Personal
Simon Trümpler
simon@simont.de
(Address upon request)
Work Related
- Portfolio
- I gave talks at GDC, Addon, Unreal Fest, ExpExpo and DAC (more information)
- I taught a Tech Art / VFX class at SAE, Enjmin, Nord University & Howest (more information)
- I taught classes about Unreal, Tech Art and 3D Engine Basics at the School4Games, oversaw the student projects and prepared/corrected the exams for my courses (2017 – 2019)
- I have several Game Dev related projects like a blog, a podcast and tutorial channels on Youtube (more information)
Work Experience
2017 – Now for Wild Sheep Studio
- As employed VFX Artist (2019 – Now)
- As Freelance VFX Artist (2017 – 2019)
I covered the whole process of creating VFX (as I was the only VFX Artist for most of the time): Receiving a pitch from design, gathering references & brainstorming, presenting the gathered material to the design team, preparing an ugly but effective “version zero” as quick as possible for them to test, improving the quality more and more in iterative steps and communicating the current status daily via slack & confluence. In rare cases, I got VFX concepts from our concept artist. Sometimes I created concepts myself, but it’s not my strength.
I created all visual assets (geometries, textures, materials), wrote the shaders in HLSL and did the implementation into the game by using a custom scripting language (Pesto). Furthermore, I worked closely with the rendering team and the gameplay programmers to get all bindings, events and additional data for the scripting language so that I could trigger the effect at the right moment, at the correct transformation and for the right amount of time. I also wrote my own script libraries to re-use code effectively.
If possible, I’ve optimized the scripts to run multi-threaded and double-checked the result with our in-game performance profiler. I used our debug views to keep an eye on overdraw and logging errors. If I found crashes or bugs in our engine (there has been a lot) or if features were missing, I’ve documented everything in Confluence and created JIRA tasks if necessary. Whenever a programmer had time, I just needed to point to my list and they knew where improvements could be made.
2016 – 2017 for Tequila Works
- As Freelance/VFX Artist on The Invisible Hours
- As Freelance/VFX Artist on RIME
2009 – 2015 at Egosoft
- As 3D Artist on X:Rebirth doing models/UVs for ships, stations, station parts, station animation, effects (no unique textures for models, we used a lot atlas textures)
- Responsible for integrating outsourced NPC models & animation
- Responsible for sound management & sound integration
- Created MaxScripts for improving my own but also other team members workflow
- Created and maintained art documentation and our asset document
2006 – 2009 at Ascaron/Studio II
- 3D Artist on Sacred 2 & Addon (Ice & Blood) doing models, textures, animation and effects (see Demoreel)
- Directed Motion Capture Recording for the Ork animations of Sacred 2 (Imagination Studios, Sweden)
- Communicated with outsourcing company (for a limited time), approved assets and supported them with documentation
- Created scripts to improve the workflow (MaxScript, PHP)
- Documented internal information like art assets/tutorials in a wiki
Education
2004 – 2006 at Games Academy
- Got “Art & Animation” course certificate
2003 – 2004 at Technical diploma
- College (“Fachoberschule”) with the graduation: technical diploma (“Fachabitur”)
2000 – 2003 at Telekom AG
- Apprenticeship as an IT specialist at Telekom AG
Skills
Software
Engines
- I worked in 3 different Custom Engines
- Unreal (since 2015, 1.5 years professional [RiME, The Invisible Hours])
- Unity (uses to demonstrate Tech Art in my courses)
3D
- Houdini (since 2018, mostly for private projects [see portfolio])
- 3Ds Max (9 years)
- Blender (since 2017, mainly for simple geometries and pyro/flip simulation)
- Maya (2 years)
2D
- Photoshop (since 2004)
- Substance Designer (since 2018, mainly for VFX textures)
- Krita (for private projects)
Programming/Scripting
- HLSL (since 2018)
- Pesto (custom scripting language, since 2017)
- Python (since 2019, mainly for private projects)
- MaxScript (9 years), Mel (2 years)
- VSCode, Notepad++ (This is not a joke. Custom engines often lack good tools, text editors were my main tool to integrate VFX, setup assets, write shaders and adjust materials)
Extra
- Intel GPA / RenderDoc / NSight (mainly for private purposes)
- JIRA, Mantis, Perforce, Confluence
- Fork Particle Studio (3 years)
Languages
- German (Native)
- English (Intermediate)
- French (Beginner)
- Spanish (Beginner)