N. Joseph Burnette - R&D in Tech Art

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R&D in Tech Art

Welcome, viewer.

I use this blog to document thoughts and ideas related to tech art in production as well as my thought process in solving various problems.

Topics will be wide-ranging, random and depends on what I am working on at the time of posting!

Enjoy!

Recent posts

Posted on

20 November 2025

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In-Engine Deformation for Artists pt. 2

Game Engine Houdini Engine Unreal Engine Vertex Shaders

This post continues from "In-Engine Deformation for Artists". Using that method of course has it's benefits for artists who wants to manipulate traditionally-modelled geometry directly within the

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Posted on

24 October 2025

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Unified Scattering Workflows

Foliage Game Engine Unreal Engine Unity Houdini Engine Houdini

There are a lot of tools for in-engine foliage scattering out there. When I started building my own solution (pre-UE PCG days) artists had a lot of feature requests that went beyond just scattering

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Posted on

23 October 2025

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In-Engine Deformation for Artists

Houdini Engine Unreal Engine Deformation Game Engine

A client had a simple ask — but one that revealed a surprisingly common pain point in many production workflows. Having to deform low-resolution building models in Maya before importing to the game

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Posted on

22 October 2025

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Building Game-Engine-Agnostic Tool Ecosystems

Houdini Engine Game Engine Unity Unreal Engine

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of game-engine-agnostic tools and pipelines — an ecosystem of interconnected tools that behave consistently across multiple production environments. During

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