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​​​PATRICK PELUSE             

                    Senior Technical Artist | Realtime & Offline Rendering | Synthetic Data | ML Pipelines | AR/VR/MR                       ​​

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SUMMARY

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Senior Technical Artist specializing in real-time rendering, character rigging, and synthetic data pipelines for AR/VR/MR and games. 20+ years of experience with interactive tools, games, and VFX. Proficient in Unreal Engine, Unity, Maya, V-Ray, Substance; scripting in Python, C#, MEL. Strong record supporting R&D teams and building scalable render pipelines for ML/DL. Career objective: Make a great impact in the workplace by solving problems both creative and technical in various media involving traditional arts, film, game development, rendering, prototyping, simulation, and visual development on Console, MR, VR, AR, and Machine Learning.

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EXPERIENCE

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Senior Technical Artist — Skybound Entertainment
Los Angeles, CA • Oct 2023 – Jun 2025

  • Led UE5 rendering for Invincible VS characters; designed, proposed, and built scalable shader/material pipeline. Custom eye, hair, body, damage, blood, custom Material Layer Blend system. Custom rimlight, toon, shaders. Look dev support.

  • Optimized Lumen lighting, overall asset optimization, naming, and standardization for performance targets.

  • Character and Prop rigging to support project goals. Mgear, Custom Rigs.

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Founder / Developer — Simsara
Pittsburgh, PA • Oct 2022 – Current

  • Architected a modular, Python-based quantitative research and trading simulation platform (Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, GPT-based APIs) supporting back-testing, live execution, and ML-driven strategy evaluation.

  • Developed containerized microservices (Docker) for scalable data ingestion, labeling, and distributed compute.

  • Integrated immersive data exploration with Unity/Unreal Engine and VR/3D visualization tools. ML Agents, Physics, Rigging, Training, Inference in Unity.

  • Automated pipelines for synthetic data generation and annotation, leveraging photogrammetry (COLMAP, RealityCapture, Metashape) and procedural content tools.

  • Deliver scalable solutions for analytics and training. Modular back-testing, live-execution simulation, adaptive ML-driven strategy evaluation, fully auditiable.

  • Brand and full CMS Web Backend.

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Senior Technical Artist IV — Oculus Research / Reality Labs
Pittsburgh, PA • Mar 2018 – Jan 2023

  • Data generation for machine learning both real-time and offline in Unity HDRP and Maya Vray Next.

  • Managed design end to end development of Realtime Simulator, QA, Training Data, Future Headsets, and Capture Systems. Lead developer, coding, rigging, assets, scenes rendering optimization, VR.

  • Setup batch rendering systems and scripting for both local rendering, internal farm, and cloud.

  • Look Development for dataset generation. Multiview Realistic Indoor Environments, 3dsmax, Day to Night for NERFs and 3d reconstructions. Custom JSON export camera intrinsic, extrinsic, and render optimization.

  • C# Scripting, Python, Rigging, Animation Re-targeting, QA, Art Direction, Custom Tool Creation.

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Senior Technical Artist / Prototype Developer — Magic Leap
San Francisco, CA • Apr 2014 – Nov 2017

  • Make prototypes using game engines Unity for gesture recognition, computer vision.

  • Rendering and pipeline of synthetic data, hands and env for machine / deep learning.

  • C# Scripting, Rigging, Animation, UI/UX, Art Direction, Tool creation for researchers.

  • Ensure new tools and technology are pipeline efficient and deliver the best possible results for teams.

  • Rigging for Realtime full body locomotion game, Animation, Executive AR Demos, UI/UX, and Conceptual Drawings.

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Lead Technical Artist — Meta Vision
Portola Valley, CA • Nov 2013 – Jan 2014

  • Created CG elements. Modeling, Textures, Created Shaders, Materials, and performed Rigging tasks for AR Space Glasses.

  • Animated things. UI and UX Design and integration.

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Multiple Roles — Digital Domain
Port St. Lucie, FL • Feb 2011 – Sep 2012

  • Stereoscopic Animator (1 year): Converted source film to 3d stereoscopic viewing. Rotoscope and 2d tracking, Animate objects in 3d space. Create Clean Plates, 2d Tracking, 3d Tracking, Color Keying, Re-grain Film.

  • Look Surfacing / Texture and Sculpting (6 months): Texture / Sculpt hi-res animal and foliage models for upcoming feature “The Legend of Tembo.” Assist in pipeline development and testing stages.

  • Generalist Assignment (1 month): Assist in the development of 2012 Pathfinder Award Presentation. Model, Texture, Light, Animate Cameras, Render, and Composite final passes together.

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Junior Engineer (Localization), 3ds Max team — Autodesk (Media & Entertainment Division)
San Rafael / San Francisco, CA • Oct 2004 – 2007

  • Created GUI's for Essential Skills Video tutorials shipped with all localized versions of 3dsMax9.

