Portfolio

Megan wearing her undergraduate USC sash and orange master's hood with a Fight On! peace sign

My name is Megan Friedenberg. Currently, I am a graphics engineer (mid) at Playstation San Diego Studio in Pacific Beach, CA.

I graduated in August 2023 with a master's degree in Computer Science from University of Southern California. This past December 2022, I graduated with a bachelor's in Computer Science, also from USC, and I've been lucky to have been advised by Matthew Whiting for both degrees.

My interests lie in engine programming, including but not limited to real-time rendering, animation programming, tooling, VR/AR, and embedded systems. I've completed a technical art internship at Insomniac Games and two engine tooling internships at Disney Media on the real-time team.

Email (mfrieden@usc.edu) / LinkedIn / GitHub

News

● [2023-11] Join San Diego Studio's graphics team
● [2023-08] Graduate master's CS oh yay!
● [2023-06] Start interning at Insomniac Games
● [2023-01] Bachelor's CS degree is conferred
● [2022-12] Big City Greens' Unreal holiday special airs
● [2022-05] Start interning at Disney Media on the real-time Unreal team

Experience

San Diego Studio | Graphics programmer (mid)

November 2023 - Present (Managed by Lee Blum)

Specializing in tooling for cloth, hair, and characters for MLB The Show.

Insomniac Games | Technical Art Intern

June 2023 - September (Managed by Mike Fitzgerald)

Expanding and refactoring tech anim tooling for Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine.

Disney | Real-time Developer Intern

May 2022 - December 2022 (Managed by Evan Binder)

Developed tools - custom FBX exporter and shot creator - to support content creation pipelines in Unreal such as real-time animation, sports visualization, and motion capture.

Credited on Big City Greens' Virtually Christmas special.

Engines / Rendering

A gif showing different passes of a deferred renderer with the final showing rainbow orbs.

Deferred Lighting+Rendering | DX12 Directed Research

Dec. 2022 | Contact for code.

Developed a deferred renderer with deferred lighting for senior year directed research.

Depth, normals, specular are in their own render targets. One pass per light with a bloom mask.

A gif showing a navmesh being used by soliders. More than 5 soldiers are running towards the player and are showing pathing algorithms.

Prime Engine Development

Jan. 2023 - May 2023 | code.

Prime Engine is a low-level game engine made by Artjoms Kovalovs, where I expanded and implemented several systems (physics, animation) and a full navmesh system to simulate crowds.

A player is jumping between 4 different platforms
to showcase programmed graphics, rendering, and animation.

Custom Game Engine

Jan. 2022 - May 2022 | code.

Developed using DirectX11/hlsl, multi-threading, and an asset pipeline from Blender. It also features 3D collision detection, skeletal animation, normal mapping, multiple render targets, mipmapping, and billboarding. Shaders include Valve's Half Lambert, bloom, a toon shader, and skinning.

A gif showing two screens side by side of a first person shooter, where the left player is fighting against the right player.

Networked UE5 FPS

Oct. 2022 - Dec. 2022 | Contact for code.

Utilizing the Steam Developer API, this FPS can connect to other Steam clients. Players can chat and leave in-game tags that are saved as level metadata. Timed grenades can blow both players up.

Animation

A triangulated mesh armadillo with control handles being moved to show its limbs moving, exemplifying inverse kinematics

Character Deformer

May 2023 | code.

Given a character skeleton and its skinning weights. This program can animate the skin mesh through forward kinematics (FK) and inverse kinematics (IK).

A gif showing two mocap models dancing, a green point model with pre-read data and a red point model showing computed values.

Motion Capture Interpolation System

Jan. 2022 - May 2022 | code.

My implementation and evaluation of different interpolation schemes (linear vs. Bezier) to interpolate human mocap data with different representations (Euler angles vs. Quaternions).

Jello!

Jan. 2022 - May 2022 | code.

Jello! is a physically-based simulation of a jello cube inside a cornell-box force field. It's modeled by a mass-spring system, capable of handling collisions, and rendered with OpenGL.

Embedded Systems

A React UI showing a keyboard and 2 measures are recorded. Tensorflow's Magenta is contacted on the side.

Robot Rock

Created an automatic drumming bot with 4 other Makers. Developed a React UI to control the solenoids being powered by an Arduino Mega. Using signal processing in Python with SciPy and PyAudio, DrumBot can beat-detect surrounding instruments in real-time. TensorFlow's GrooVAE model are inputted the listened melody which allows DrumBot to play a beat to it. By developing a multi-threaded Python core, DrumBot can also translate into sheet music its performed beat in near constant time.

Maya

Click here for my Maya portfolio site. During my spring 2022 semester at USC, I took an intro to animation, modeling, and basic rigging course in Maya. In the class I created a short film of a car race, modeled my own car for it, and created all desk props in the video.

Teaching

● Spring 2023 ITP 485 Programming Game Engines (Teaching Assistant), taught by Matt Whiting
● Spring 2022 ITP 380 Video Game Programming (Course Producer), taught by Sanjay Madhav
● Spring 2022 ITP 116 Advanced Intro to Python (Head Course Producer), taught by Jeffrey Miller
● Fall 2021 ITP 116 Advanced Intro to Python (Designed course), taught by Jeffrey Miller
● Fall 2021 CS 102 Intro to C++ (Course Producer), taught by Mark Redekopp

Advice

I've been asked for advice on getting into industry so here's the highlights:
● Make a website like this! It gives you a branding -> are you a tools/animation developer etc.
● If you're not sure on engine/graphics/tools, exactly where YOUR niche is, having several related interests is enough.
● GIFS is the way for showcasing projects. Lets people see what your project is in 6 seconds or less.
● Have a cleaned up GitHub homepage. Companies do look at it if you link it, trust me.
● Reach out to people who you think are doing cool things. See how they got there.
● Don't give up! It's hard sometimes, really hard. But don't!