Creating the future of animation with Unreal Engine
Location: NYC
Email: woody@infinistache.com
Some context about me:
As a kid I liked making things - especially VIDEOS, CODE and GAMES.
I spent 10 years making things using cinematography, editing and motion graphics.
During Covid, I transitioned into R&D at FCB’s StudioRx in their XR team and became an Unreal Engine specialist.
As a freelance developer, I’m creating the future of live streaming, experimental animation and game development and posting it.
Top Skills
Pairing great ideas with amazing tech
Motion capture operating and directing
Unreal programming (games, API’s, networking, motion capture, etc)
Unreal Sequencer
Unreal Control Rig (Realtime and Post)
3D character creation in Blender (Full pipeline)
Get in touch if…
You need a developer who can make ANYTHING work in unreal engine, but especially stuff that needs to be live or procedurally animated.
You need high quality motion capture.
You want to know if something is possible in animation. (It probably is!!)
You want to nerd-out about Dungeons and Dragons.
Motion Capture
Currently using:
Xsens Link suit
Manus Quantum gloves
AR-Kit
Also used / previous:
Vive Trackers (Wrote an IK mocap solver)
Leap Motion (Wrote an IK solver)
Rokoko
Mocopi
Stretch Sense
Various other devices and peripherals
Realtime Animation
Demonstrations of animation happening in realtime programmed to work on top of motion capture or even without mocap entirely.
Live streaming character: (suitless)
Speech to 3D text physics:
Midi to piano algorithm:
Midi to drums algorithm:
Procedural stop motion effect:
I built a stop-motion demo that could run on top of any animation blueprint data applied to to the character as well as facial blendshapes. This was a 1-day build. It’s something I’d like to expand on in the future.
Model / blendshapes by my friend SavannahXYZ
DIY indie VP green screen demo:
Back in the early days of virtual production (this is 2021) I decided to roll my own demo of a vive-tracked camera for a trade show I was invited to speak at. I also wrote a frame buffer that could reduce video sync issues without using gen-lock.
Games (as a solo-developer)
For the past 3 years I’ve been building small scale games for use on social media. Some of my best work in this space (client projects) are under NDA.
Virtual gameshow podcast:
For several years, I’ve hosted a series of podcast interviews with industry-veteran guests that features a live game show. Here’s a sample clip featuring a jeopardy-like game called Trivia Flip. The catch is that guests play against my twitch audience who are able to collectively guess against any missed questions.
This often lead to some pretty funny moments.
To-Do Dungeon:
I built an RPG front-end on top of a simple to-do list tracking system for a few friends and myself to use to visualize our productivity. Any tasks we completed counted as attacks against monsters. Any tasks we neglected counted as attacks against us. Here’s the entire case study video.
Game jam in a box:
I hosted a game jam featuring a fixed camera perspective and challenged developers to make something “inside the box.“
My entry was a claw machine game that allowed you to pick monsters to fight on your behalf. After selection, your characters fight it out against a random assortment of the remaining unselected monsters. Your job is to pick the best of the bunch.
D&D on Twitch:
Getting a little fed up with how difficult it was to plan out table top games, I decided to build a D&D-like simulator game that allowed streamers to let anyone in their Twitch chat join a game and create a character.
I started a studio (but it’s new!)
This year I opened a studio called Infinistache. While we’re still making our way in the world of production. In the meantime, I want to be maximally available to other studios and use our facilities to help other productions.