Daniel Hayes
Technical Artist
Specializing in Lighting, Materials and Pipelines
Portfolio
A small sample of my work.
Game Cinematics in "Marvel's The Avengers"
About Me
With 21 years of experience in VFX and Games, I have had a front-row seat to the evolution of image generation technology. I am an artist, technician, and leader responsible for some of the most recognizable imagery in pop culture history. My career has taken me from building lighting pipelines to create beautiful imagery at studios like ILM and Sony Imageworks (Star Wars, Avengers) to engineering Unreal Engine workflows at Crystal Dynamics.
I specialize in:
Pipeline and Tools Engineering: Helping studios craft world-class imagery using modern real-time engines combined with an eye for artistic excellence.
Cinematic Lighting: Blending seamless realism with artistic direction, building bulletproof pipelines to enable artists to bring their best work to the screen.
Tool Creation: Empowering artists with robust, documented, and automated systems. Training, documentation, mentorship and an eye towards pushing the medium of computer graphics forward.
I take pride in being a pure technical artist and my sweet spot is directly on the intersection of technology and artistic expression. Storytelling, crafting images that inspire, is what gets me up in the morning. I have a long track record of mastering new techniques and using them to bring computer graphics work to the next level.
I am currently job hunting and looking to connect with teams that are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in real-time graphics and visual effects.