John Cassella
FX Animator, Tool Development Leader, Department Workflow
Los Angeles, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJohn Cassella is an experienced FX animator and tool development leader with 15+ years shaping visual effects pipelines for major feature animation studios, currently driving FX animation, department workflow, and toolsets at DreamWorks Animation. He blends hands-on Houdini and Maya expertise with C++ back-end contributions—most notably enhancing the open-source Partio particle library—to solve creative technical challenges and scale tools used by large artist bases. A recipient of DreamWorks’ Ingenuity Award, he has led cross-show task forces (Destruction, Houdini tools/workflows) and established development protocols and documentation practices that outlast individual productions. His background ranges from studio-facing plugin development and MTOA/XGen integrations at Luma to early visual effects and broadcast engineering, giving him rare end-to-end insight from signal chain to final frame. Colleagues rely on him for pragmatic, creative solutions that bridge artist needs and robust pipeline design.
15 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
BA, Video Production, BA, Video Production at Emerson College
Github Skills (7)
cpp-library10
c-language10
filetype10
cprogramming-language10
particle10
file-format10
c-libraries10
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
wdas/partio
Jan 2012 - Jan 2012
C++ (with python bindings) library for easily reading/writing/manipulating common animation particle formats such as PDB, BGEO, PTC. https://wdas.github.io/partio
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:8 commits in 1 day
Contributions summary:John's contributions primarily involve modifying C++ code related to reading, writing, and manipulating particle data formats within the `partio` library. They refactored code by removing whitespace and using the `std` namespace. The user also added support for new file formats like PTS and integrated existing branches with support for additional file formats such as BIN, MC, PDC, PRT, and RIB. Furthermore, they added a tool to view attribute data.
animationcpppdbpython-bindingsfileformats
redpawfx/partio
Nov 2011 - Apr 2018
C++ (with python bindings) library for easily reading/writing/manipulating common animation particle formats such as PDB, BGEO, PTC. See the discussion group @ http://groups.google.com/group/partio-discuss
Contributions:309 commits, 27 pushes, 6 branches in 6 years 5 months
animationcpppdbpython-bindingsmaya
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