Dan Englesson


about

portrait

My name is Dan Englesson and I’m working as Lead USD Pipeline Technical Director at Goodbye Kansas Studios. For the past 6 years I have been leading the development of a new VFX pipeline completely based on Pixar’s open-sourced OpenUSD framework, enabling us to efficiently take on large-scale cinematics and VFX projects.

Prior to moving back to Sweden I worked at Pixar Animation Studios in San Francisco for 5 years, where I worked on the movies Coco, Finding Dory and The Good Dinosaur as a Lightspeed and Pipeline Technical Director developing and maintaining the pipeline in the Pipeline team as well as optimizing renders in the Lightspeed team. Furthermore I worked in the RnD department optimizing light sampling for Pixar’s inhouse sampler that became a part of Renderman later on.

Before joining Pixar I worked as a Core Engineer at The Moving Picture Company in London creating new tools for blockbuster movies such as World War Z and The Jungle Book.

I received a Master of Science degree in Media Technology and Engineering in 2012. An education that gave me a strong knowledge in math, physics and programming techniques needed for creating state of the art visual effects for movies and games, which has enabled me to work with some of the best in the industry.

    Work Experience
  • Lead USD Pipeline Technical Director at Goodbye Kansas Studios 2020-present
  • Pipeline Technical Director at Goodbye Kansas Studios 2018-2019
  • Lightpseed Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios 2017-2018
  • Global Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios 2015-2017
  • Pipeline Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios 2014-2015
  • Core Software engineer at The Moving Picture Company 2013-2014
  • Crowd Technical Director Resident at Pixar Animation Studios 2013
  • Global Technical Director Intern at Pixar Animation Studios 2012
  • M.S thesis position / intern at The Moving Picture Company 2012
  • Laboratory assistant in TNM069 - 3D Computer Graphics 2010
  • Talks, Articles and Podcasts
  • Article in Post Magazine - Why USD is crucial to a Modern VFX Studio 2023
  • Podcast at CG Garage - USD at Goodbye Kansas Studios 2022
  • Podcast at Yellow Brick Road - Making an efficient USD Pipeline 2022
  • Talk at 24 Hours of Chaos - Creating an efficient USD pipeline 2021
  • Talk at Embark Studios - The basics of USD 2020
  • Talk at Electronic Arts - The basics of USD 2020
  • Talk at Stockholm Houdini User Group - The basics of USD 2020
  • Talk at Media technology days at Linköping University. - Talked about how it is to work in the VFX industry as a Software Engineer 2020
  • Non-profit Work
  • Part of a team that organized and planned the reception of 200 new students at Linköping University 2010
  • Education
  • Master of Science in Media Technology and Engineering at Linköping University, Sweden 2007-2012
  • list of completed courses
  • Languages
  • Swedish: Native
  • English: Full professional proficiency
  • Computer experience
  • Languages: Python, C++, C, Java, Rust, Lua, OSL, MySQL
  • API/Libraries: OpenUSD, CUDA, GLSL, OpenCL, OpenGL, OpenMP, pThreads, TBB
  • Programs and tools:Houdini/Solaris, Maya, Nuke, Blender, Vray, Renderman, Katana, Unrea
  • Operative system experience: Linux, Windows.

Movie credits

Featured Projects

psd

PIC/Flip fluid solver

A PIC/FLIP fluid simulation method implemented on the CPU and was multithreaded with OpenMP for speed.

View more
psd

Master Thesis

Improving the visual quality of crowd systems for feature film productions

View more
mayahair

Maya plugin: Gpu hair generation and shading

A generation and realtime Hair shading for the Maya Viewport using CUDA and GLSL.

View more
mayahair

Synthesizing sound from physically based motion

By using the Finite Element Method, vibrations and pressure differences from the deformed mesh can be extracted and used to calculate how the object would sound like when for example hitting the floor.

View more
All projects