# Tony Pelle > Staff Software Engineer, Google Beam Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/tonypelle Nearly two decades of experience as a software developer, pipeline architect & supervisor for the VFX and CG Animation industries. ## Work Experience ### Staff Software Engineer @ Google Jan 2015 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Production Engineering Supervisor @ Industrial Light & Magic Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco Bay Area • Supervising a team of engineers responsible for the design, development and support of ILM’s pipeline infrastructure. • Designing the next generation pipeline infrastructure to support ILM's geographically diverse studios, to enable efficient collaboration on projects, and improve pipeline resiliency under adverse conditions. • Collaborating with IT, IS, R&D and CG Supervisors on improving artist and production workflows. ### Director of Production Technology @ Rainmaker Entertainment Inc. Jan 2008 – Jan 2013 | Vancouver, Canada • Successfully transitioned the studio from an XSI pipeline to a Maya pipeline. • Successfully completed the studio’s first theatrically released feature film, “Escape from Planet Earth”, using the new pipeline. Additionally, four direct-to-video films, five short films and three gaming cinematics have been delivered with the pipeline. • Managed CG Supervisors and Pipeline Technical Directors, directing pipeline development and production problem solving & support. • Developed tools for job submission, reporting and process execution software for the compute farm; wrote the core of the asset management system used throughout the pipeline. • Oversaw the Creature Department TDs and the development of the rigging and simulation pipelines. • Recruiting, mentorship & career development, performance management and resource planning. • Worked with Directors, CG Supervisors and production to ensure that the creative vision of the productions could be met within the prescribed budget and timeline. • Worked with producers and executive staff to create production budgets & schedules for bidding on new projects. Established initial technical & resource requirements, set expectations, while remaining flexible to the ebbs and flows of production. • Worked with the executive team to develop a business plan, create budgets and schedules for the facility. • Worked with IT to establish hardware and software requirements, purchasing recommendations, infrastructure improvements and problem solving. • Worked with software and hardware vendors to ensure our support needs are met, defined product improvements, tested and validated new products. ### CG Supervisor @ Rainmaker Entertainment Inc. Jan 2008 – Jan 2008 | Vancouver, Canada • Worked with a co-CG Supervisor to define processes and to create the pipeline. Worked with other department supervisors to define their workflows, create tool specifications and to schedule and guide tool development. • Supervised a team of Pipeline Technical Directors to guide the development of new software and enhance existing tools. Managed task priorities and balanced resources for the different departments. • Worked with producers and director to overcome technical hurdles to realize the director’s vision within budget guidelines or to provide alternative ideas and solutions. • Worked with the facility to manage shared resources, including render farm allocation and configuration. ### Pipeline Architect/Senior Software Developer @ Vanguard Animation Jan 2006 – Jan 2008 | Burnaby, BC • Worked with department supervisors and artists to define their workflow and develop a pipeline from Layout through Animation, Lighting, FX and Compositing. Implemented tools and methodologies to support the pipeline and the integration with the Asset Management system. • Developed a database driven Asset Management system for artists to version control their work, assemble and manage their shots and all digital assets. Created web based tools, standalone software written in C++ & Python and integrated tools within Maya using a combination of plug-ins and MEL. • Developed tools for cataloguing story boards and tracking their use by editorial. • Implemented a HDR floating point framebuffer for viewing interactive farm renders. ### Senior Software Developer @ Mainframe Entertainment Jan 2004 – Jan 2006 | Vancouver, Canada • Worked with a team to examine existing pipeline techniques and map out a pipeline strategy for CG feature film production. Established sets of standards for artists and developers. Evaluated operating systems, hardware, off-the-shelf applications and custom software solutions for pipeline integration. • Designed and implemented an asset management system for assigning, tracking and providing version control for CG assets. The multi-user system was implemented using a client/server model with a MySQL database backend and integrated into XSI. • Investigated hardware-assisted rendering techniques and researched the state of the art in games and GPU programming. Implemented a prototype GPU based floating point compositing and rendering system. ### CG Software Developer @ Industrial Light & Magic Jan 2001 – Jan 2004 | San Rafael, CA • Implemented new data structures and algorithms for fast interaction and manipulation of polygonal surfaces and Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. Responsible for integration of the new geometric surface representations throughout the pipeline, from modeling, texturing and animation to rendering. • Worked with a team to develop and extend existing cloth simulation software. Implemented the pipeline to simulate a textured model, and dynamically tear and render the models for "Van Hesling". Provided flexible tools for artistic control over when and where the surface would tear. • Implemented tools to support new techniques for rendering realistic looking skin and other translucent surfaces for "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines", "Peter Pan", "Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events" and others. • Developed software and processes for painting 3D models across multiple platforms. Required development of software that was portable across several operating systems and hardware platforms. • Prototyped software for non-linear editing of cameras within a 3D environment for shot pre-visualization. • Added frame accurate audio playback to our in-house animation software. • Ported our in-house software and GUI applications from IRIX to GNU/Linux. • Developed and maintained our in-house preview renderer and lighting tool. ### Senior Software Developer @ Mainframe Entertainment Jan 1996 – Jan 2001 | Vancouver, Canada • Worked with a team to design and develop the next generation facial animation system. Implemented animation controls including expressions and constraints. Led the GUI design and development team. Designed and implemented a system for real-time playback of animation within the software. • Worked with a team to create a subdivision surface modeler. Designed and implemented the modeler with support for hierarchical surfaces and surfaces with arbitrary topology using Loop’s and Catmull-Clark subdivision schemes. The modeler supported the fitting of surfaces to scanned data. It included extensive interactive tools for surface manipulation. • Worked with animators and technical directors to design and implement an image compositing application. This application allows users to manipulate and composite layers of images. The compositor is easily extensible with custom plug-ins and supports distributed compositing. • Developed a Softimage plug-in to support Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces within Softimage. The plug-in supported the editing, displaying and rendering of the surfaces. • Implemented Mental Ray material, texture, volume and camera shaders. • Ported Mental Ray shaders and libraries from IRIX to GNU/Linux. Modified the development environment to support cross platform compiling. • Designed and implemented tools for animators to verify and manipulate large sequences of images. • Designed and implemented a plug-in to support stereographic cameras within Softimage 3D. ## Education ### B.Sc. in Computer Science Simon Fraser University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tonypelle - Portfolio: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0670945/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/tonypelle JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/tonypelle/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12