Toni Villalba Corominas

Toni Villalba Corominas

Senior Technical Artist

  • Professional experience coding tools for Maya (Maya API 2.0, Python Commands or PyMEL), Blender(Python), Substance 3D Painter and Substance 3D Designer(Python and Javascript), Marmoset(Python), Photoshop(Javascript), Unreal Engine(C++, Python and Blueprints), Perforce integration tools for them(Python or P4 commands), PySide2/PyQt5 libraries for UI(C++ and Python) and tools for integration between them.
  • Profesional experience coding shaders in HLSL or GLSL and creating materials in Unreal Engine material editor, Maya and Blender node systems.
  • Professional coding skills in Python, C++, javascript, GLSL, Html, css, and .sql.
  • Professional experience coding and managing node systems in Maya, Blender and Unreal Engine.
  • Knowledge on how game engine systems manage models, textures, lighting and interaction and how computers manage memory and other systems all up until we see something generated in 3D in some visual device.
  • Basic knowledge of the maths involved to it.
  • 7 years in an art academy drawing and painting with diverse tools, having good looking eye for lighting, colour, shape and proportion. I think that’s why I like to collect well drawn storybooks and mangas.
  • Team player with iniciative, self-motivated, proactive and a tireless worker who is really passionate about create 3D games experiences.

E X P E R I E N C E

Technical Artist

31st Union / Valencia, Spain / from January 2020 (Remote)

Because the high quality of our work at elite3d, the company was bought by 2K games early December this year and early 2022 I started working at 31st Union, a division of 2K games in Valencia. As part of a big team of tech artists, I’m specialized in texturing tools, integration of them in engine and version control plugins and tools.

  • Working closely to rendering engineering, materials, environment and characters teams to develop the tools for executing the pipeline desired by leads in each area.
  • Developing tools environments for different softwares related to my area. Custom executables, manage of system path variables, tools folder structure, initial execution of scripts.
  • Developing C++, Python and JavaScript plugins for different purposes including version control managing and integration of different content creation softwares.
  • Development of GLSL shaders for different softwares.
  • Development of a multilayer material system for texturing integrated with engine.
  • Manage my own task creation in agree with leads of different areas.
  • Instructing teams on best practices and generating documentation and videos.
  • Debugging game engine in C++ if it’s related to my area.
  • Being part of a small team in charge of reviewing everything, code and assets, submitted to the main build in some critical moments.

Technical Artist

Freelance / Valencia, Spain / from January 2021 (Remote)

I’m working on my free time as advisor for advertisement and 3d animated films companies helping to develop many kinds of projects for small and big companies as General Motors or Alphalete, among others. animated characters creation pipelines (from model creation, texturing, add hair and groom, eyes, rigging, skinning, clothing and animation(Mocap or keyframe) and lighting and rendering setups

  • Develop and execute animated characters creation pipelines (from model creation, texturing, add hair and groom, eyes and clothing) using Maya, Blender, Substance Painter Substance Designer, Maya XGen, Unreal Engine and Marvelous Designer.
  • Rigging and skinning, mainly in Maya but also in Blender in project needs it, human characters and creatures. Developing of Unreal Control Rigs, by hand and also by generating scripts that convert a Maya or Blender rig chain into a Unreal Engine Control Rig blueprint.
  • Create animations , Motion captured or keyframed, in Maya. Also import in Unreal Engine sequencer and create complete shorts, composed of different sequences and levels, with any kind of effect animation or transformation integrated in real time.
  • Recorded and integrated in Unreal Engine 5, streamed in real time, a performance of the short film director in the Unreal scene taking control of the characters for marking time marks on the shot sequences, and animate the whole scene, characters and assets, based in those time marks.
  • Created cloth models based on real cloth patterns for non released outfits in Marvelous Designer, simulate it during an animation, exported in Unreal Engine, set a proper lighting scene and recorded in high quality using the Movie Render Queue.
  • Scripted Unreal Engine using python for combining any existing model parts and materials in as many possibilities in a level and take high quality renders after each iteration to obtain more than 3000 different variations for a NFT project.
  • Created a multilayered material system for this NFT project for faster creation of the models materials variations and material iteration.
  • Making Unreal Engine plugins for next release in Unreal Marketplace

Technical Artist

elite3d / Valencia, Spain / May 2019- December 2019 (On site/Remote)

As a AAA outsourcing studio, in elite3d I had the chance to work on a big variety of projects and production tools. I learned there to be a jack of all trades and learned from the tech art mates of the client companies as I was the only technical artist with advanced coding skills at the studio.

  • For The Division 2 Episode 2 ( 15 environment artists) I had the chance of working in creating a lot of cloths, Substance Painter smart materials for helping the team to paint the masks for the layered material system of environmental models and help on setting the actors in Snowdrop, even the physics and destruction of the assets we produced at the studio. I also did documentation about the tools created and some other docs for helping the team to understand concepts and quick guides. When I joined the project we were completely out of time and this helping hand was key for finishing the project before expected and we could even make some extra polish.
  • For Cyberpunk 2077 (20 environment artists) I had the chance of making some Maya tools for the team for speeding up the process of stacking UVs, worked on some environmental assets to know the content creation pipeline and integration with Red Engine and I had the chance of reading and learning from their content creation tools, specially texturing pipeline and materials creation.
  • For Battlefield 2042 (45 environment artists) I worked during the whole production process (2 years), helping coding tools for easy texturing environmental assets in Maya and Painter, using a material layering system. I also debugged and helped DICE finding errors in Frostbite as they were updating the engine and validating the Frostbite versions, validated the correct setup of all the actors we sent to client in engine, even physics and destruction, created documentation about tools or undocumented new Frostbite updates for general use, taught the team about the new tools and warn about bugs and maintain a fluid communication with client stakeholders during all the production. I received a couple of good mentions from EA, and I also helped during some months in another EA project using the same engine at the same time I helped on Battlefield until 31st Union bought elite3d.
  • Helped during 5 months in a non-released project as a Unreal Engine C++ game programmer.
  • I did other tools during this period for other projects covered by NDA, like a python program using OpenCV for selecting too blurry images in a folder of photogrammetry pictures depending on the preferred range of blurriness for deleting them and helping to obtain better calculations of the points cloud or a complete 3d assets library software for storing, sharing and tagging 3d mehes including a 3d pbr viewer and an users-projects security system integrated with a jira plugin.

Web programmer

Freelance / Vila-real (Castellón), Spain / July 2011- April 2019

After having experience in sales and passionate about coding for the web, I run my own webpages business, specialized on big companies. I enjoyed a lot during many years but because my passion for 3d videogames I decided to switch my career to videogames industry and learn all the necessary on my free time until I considered that I had a good portfolio for applying for a big company.

  • Coding in the main languages used in webpages as Html, Css, javascript and sql,
  • Sales and customer support.
  • Writing docs for the webpages and teaching client workers on how to manage the webpages
  • Manage my small own teams of salesmen and programmers