Rafael Campos
Senior Technical Director at Skydance Animation
Irvine, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRafael Campos is a Senior Technical Director and graphics software specialist with 12 years of experience building tools and research-driven systems for animation, VFX, and game studios. He combines deep R&D and production experience—from developing in-house fluid simulators and Houdini plugins to shipping artist-facing FX, CFX, lighting and surfacing tools at Blizzard and Skydance Animation. While pursuing a PhD focused on physically-based animation, he has contributed practical software solutions across pipelines using C++, Python, OpenVDB and Houdini HDK, bridging academic research with production needs. His background includes financial software early-career, giving him a disciplined engineering approach to reliability and tooling. Based in Irvine, CA, he’s comfortable leading cross-disciplinary teams and translating complex simulation research into robust, artist-friendly systems. A detail that often surprises collaborators: he pairs production shipping cadence with ongoing PhD research, keeping both theory and practice tightly aligned.
12 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Master’s Degree Computer Science, Master’s Degree Computer Science at Drexel UniversityDoctor of Philosophy - PhD Mathematics and Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Mathematics and Computer Science at Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC) - USPBachelor's degree Computer Engineering, Bachelor's degree Computer Engineering at UFSCar - AlumniScientific Initiation Computer Graphics, Scientific Initiation Computer Graphics at IMPA
English, Portuguese
Github Skills (22)
ruby10
openframeworks10
linux9
sparse9
volume-rendering9
homebrew9
macos9
package-manager9
voxel8
data-structure8
openvdb7
computational-fluid-dynamics6
computer-graphics6
physics-engine6
computational-physics6
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
jehutymax/latam-map
Feb 2016 - Oct 2017
Contributions:1 PR, 2 pushes, 1 branch in 1 year 8 months
americalatinmaplatin-americaopenstreetmap
jehutymax/openvdb
Oct 2015 - Feb 2017
Contributions:2 pushes, 5 branches, 1 comment in 1 year 4 months
openvdb-developmentopenvdb
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