CG Generalist Reel

CONTACT INFO: ollie.y.yao@gmail.com | ollieyao.com

1. Zootopia 2 Effects Animation & Effects Apprenticeship

Created at Walt Disney Animation Studios. All shots animated in Houdini, and rendered with Hyperion. I was responsible for snow simulation and Nibbles' wood chip animation throughout the film, and created and executed an effects rig to help me do the shots faster. During my apprenticeship I tried effects with many different techniques, including fire, water, snow, rigid body dynamics, cloth, soft bodies, and smoke.

2. We Are Chrome For Developers:

Created at HOPR Studios. I was responsible for set modeling, shading, and lighting throughout the short. Additionally, I was responsible for the UI design for the computer screen, as well as the designs on the corkboard. The project was rendered in Redshift.

3. "Twin Sparks" Short Film

Twin Sparks is Heather Yun and I's SVA senior thesis film set to come out in Spring 2023! I've always been inspired by stylized 3D, and am super excited show off all I've learned about the medium in this film! I'm responsible for the shading, lighting, and FX in this shot, which was done in a combination of Houdini, Blender, and Nuke. Animation is done by my thesis partner Heather. Learn more here! https://www.ollieyao.com/twin-sparks

4. Caterpillar’s Day Out

Modeled in Maya, fur simulation done in Houdini with Vellum, then exported back into Maya for render with Redshift. The project was inspired by a Dr. Seuss look, but rendered in 3D. Fur simulation is something I’ve been meaning to tackle for a while - the pipeline is difficult to figure out at first but once I got it ironed out everything went pretty smoothly!

6. "Bad Apple!!" On An Apple

FX Animation and source images for texturing generated in Houdini. Texturing, lighting, and rendering done in Blender Cycles. A loving recreation of the Bad Apple!! animated music video originally created in 2012, which has spawned countless reimaginings. I wanted to create a carved apple look, and so I used Houdini to generate a set of displacement maps automatically sourced from the black and white images in the original music video, then projected it onto a series of randomized apples to give a stop motion look.

7. "Bootybot":

Pixar Undergraduate Program individual final project. With this project I wanted to use the Pixar pipeline to create a stylized render. The final look was achieved through various hand-painted AOVs piped through Flow into Katana, as well as some custom Nuke nodes to create the desired effect.

Music is "I Lost All My Eggs" by Shawn Wasabi.