Project: FSU Metaverse MVP & Career Center

Role: Senior Technical Artist & Lead Developer

Tools: Unreal Engine 5, Houdini, Maya, Python, OpenAI API, C++

Timeline: 3.5 Month Rapid Prototype

Project Overview: Designed to gamify the career development process for Future State University students, this Metaverse MVP served as an interactive hub for career readiness. As the technical lead, I was responsible for architecting the world-building pipeline, implementing AI-driven gameplay systems, and delivering cinematic content under an extremely aggressive timeline.

Key Technical Achievements

• Procedural World Building (Houdini):

  • Abandoned manual placement in favor of custom procedural tools built in Houdini.

  • Integrated real-world civil engineering drafting standards directly into the generation logic, ensuring that the campus layout was not only visually cohesive but architecturally grounded.

  • This pipeline allowed for rapid iteration of the environment layout without sacrificing detail.

• AI-Powered Career Simulation:

  • Mock Interview Module: Developed a system where users upload their actual resumes and participate in a voice-based interview with an AI NPC. The system analyzes the audio to score the user's performance against specific job descriptions.

  • Anti-Cheat Implementation: Engineered logic to detect "AI-scraping" vs. genuine human responses, prioritizing audio analysis to verify the authenticity of the user's soft skills.

  • Holland Code Assessment: Built a visual-first multiple-choice test to profile student career interests, mapping results to potential job paths within the world.

• Motion Capture & Cinematics:

  • Owned the animation pipeline from performance to engine. I personally choreographed and enacted motion capture sessions to create diverse NPC behaviors and cinematic sequences.

  • Created the "Drone Tour" intro sequence, animating a custom character interaction where a drone is grabbed out of mid-air and used as a selfie-cam to introduce the user to the campus.

  • Implemented real-time lip-sync for both text and voice-driven NPC interactions.

The Result Despite a high-pressure 3.5-month development window, the project successfully demonstrated complex platform capabilities—merging procedural generation, generative AI, and high-fidelity character animation into a cohesive, functional demo.