Who am I...
My name is Ranjeet "Rungy" Singhal, the first name is pronounced "run-jee".
During the course of my career, I have been a Technology Director...a Tech Artist...a Lead Animator...a Character Artist...and a Pixel Pusher.
I'm currently seeking employment to use my wealth of knowledge and experience to make great fun games.
Resume.doc here
Art Samples here www.artstation.com/rungy

Knowledge, Experience, Skills and Accomplishments:

  • 18+ years of technical art experience
  • Expert level of Unity engine experience
  • 9+ years specializing technical art for real time games on console and PC
  • 18+ years of developing in Maxscript, about 3 years of MEL
  • Experience developing with C#, C++
  • Thorough understanding of environment art and world building construction processes and methods
  • Experience working with modern workflows and game engine editors like (Unity, some UE3)
  • Knowledge of PBR pipelines, distance based shader detail fading (prevents twinkling), multi channel colorization, custom terrain splats
  • Creatively innovate pipelines and solutions between designers, programmers and artists
  • 18+ years of experience and understanding of techniques and technologies relating to character rigging and animation 
  • Advanced dual body upper / lower retargeting workflows
  • Providing support for character rigs throughout production, Batch source modification, Re-ExportAll
  • Excellent understanding of human anatomy, structure, dynamics and character motion
  • Expert games industry character animator / rigger 
  • Expert at automated retargeting of animation data, be it hand keyed or mocap, Unity or Unreal
  • Maxscript tools for autoskel / automated rigging and weighting workflow
  • Experience with game engine rigging and animation systems like Unity, some Unreal 
  • Experience with creating custom support structures for character assets (ie, facial rigging, capes, robes, ponytails, etc that can move independently from the normal body structure) 
  • 9+ years or more of production experience in game development as a Character Artist.
  • 5+ years experience developing character/avatar customization systems and data.
  • Solid foundation in human anatomy and mechanical principles.
  • An exceptional understanding of realistic and super stylized character forms with the ability to provide "within the hour" UV'd prototypes
  • Creative vision to take a character to completion from either a detailed or simple concept image
  • Great understanding of next generation asset creation pipelines and tools
  • Exceptional understanding of form, shape, structure, and silhouette in regard to modeling
  • Superior eye for light, shade, color, and detail in creating texture maps
  • Mastery of 3D Studio Max, 3D Coat, Zbrush, and Photoshop
  • Highly organized with excellent spoken and written communication skills
  • Excellent Time management, Creative and Production Processes
  • Experience working with large and diverse teams while developing at scale
  • Self-motivation, good communication skills, and a great team-player attitude
  • Experience working on FPS, sci-fi , fantasy, and MMO's
  • One or more shipped game titles 

 

WORK EXPERIENCE:
(Dates of Employment) (Name of Company) (Location)

INDEPENDENT DEVELOPER
MAY 2015 – JAN 2019
Started my own company with the goal of providing data to other independent game developers via the Unity Asset Store for use as funding for my own private game development efforts. Within those three and a half years I created over 300 characters, about 600 animations, and the fundamentals of a complete top down action RPG game including a very versatile UI/ability system with 225 levels of player EXP. This work is still in progress and is being used for two titles "Beauty and the Brutes" and an undisclosed title.

DIRECTOR OF ART AND ANIMATION TECHNOLOGY
OCT 10 – MAY 15 JANUS RESEARCH EVANS, GA
Optimization and visual improvements to real time content including: Optimization data to increase rendering performance by an 88% gain. Construction of an automated Lip Sync pipeline that can produce skeleton animation files at a rate of about 100 per hour. Teaching proper performance techniques to the Art Staff, while at the same time dramatically increasing Art Quality to near photorealistic levels using latest state of the Art Shading technology. Working with Engineering and programming for character Artificial Intelligence, specifically Path Navigation, and weighted fluctuating character actions/goals similar to human brain patterns. Development of an automated export pipeline and creation of numerous assets. Development of Enhanced Reality system and data ( for actual live video overlaid with artificially real components ) Increasing fellow artists level of expertise through training exercises, tutorials and discussion.

ENGINEER, ART DIRECTOR
NOV 09 – OCT 10 SELF EMPLOYED LOS ANGELES, CA
I created my own game engine with an advanced skeletal animation system. The system supports unlimited animation blends, data streaming and lightmapping. I also created tools and exporters for my engine.

DIRECTOR OF ART TECHNOLOGY
FEB 09 – NOV 09 THQ LOS ANGELES, CA
Conducted research and implementation of four major systems for an undisclosed fighting game published by THQ. The first is a system that intelligently blends between animations based upon a “set” of goals. This is a bit different than aim blending or state blending in that varying target position during melee combat is accounted for. Using a global illumination formula to represent the “values” for possible targets and blending between the closest of those values worked really well. The second system I researched and developed was a muscle system, very similar to Maya Muscle but the in game result was based on “samples” and interpolated given approximation to said samples. In this way, the muscle helper transform data was only required for it’s skinning info and for the transform states of the samples. That means that those helpers were not required to be exported per frame as with the major bones. The third system was a powered rag doll system, for which I handled data setup and wrote a custom Collada Exporter for that data as Collada’s support for physics is weak at best. And the last system I devised was a plan to handle the deformation of impact without affecting a skeleton or ragdoll system. Basically wrapping the area of impact with an FFD deformer and applying the deformation to a mesh after it’s physics and animation had been taken into account.

