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Soul Machines – 3D Scan Director, Team Lead & Technical Artist

Specialising in 3D Character Artist workflows.
acial data acquisition, 3D asset optimisation, AI-driven digital humans, and automation tools

Introduction

Soul Machines required an experienced 3D Scan Director and Team Lead to oversee and refine their facial data acquisition pipeline for hyper-realistic digital humans. My role involved leading the scanning team, managing 3D asset pipelines, implementing automation tools, and ensuring photorealistic digital avatars met the highest industry standards. This work extended into technical R&D, including historic phenotype research, procedural workflows, and wardrobe digitisation, to advance Soul Machines’ AI-driven character technology.

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Responsibilities & Contributions

A. 3D Scanning & Capture

• Reviewed and significantly improved Soul Machines’ proprietary 54-camera photogrammetry rig, optimising capture accuracy, lighting consistency, and processing efficiency.

• Directed and captured high-precision Facial Action Coding System (FACS) scans, ensuring accurate facial deformations for AI-driven avatars.

• Operated, maintained, and continually refined a high-precision lighting setup, ensuring consistent and repeatable scan results across multiple capture sessions.

B. 3D Asset Pipeline & Optimisation

• Developed and managed UV workflows, ensuring precise colour accuracy and seamless texture application.

• Established a structured retopology pipeline, creating optimised facial meshes that support realistic deformation and animation.

• Refined 3D clothing production pipelines in Clo3D, collaborating with fashion designers to ensure accurate digital garment replication.

• Developed a modular ‘3D Clothing Wardrobe’ system, structuring assets for incremental production rollouts in sprints.

• Conducted continuous look development in a proprietary rendering engine, refining asset quality and realism.

C. Texture & Material Workflow

• Enhanced texture baking and multi-channel maps (Albedo, Normal, Roughness, Subsurface, Cavity, Displacement) to achieve cinematic realism.

• Used Adobe Suite and Substance Suite for high-fidelity texturing and material creation.

• Ensured photo-realistic skin detail retention using procedural and scan-based texture refinements.

• Implemented colour accuracy workflows, ensuring consistency from scan to final asset delivery.

• Integrated procedural fabric workflows in Substance Painter, improving efficiency and material fidelity.

D. Team Leadership & Management

• Managed a team of 7 3D artists, providing mentorship, skill development, and leading daily standups to ensure workflow efficiency.

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E. Onboarding & Offboarding Talent

• Onboarded and offboarded 3D scan talent, coordinating makeup preparation with professional makeup artists to ensure consistent skin quality capture and minimal light reflection interference.

• Documented and regularly updated workflow guides in Confluence, streamlining onboarding and training for new 3D artists.

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F. Technical R&D & Innovation

• Led global historic phenotype research, ensuring Soul Machines’ AI-driven avatars were diverse, culturally accurate, and scientifically representative.

• Worked closely with AI engineers, rigging specialists, and animators to ensure seamless integration of 3D assets into AI-driven digital human platforms.

• Defined best practices for asset creation and quality control, maintaining consistency across AI projects.

• Researched and implemented workflow automation, increasing scan quality, retopology efficiency, and rendering fidelity.

• Developed automation tools with tech developers, improving workflow efficiency, reducing manual workload, and tracking bugs through Jira.

• Implemented a direct-to-server automated upload process, enabling a cloud-based material library for long-term client access.

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G. Key Achievements & Results

• Worked on high-profile Celebrity Digital Twins, including Jack Nicklaus (golfer) and Carmelo Anthony (NBA player), ensuring accurate and photorealistic digital avatars.

• Successfully delivered AI-driven avatars with hyper-realistic textures, optimised topology, and seamless rig integration, advancing the next generation of AI-driven digital humans.

• Developed automation solutions that significantly reduced manual processing time, minimised human error, and increased consistency across pipeline workflows.

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Bonus: Wardrobe Department Contributions

• After my tenure in the scanning department, I transitioned to the Wardrobe Department, where I worked on improving 3D pipeline automation for garment digitisation, helping streamline real-time clothing asset production.

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Photocredits: Soul Machines