  • Leveraged program files for the localized versions of 3dMax 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9. Performed Black Box testing QA.

  • Created test scripts, located bugs, created reports, and reconfigured 3dsmax for proper functionality.

  • Localized all graphics for the New Feature Guide, Reference, and Tutorials for 3dsMax 7.

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SELECTED PROJECTS

  • Interactive Development Kit (IDK) — Co-creator; integrated custom microcontroller and custom sensor suite into UnityGame Engine and other applications using C# and Python; built demos and prototypes. Search "interactive development kit" on kickstarter.com. bit.ly

  • Gorant Chocolatier — Designed and developed full e-commerce site using PHP, CSS, and MySQL.

  • Pathfinder Award Presentation — Modeled, textured, lit, animated cameras, and composited final sequences.

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PUBLICATIONS

  • Constraining Dense Hand Surface Tracking with Elasticity, SIGGRAPH Asia (Dec 2020). Hand rigging, UVs, Synthetic Multicamera Renders.

  • SelfPose: 3D Egocentric Pose Estimation from a Head-Mounted Camera, IEEE TPAMI (Nov 2020). Rendered additional Synthetic third person view including depth.

  • xR-EgoPose: Egocentric 3D Human Pose from an HMD Camera, ICCV (2019). Created simulator and dataset for training data.

  • Information-Theoretic Online Multi-Camera Extrinsic Calibration, IEEE RA-L (2022). Unity based Simulator, Bodies and Rigging, Camera Rig, Animation Retargeting, Ground Truth Data, Environment and Rendering setup using HDRP.

  • Mutual Scene Synthesis for Mixed Reality Telepresence, arXiv (Apr 2022).

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CERTIFICATIONS | LICENSES

  • AI For Everyone — Coursera (2019)

  • OpenCV School — ongoing ML certifications

  • Commercial Driver’s License (CDL-A), Class A — Unrestricted (Manual Transmission), Issued 02/2026

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EDUCATION

  • Academy of Art University — Masters in Fine Arts, 3D Modeling, Gaming, Texture Painting, Conceptual Art Studies (Dec 2010 - Present coursework, not completed)

  • Academy of Art University — Bachelors in Fine Arts, 3D Modeling, Texture Painting, Rendering, Traditional Art Studies, May 2008

  • ITT Technical Institute — Associates in Specialized Technology Degree, Information Technology – Multimedia, Jun 2003 (GPA: 3.95, Highest Academic Honors)

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CORE SKILLS

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Rigging & Animation
Advanced facial/body rigging (FK/IK, root-driven, quaternion-based), retargeting (Xsens, MotionBuilder), Leap Motion SDK, real-time animation pipelines, FBX export, Mgear, custom rigs, skinning human/non-human assets.

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Rendering, Lighting & Look Development
PBR workflows (Substance Painter/Designer, Marmoset, Shader Forge), advanced lighting and rendering (Vray, Arnold, Redshift, Mental Ray, Unity HDRP, Unreal Lumen), custom pipelines for synthetic data and deep learning (Unity, Vray).

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Modeling, Texturing & Digital Sculpting
High-to-low poly workflows, retopology, advanced UV mapping, NURBS & polygon modeling (Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox), photogrammetry & reality capture (COLMAP, RealityCapture, Agisoft Metashape, Meshroom).

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Synthetic Data & Machine Learning Pipelines
Data generation for machine learning (real-time & offline in Unity HDRP and Maya Vray Next), custom pipelines for synthetic data/deep learning, multi-view realistic indoor environments, ML Agents, Physics, Rigging, Training, Inference in Unity.

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Programming & Scripting
Python, C#, MEL, Bash, HTML, PHP, MySQL, ActionScript 3, OpenCV, HLSL, Micro Python.

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AR/VR/MR Development
Unity (mobile/PC/VR/AR), Unreal Engine (Blueprints), 3D browser UI, Magic Leap, Meta Vision, ARKit, ARCore, OpenVR, Oculus SDK.

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Pipeline & Workflow
Git, Perforce, Shotgun, Docker, microservices, asset optimization, naming conventions, custom tool/pipeline development, batch rendering systems.

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Software & Tools
Maya (6.0–2023), 3ds Max (4.0–2017), Zbrush, Mudbox, Marvelous Designer, Wrap 3D, Mechanim, EMotionFX, Fuse, Unreal Engine (3, 4, 5.2, 5.5), Unity (2013– 6 HDRP), NukeX, Mari, Adobe Photoshop/After Effects/Premiere Pro.

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Applied & Technical Studies
Color theory, human/animal anatomy, look development for characters and environments, game development, pose estimation, scalable synthetic data.

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Operating Systems
Windows, OSX, Linux, Lumen OS, Android SDK, Docker

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