Timothy Patrick Steele

Visual effects professor

Education

B.A., fine arts, University of South Carolina
Graduate coursework, digital production arts, Clemson University

Credentials

Professor of visual effects, March 2014–present, Savannah College of Art and Design
- Teaching various software packages along with industry standards and practices
- Working with students on cloth and hair implementation for short films
- Faculty adviser for the Digital Media Club and Siggraph Club

DreamWorks Animation, December 2009–March 2014
- How to Train Your Dragon 2, character effects artist
  - Worked with contractors on implementation of new real-time cloth and rigid solver
  - Created Maya cloth setups
  - Created Houdini fur, cloth, net, and chain setups
- Turbo, character effects artist
  - Sped up cloth rigs for various characters by more than 50%
  - Learned and took over feather and grass setups after the lead artist left
  - Created tools for volumetric (vdb) sim cage generation for plants and props
  - Houdini representative for CFX department
- Megamind, character effects artist
  - Hair and cloth simulation, deformation cleanup, and prop rigging

Rhythm & Hues Studios, June 2007–December 2009
- Knight and Day, rigging TD
  - Created PyQt tool for quickly dialing in muscle jiggle
  - Rigged Tom Cruise stunt double’s face replacement with full muscle system
  - Rigged cars and trains
- Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, technical animation supervisor
  - Set up hair and cloth pipeline for six characters and 22 outfits
  - Managed 32 technical animators
  - Trained and wrote documentation for new technical animators
  - Prototyped automatic fur cleanup tool for R&D
- Night at the Museum 2, technical animation TD
  - R&D for “stone” cloth and grass shots
  - Hair and cloth simulation, deformation cleanup, and prop rigging
- Aliens in the Attic, lead technical animation TD
  - Led a team of ten technical animators
  - R&D for simulating rigid armor and ragdoll physics
  - Hair and cloth simulations, deformation cleanup, and environment interaction
- The Incredible Hulk, technical animation TD
  - R&D for the sonic wave effect
  - Set up and documented process to get wet hair simulations into the FX pipeline
  - Hair and cloth simulations, deformation cleanup, and environment interaction
- Alvin and the Chipmunks, technical animation TD
  - Hair and cloth simulations, deformation cleanup, and environment interaction
  - Assigned to mentor other TDs after three months of working at Rhythm & Hues