ZENITH DIGITAL

About Me

Who Am I? What Do I Offer?

Hello, I'm Daniel, a dedicated Unreal Engine specialist with comprehensive expertise across all Unreal Engine systems. My passion lies in leveraging C++, Blueprint, and Editor Scripting to unravel complex challenges, innovate solutions, and explore new opportunities.

My approach is centered on developing new solutions and techniques to enhance workflows, introduce support for novel features and data types, automate and refine tasks, and provide teams with best practices and insightful guidance. My goal is to not just solve problems but to elevate the entire development process.

My experience spans various output mediums within Unreal Engine, including Virtual Production, XR development, video games, media and broadcast, and live events. This diverse background enables me to adapt and excel in multiple aspects of digital creation.

Additionally, my strong foundation in Performance Capture offers an extra layer of expertise that I bring to projects as required. This specialized knowledge complements my broad skill set, allowing for even more dynamic and immersive experiences.

At the helm of Zenith Digital, I provide bespoke Unreal Engine development services. Whether you’re looking for a project leader or a collaborative partner, I’m here to bring your vision to life with precision, creativity, and technical excellence.

What Experience do I have?

I have been working in Industry for 12 years, since leaving University in 2012, and using Unreal Engine for longer than that. In that time I have worked across film & TV, video games, theatre and more.

I initially started with UDK , where I found the passion for game development, then started using Unreal Engine 4.6 in industry in 2012, for realtime visualisation of performance capture, and used Unreal Engine practically every work day since.

What software can I use?

My main focus is Epic Games Unreal Engine, but along with that comes many side skills required to fully complete tasks. Quick incomplete list:

Unreal Engine 100%
Visual Studios + VS Code 80%
Python 60%
3DS Max 75%
Maya 50%
Substance Toolkit 60%
Adobe Photoshop 80%
Adobe Premier Pro 50%
MVN XSens 80%
Web Development 30%

Unreal Engine Skillset

  • Blueprint: Gameplay logic, procedural designs, optimisation, event driven gameplay, data driven gameplay
  • C++: Unreal Engine API, Efficient programming, blueprint libraries, script-exposure, Slate UI, JSON
  • Plugin Development: (Custom logic, Modularity)
  • Lighting: (Baked, Dynamic, Hybrid, Scenarios - Not a lighting designer, however)
  • Behaviour Trees and EQS: (AI Programming general level. Not a specialist AI Programmer)
  • Materials: Setup and creation, automation tooling, parametarisation
  • Multiplayer, Networking: Working knowledge
  • Cascade / Niagara: Working knowledge
  • Audio Engine: Working knowledge

Past Employment (More Details Below)

Detailed Work History

I started work in the industry at The Imaginarium Studios , in 2012, where I worked for almost six years on a large number of fantastic projects. I was focused mainly on performance capture, and utilising game engines to further the motion capture industry. I worked on lots of games, films, TV shows, music videos, and other miscellaneous projects there. Since the Imaginarium was a fairly small company (at the time), myself and my very talented colleagues covered many roles to ensure projects were the best they could be, and allowed me to gain many useful skills not limited to a single role.

I took on my first lead development role in 2016 for The Royal Shakespeare Company's "The Tempest". I progreammed the engine and worked with an incredibly talented character artist, and expert character rigger to build Ariel in their many forms for the live production. Epic did a great write-up of the work myself and others did on which can be viewed here: Unreal Engine Brings Virtual Character to Life Onstage in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Tempest . There is also a white-paper on motion capture, featuring much of the work on the Tempest, here, Choosing a real-time performance capture system.

From June 2017, I started working at The Third Floor Inc , London branch. The Third Floor specialises in Pre-Visualisation, and I worked within the R&D department to develop Unreal Engine tools and pipelines to facilitate it's adoption in the film pipeline. This included new virtual production tools utilising virtual reality and augmented reality to bring a new dimension to the virtual production toolkit. I also assisted the Immersive department in technical implementations for developing more experimental or XR related projects, including production of their own game, Mad Factory VR . The XR tools that I created at the Third Floor have received a great write-up by Epic Games, and can be viewed here: Game of Thrones Previz using Unreal Engine 4

From September 2019, I started work at The Royal Shakespeare Company as the Lead Developer for the Audiences of the Future project. I took charge on the Unreal Engine technical development, and working with support from the web team, art team, and various other departments, we captured a live performance each night, utilising performance capture, to bring bespoke digital characters to life. Each performance was unique, with dynamic user-input from the collective audience shaping the performance. Mass audience interaction, via the web, into Unreal Engine, amalgamated into usable data, drove visual effects, and real-world lighting to direct performers and make each nights performance a unique experience. A custom cue system, initially tiggered via traditional lighting desk, and routed via Unreal Engine, drove the show in a theatre style setup, but with very new oppertunities. A fully dynamic audio system, driven by Gestrument (Now Reactional Music) powered dynamic sound landscapes with beautiful unique music each night.

Tutorials

Tutorials Udemy

I have a mix of tutorials, most can be found on Udemy. Follow the links above to see more.

Unreal Engine Marketplace

Marketplace Information Storefront

I have been using some development time to produce high-end assets for the Unreal Marketplace. As I have been doing Unreal for quite some time its a great platform to grow a portfolio of products. I try to maintain a high bar for quality, and keep the assets up to date as the engine matures. I have also found it's another area which is great for learning new features and skills I have yet to master

Personal Projects

I love learning and developing my own content, the more challenging the more I will learn, and so the more I enjoy it. Time is always a constraint, but when I can, I love to work on new game ideas and projects. I can't wait to share more as these ideas develop.

Hobbies

Outside of development, which I do spend a lot of time on, I love to grab my DSLR and explore through photography. I'm also an avid gamer across all platforms, and I particularly love to explore indie games, to support the developers and research what others are making.

I also host a Discord server, both in support of my own products that are for sale, and for general community help, which has over 400 members