Education

B.S.E in Digital Media Design with minors in Fine Arts and Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science (2001 to 2005).  Cumulative GPA: 3.92 / 4.0.

Experience

• Crowds Supervisor, for PIXAR Animation Studios                                                            

  • Elemental (2021 to 2023)  Crowds Supervisor, developing neural style transfer pipeline for volumes.                                                                      

  • Turning Red  (2019 to 2021)  Crowds Supervisor, deploying large scale kinematically rigged crowds.                                                        

  • Onward (2018 to 2019)  Crowds Supervisor, expanding the reach of virtual production for crowds.                                                                     

  • Incredibles 2 (2017 to 2018)  Crowds Supervisor, integrating motion capture to production process.                                                     

  • Finding Dory (2014 to 2016)  Crowds Supervisor, leading a team and integrating houdini for crowds.                                                     

  • Brave (2009-2012) Crowds Lead, developed a new crowd pipeline and lead a team of TDs

• Software Engineer, for PIXAR Animation Studios           

  • Pixar Research Rotation (2023-present) ML based cloth sim, markerless mocap, and animation autocomplete.

  • Walt Disney Animation Studios (2018) Resource for USD and Presto Integration.          

  • Disney Research Collaboration (2016)  Exploration of applications in Machine Learning to simulation and crowds.                     

  • Monsters University / The Good Dinosaur (2012-2013) Rendering research on Level of Detail.

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• CG Instructor, for The Academy of Art University and freelance                                                                                       

  • RenderMan (2006 to 2015) Teaching shading, lighting, rendering pipeline & optimization.                                                           

  • Massive Crowd VFX (2008 to 2014) Teaching procedural animation and crowds pipeline.                                                        

  • Guest Lectures (2008 to current) at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, University of California at Berkeley, University of Michigan, Bangkok University,  NTDF, and  Hyper Island​​

• Technical Director, for PIXAR Animation Studios                                      

  • Cars 2 / Toons (2009-2010) Developed the “shrinkwrapping” pipeline for fast car rendering                                                                                               

  • Up (2008-2009) Crowd Simulation, brain design in Massive for canine agents, shotwork                                                             

  • Wall-E (2007-2008) Crowd Simulation, developed fast physics tools for crowds, shotwork                                                                                                    

  • Ratatouille (2006-2007) Crowd Simulation, used Massive to animate swarming rats                                               

  • Cars (2005-2006) Render Optimization, created& deployed an ID buffer based pruning tool

• Technical Director Intern, for PIXAR Animation Studios                                                                                                          

  • Cars (2004-2005) Set Shading and Pipeline, shaded props & created shader templates & UI

• Graphics Programmer, for the Brainard Psychophysics Laboratory                                                             

  • (2002 -2004) Programming color experiments in C, RenderMan, Radiance, and Matlab.                                           

• Teaching Assistant, for the Computer Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania                                                                     

  • GPGPU Programing (2005 Fall), taught real time shading assisted in GPGPU instruction                                                                       

  • Virtual World Design (2004 Spring), taught game programming in shockwave 3D.

Patents & Papers

• Kanyuk P, Park J W, Raja S inventors.  Pixar Animation Studios, assignee.  Animation engine for blending computer animation data. United States Patent US 9,214,036.  2015 December 15

• Kanyuk, P., "Brain Springs: Fast Physics for Large Crowds in WALL•E," Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE , vol.29, no.4, pp.19,25, July-Aug. 2009

• Kanyuk P, Lawrence C, inventors.  Pixar Animation Studios, assignee.  Methods for providing realistic animation of autonomous objects through improved animation control signal processing. United States Patent US 8,531,466.  2013 September 10

• Xiao, B., Kanyuk, P. J., & Brainard, D. H. (2005). Color appearance and the material properties of three-dimensional objects. Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, Sarasota, FL, 782a, http://journalofvision.org/5/8/782/, doi:10.1167/5.8.782.