Nathan Horne – Technical Artist

• Phone: 940-231-3846
• Temujin2887@gmail.com
• nathanhorne.com
• LinkedIn

Skills:

• Python
• PyQt/PySide
• Maya API
• MEL
• Redis
• MySql/SqlLite
• C++, C#
• Shell Scripting
• Racket/Scheme
• Rigging/Skinning
• Very strong problem solving and troubleshooting skills

Job history:

• Epic Games Inc – Senior Pipeline Developer
• Bioware – Senior Technical Artist (October 2016 – June 2019)
  • Anthem (multi-platform)

• Naughty Dog – Senior Technical Artist( March 2011 – September 2016)
  •  Uncharted 4 (PS4)
    • Starting with Uncharted 4 I moved onto a more tools centric role in order to support a broader range of departments and requests.
    • For the sound and FX teams, I authored a new and more interactive tool for the “tagging” of their effects into animations. The new tool let them do away with years of hand editing text files and slow ramp up times for contractors. New employees no longer needed to learn a one-off syntax just to implement audio and FX into the game. The system also has inter-department notifications built in. This helps to inform the animation team and FX/sound teams when a tagged animation is changed, and what degree of re-tagging that animation might require.
    • For the lighting teams I helped update and fix several live-edit tools to allow real-time editing of in-game lights from Maya.
    • For the animation team there were many major tools updates and rewrites. Some of the most significant work was done to completely redesign and implement an animation library from the ground up. This allowed the team to handle the massive amount of both hand key and motion capture animations and reference. I also worked closely with our motion capture TD to smoothly integrate new motion capture notes/reference and other data from the stage directly into the library.
    • For the modeling team the authoring of wrinkle maps was moved from a command line tool into a more automated and artist friendly tool, this cut the process down from days/weeks of frustrating errors to just a fraction of a day hooking up the art.
    • For the modeling/design teams a new tool was created to live-edit and author “looks” which are scripted collections of game assets pieced together to form a singular piece of art in-game. This tool allowed us to have the artists author the final in-game implementation of their art, rather than rely on the design teams coding skills as had been required for past games. I also pushed for a greater flexibility in per mesh instance parameters, which allowed a massive increase in shader variation using the same asset quantity as prior games.
    • For the Sony outsourcing team a new set of tools were created to collect and track asset dependencies, and synchronize them with the remote site. Removing the prior burden on the art teams to manually copy/push files manually to individual outsourcers.
    • For the design team, I worked closely with several designers to implement compile tools directly into their primary editor via several plugins.
    • Many cross department tools were also created to optimize the pipeline overall:
      • A batch Maya farm and gui was created to allow many scripts to utilize external machines for large tasks (Motion capture solves, playblasts, and rig/scene fixup scripts)
      • A batch asset build tool which gathered together all of the common art asset build command line tools into a user friendly interface.
      • A python library and set of run-time commands for interacting directly with the running game instance.
      • A python/c++ library for interacting with our proprietary version control.
      • A python library for PyQt which greatly simplified the gui scripting process.
  • The Last of Us (PS3/PS4)
    • I handled rigging and cloth for many characters across both the single player and multiplayer aspects of the game.
    • Single player tasks were mostly related to implementing new characters and skeletons into the game as needed by the art and design teams, as well as authoring and adjusting cloth simulations. There were also many “factions” of enemies that were authored in a part system style, I pushed for as much re-usability as possible with all secondary characters.
    • Multiplayer tasks mostly involved the management and authoring and many more part system style characters, as well as player customization system parts.
    • My role also had me creating and maintaining a large set of tools across all art creation teams, both for authoring content as well as implementing that content into the game and managing the source assets.
  • Uncharted 3 (PS3)
    • Assisted with Multiplayer part Skinning prior to moving on to The Last of Us.

• Terminal Reality Inc – Rigger (March 2007 – March 2011)
  • Star Wars – Kinect (Xbox 360)
  • Ghostbusters the Video Game (Xbox 360/Playstation 3/PC)

Education:

• Full Sail Real World Education | Winter Park, FL: (2005 – 07)
  • Associate of Science Degree in Computer Animation, January 2007
  • Graduated class valedictorian