angeles

·          B.S. in Computer Engineering

Game Credits

Lair (PS3) – Cinematic Pipeline Technical Director

Gears of War (XBox 360) – Pre-rendered Cinematic Engineer

God of War 2 (PS2) – In-Game Cinematic Engineer

Spyro 3 (XBox PS2 GC PSP) – Pre-rendered Cinematic Engineer

Experience

2007 – Present    Sony Computer Entertainment of America (San Diego)

Cinematic Pipeline Technical Director

·          Manage and troubleshoot cinematic pipeline

·          Work closely with department leads to improve workflow

·          Develop various production tools to support all departments

·          Provide tools trainings

 

2006-2007          Technicolor Interactive

Senior Software Engineer

·          Various pipeline tools for Maya, Mental Ray, and Alienbrain

·          Setup and troubleshoot Maya scenes for PS2 in-engine render

·          Rush render farm administration and customization

·          Alienbrain administration and customization

·          Troubleshooting Maya expression-driven effects

·          Gameplay prototyping using UnrealEngine3

·          Gamebryo & RenderWare support

 

2002-2006          Institute for Creative Technologies

Lead Engineer

·          Integrating Architecture (2005-2006)

o         C++ generalist in graphics, animation, and tools development

o         Worked closed with Art Lead developing Maya tools for content production pipeline

o         Unreal 2.5 engine modification and scripting

o         Alienbrain administration

·          FlatWorld (2004)

o         Designed automatic speech-driven facial animation pipeline and tools

o         Virtual Character prototype appeared in 2004 Army Science Conference

·          Facial Animation (2003-2004)

o         Researched on realistic lip-synch, eye gaze, tongue movement, and skin wrinkles

o         Results published in 2003 Symposium for Computer Animation

·          Full-body Animation (2002)

o         Implemented 1999 SIGGRAPH paper on joint-smoothing and retargeting for IK-based characters

·          Motion Capture (2003-2004)

o         Responsible for set-up, maintenance, calibration of in-house motion capture system

o         Experience in MoCap data acquisition and post processing

·          Face Scanning (2003-2005)

o         Experience in set-up, calibration, environment lighting for 3d model acquisition

o         Digitizer data post-processing and 3D model construction

Languages

C++, C, Java, Perl, Visual Basic, Lisp, Pascal, Basic, ASP, PHP, HTML, XML, JavaScript

API

MEL & Maya API, Unreal Engine 3, Gamebryo, OpenGL, STL, FLTK, Microsoft SAPI, AT&T Natural Voice, Performer, MySQL

Technologies

·          Temerity Pipeline

·          Alienbrain & CVS

·          Rush

·          Motion Analysis motion capture system setup and data-processing

·          Inspeck face scanner setup and data-proecessing

·          Windows, UNIX, SGI Irix

·          Microsoft Visual Studio & Office Suite

·          Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere

Publications

Expressive Speech-Driven Facial Animation
Yong Cao, Wen C. Tien, Petros Faloutsos, and Frédéric Pighin
ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 24, Number 4, October 2005

 

Learning Controls for Blend Shape Based Realistic Facial Animation

Pushkar Joshi, Wen C. Tien, Mathieu Desbrun, and Frédéric Pighin

Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Animation 2003 and SIGGRAPH 2003 Technical Sketches

Personal

U.S. Citizen