Aaron Luk

Current

• Software Engineer at Pixar Animation Studios

Past

• Software Test Engineer at Pixar Animation Studios
• R&D Software Engineer at Tippett Studio
• Network Software Engineer at Intel Corporation

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Education

• Art Institute of California - San Francisco
• University of California, Berkeley

Recommended

7 people have recommended Aaron

Connections

308 connections

Industry

Motion Pictures and Film

Websites

• My Portfolio

Aaron Luk’s Summary

CG Tools Generalist.

Aaron Luk’s Specialties:

* Lighting and Rendering Pipelines.
* Fur/Feather Systems.
* Technical Documentation.
* Development of custom Maya and Renderman-related tools.
* Infrastructure for largescale software development environments.

Aaron Luk’s Experience

• Software Engineer

  Pixar Animation Studios

  (Public Company; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

  April 2009 — Present (8 months)

  Optimizing and extending performance-critical libraries and workflows for the studio's next-gen animation toolset.

• Software Test Engineer

  Pixar Animation Studios

  (Public Company; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

  July 2007 — May 2009 (1 year 11 months)

  Developing white box / API tests for proprietary next-gen animation package.

• R&D Software Engineer

  Tippett Studio

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

  October 2005 — July 2007 (1 year 10 months)

  In-house tools development for CG artists producing VFX and animation for films and commercials.
  
  - Implemented enhancements to fur/feather system, including Maya plugins and MEL for manipulating guide hairs, image and file I/O for artist control over parameters governing the render-time geometry, and Renderman DSO to generate the fur/feather primitives.
  
  - Produced key features for a suite of Qt GUIs and Python libraries used to create, edit, and arrange renderfarm tasks.
  
  - Interim graphics lead, assuming ownership of the render pipeline, including modules for RIB generation (C++, Maya API), introspection (Rif), and archiving (Python, Rif). Consulted with other tech principals to refine infrastructure and define milestones.
  
  - Directed development efforts into next iteration of rendering tools, including an open source solution for shadowmap generation, and a GPU-accelerated preview renderer for interactive relighting and look development.

• Network Software Engineer

  Intel Corporation

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; INTC; Computer Networking industry)

  June 1999 — February 2003 (3 years 9 months)

  Developing APIs, test suites, and demos for network processor SDKs, including security applications, device drivers, and benchmarking tools. Emphasis on modular, reusable, extensible, and well-documented code for external customer use.
  
  - Responsible for writing drivers in C managing IP stack throughput and inter-processor communication over PCI.
  
  - Wrote a software guidelines document for customer release, detailing common techniques and tools for writing reusable and easily extendable drivers and applications using the SDK.
  
  - Developed a division-wide process document describing the procedures and milestones required to bring a project from planning to development stages, standardizing the process, and reducing overhead in the planning phases for all future division projects. Created training presentations to expand upon the material in the document, for use in company classes.

Aaron Luk’s Education

• Art Institute of California - San Francisco

  B.S. , Visual & Game Programming , 2004 — 2007

• University of California, Berkeley

  B.A. , Applied Math , 1995 — 1999

  Activities and Societies:

  hardboiled - writer and layout designer for on-campus magazine covering Asian American issues and interests

Additional Information

Aaron Luk’s Websites:

• My Portfolio

Aaron Luk’s Interests:

film history/theory/culture/criticism, graphic design, comic books, world travel, digital rights

Aaron Luk’s Groups:

ACM SIGGRAPH, EFF

•    Intel Alumni Association
•    ACM SIGGRAPH
•    Art Institute Graduates
•    Art Institute of California - San Francisco

Aaron Luk’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch