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Who I am & What I do

I am a graduate student at Texas A&M university working towards a Master's Degree in Visualization Science. My current research is mainly about creating scripted/proceduaral rigging solutions for characters including soft bodied creatures as well as rigging in general. My current personal project is rigging a sea anenome. I am also researching procedural modeling techniques for creatures like the sea anenome that would be hard to model entirely by hand. The sea anenome is a good example because it can have 100 arms and the modeling is best done by making the base using point and click GUI operations, and then making the arms with Python or Mel scripting. The entire rig can also be procedural saving time in the pipeline.

I am also interested in games and am curently working with the Education Department on an exciting serious game for up and coming teachers that haven't yet had classroom experience and could benefit from a simulation. My role is mainly (re)programming the half-life 2 engine to get it do what the professors want. This project is fun and I am learning alot, so keep posted for the proof of concept that will be unveiled in the month of August!.

What makes me Unique

I hold a degree in computational mathematics from the University of California, hence I enjoy mathematics and try to use it whenever possible to help me solve an animation or rigging problem. My focus at UC was mostly dynamical systems which led me to study theories of chaos in my graduating year. In my work at the Viz Lab, I frequently rely on my background in mathematics and programming to make some of the more repetitive tasks of rigging faster to complete. It's amazing how mathematical modeling, rigging, and animation is, and how graph theory and group theory can be applied to solve the abundance of problems I encounter. One day I plan to write a paper on the usuage of groups and cyclic sub groups to solve problems with walk cycles.