Full name
Luke Davenport
Title
Technical Artist
Location
United Kingdom
Blurb
Hammering better workflows out, one snag at a time.
Experience
Senior Technical Artist
Supermassive Games
Working with key stakeholders to plan out work on new projects and leverage existing tech while creating new tools and process fit for purpose of project aspirations.
I handle full stack technical character implementation. taking delivered models into rigs, managing import/export of animation to and from engine and any supplimental material work required.
In summary, acting as the technical and artistic bridge for the team primarily while also supporting with Shader and material workflows in engine.
Rigging Artist
Playside Studios
Came on to the team with the initial goal of taking as much rigging load off of the current Technical animator.
Routinely cleared expected workload which left a lot of my time free to help with other aspects of the studio.
I helped start the projects internal to the animation department of documenting workflows and processes to help eliminate key man situations and encourage cross pollination of knowledge.
My experience was pulled in again when a lack of existing artist support was identified and worked with automation of tedious and time consuming tasks.
Technical Artist
Scientific Games
As my teams' dedicated TA i was brought on board to help up skill them from their old workflows into unity, this included:
Mentoring Art and Engineering on best practices
Communication with Leadership about realistic outcomes and timelines.
Leading by example and setting up proper structures for the team to build off.
Champion the embrace of team member skills to drive production choices.
With those larger hurdles out of the way, though ongoing, I focus mainly day to day on:
Continuous improvement of workflows. (How can we do this quicker/easier/cheaper)
Performance optimisation.
Iterative changes to workflow that balance deadlines with improvement.
Tools and Pipeline dev to support above mentioned goals.
Founder - Freelance Technical Artist
Acid Interactive
This has been the organisation that I have handled my fee for service work. During this time I have focused on skills improvement while going the extra mile for clients.
Some completed projects include:
Private Game development/VR tutoring
VR market research application
Extensive modelling and texturing work
Project optimisation and extended customer support.
Developer
Hypercore
.NET Framework Developer
Building Web applications with EF 5.0
Work autonomously and in a small team environment
Working on multiple projects concurrently and self moderating workflow based on client priority
Tutor – Game Design Concepts
University of South Australia
Teaching introduction to UE4 covering:
Blueprints, Level design, Materials, Particle effects, Sounds and Testing
Worked with Course Coordinator to develop lesson plan and objectives
Worked to update the course from using XNA to UE4
Worked 1on1 with student teams to introduce concepts outside of usual class scope (eg. matrices, 3d modelling, shaders, animation)
Technical Artist
E-train
Abstracted re-usable game Logic (C#, Unityscript)
Built a re-usable framework for rapid development
Extending Unity Editor (C#, Unityscript)
Provide design recommendations and implementations
Test code on a variety of platforms
Integration of a variety of plugins into central pipeline
Particle effects and Post processing
Optimisation of projects, assets and code
Work autonomously and in a small team environment