LEAD TECHNICAL ARTIST
AUG 08 – FEB 09 PLANET MOON, MICROSOFT SAN FRAN, CA
Upon arriving I was given the task of revamping the unreal animation pipeline. I made several alterations and upgrades to the exporter process. This is the first C+ coding I’ve done in a while, took about a month of brushing up, but resulting in a very successful upgrade to the Unreal Engine pipeline. I altered routines for their exporter to be able to specifically flag which nodes qualify for export, in addition I added FULL maxscript support for managing the compile and export process. Once that was done, I created an intelligent system for marking skeletons that specified and asset tracking file used by any and all files using a particular skeleton. What did that do? It allows a skeleton to be in multiple files, multiple skeleton in one scene, even multiple bipeds in the same scene with the same name, track each animation…its frames, and which maxfile the animation was stored in. The artist only had to click an “add” button and type in the name of the animation one time. Then, by invoking the interface, the user is presented with a multi list box by which the user could select any number of entries and press the export button. My work handled everything from that point…loading compiled binary anim files, appending, updating, export file path and name handling…

LEAD TECHNICAL ARTIST
FEB 07 – AUG 08 SPACETIME, NCSOFT AUSTIN, TX
Worked with a lot of the former Star Wars Galaxies developers on an MMO with a unique space flight / ground combat MMO engine. Handled all technical art tasks. Helped design and develop parts of the art and animation system and pipeline with the art leads and programmers. Exported and implemented all animation assets into the game. Handled re-exportation and updates of all assets. Animated most of the ships and some primary passes for characters. Created many custom proprietary tools for artists as well as assisted them with any and all technical problems for source assets.

LEAD TECHNICAL ARTIST
NOV06 – FEB07 WOLFPACK/UBISOFT AUSTIN, TX
Work with Unreal Engine 3, handled all technical art tasks, developed new methods for creating tillable normal maps , all the shader work, developing tools for other animators, rigging characters and some animation. Created and documented all Art Dept production processes. All Max work here.

DIRECTOR OF ART AND ANIMATION TECHNOLOGY
MAR 02 – NOV 06 RITUAL ENTERTAINMENT DALLAS, TX
Began here as a lead animator but very quickly assumed the role of director. Game engine enhancement, export pipeline creation and performance enhancement. Game system design, character design, character modeling, documentation and instruction of all technology used by company.

LEAD ANIMATOR
FEB00 – MAR 02 SONY SAN DIEGO, CA
Lead a team of 9 animators to produce Everquest Shadows of Luclin and Planetside.

LEAD ANIMATOR
1998-2000 Battlecruiser3000AD/Derek Smart
Did contract work for Derek Smart, this also included modeling and textures.

Art Director
1995-1998 Odyssey Software
Software used during this period:
Deluxe Animator
Autodesk 3D Studio
Photoshop
Titles worked on:
Mad Dog Macree II
Ractor
Rodney Dangerfield’s Comedy Saver
This was a transitory period of my career. During my migration from the Amiga to the PC I decided to focus on techniques for developing skills at creating content for the PC.

1985-1995 Commodore Amiga, Motorola 68000, 16 bit era
Lead Programmer, Odyssey Software
Art Director, Digitech
Lead Programmer, Independent Development
Software used during this period:
Genpak Assembler
Deluxe Paint
Modelor 3D
Videoscape 3D
Titles worked on:
Dino Wars
Space War
Fastcar Auto Racing
Gunfight

Getting to work on the Amiga was a real dream as compared to working with monocolor lores sprites on the Atari. Some advanced programming techniques I developed included: force feeding the horizontal comparator to expand the limitation of sprites from 16 pixels wide to the entire width of the screen ( 320 pixels wide ) and using the hardware to create a new DOS to increase storage on a floppy disk by 30% All the programming I did during this period was in Assembly language and writing to the computers chipset directly. I also hacked an early copy of Deluxe Paint (1) to add animation capabilities to it long before Deluxe Paint II came out with that feature

1979-1985 Atari 800, Motorola 6502, 8 bit era
Lead Programmer, Independent Development
Software used during this period:
Atari Macro Assembler
Atari Basic
Koala Pad Painter
Titles worked on:
Hero Combat
Dragon Battle

EDUCATION:
High School Diploma

CERTIFICATIONS:
none

Credited Work:
MMA tech research ( NDA ) Kung Fu Factory/THQ
A Natal Test Project ( NDA ) Planet Moon/Microsoft
Blackstar Spacetime Studios
Stargate Worlds Wolfpack/Cheyenne Mountain
Kingdoms of Might and Magic Ubisoft/Wolfpack
Sin Episodes Ritual/Valve
25 to Life Ritual/Eidos/Crystal Dynamics
Quake 4 Expansion Ritual/iD/Activision
Legacy of Kain (6) Ritual/Eidos/Crystal Dynamics
Legacy of Kain (5) Ritual/Eidos/Crystal Dynamics
Tomb Raider Legend Ritual/Eidos/Crystal Dynamics
Sin 2 Ritual/iD
Black Hawk Down Ritual/Novalogic
Counter Strike Condition Zero Ritual/Valve/Microsoft
Lord Of The Rings Ritual/Electronic Arts
Star Trek Elite Force 2 Ritual/Activision
Everquest Shadows of Luclin SONY
Planetside SONY
Battlecruiser 3000 Battlecruiser3000AD/Derek Smart