Tsingtao Zhang

Hello, I'm Tsingtao Zhang, a Technical Artist and Graphics Programmer specializing in procedural generation, shader development, and art pipeline design. With a Master's in Game Design and Development from Rochester Institute of Technology. I work at the boundary of art and engineering — building systems that are both visually expressive and technically efficient.

My recent work includes leading a real-time procedural tower defense game at Snowcake Studio, where all geometry is generated at runtime in Unity via HLSL. Prior to that, my award-winning VR capstone Duolatera had me designing asset pipelines, training external artists, and building Python automation tools — all within Unreal 5.

In my life, I'm a bass in choir, a good cook, and a hardcore racing gamer. I once built a steering wheel from motor and PBC boards.

Email: tsingzhang1@gmail.com

Realtime Procedural Generation

A realtime generated tower defense game

Build your own castle freely and defend the enemies!

Starting off as a passion tech demo, it's now a part time game project with my friends. I lead the development of our core feature: controlled by player, generating and rendering the buildings in realtime.

Duolatera

An online VR 2-player co-op puzzle game.

Technical Artist & Gameplay Programmer | 7 mo | 5-people project

This is an online VR 2-player co-op puzzle game made with Unreal Engine 5. In this deserted alien world, 2 players open portals with their laser tools and interact with escape room puzzles, in order to find their way back to earth.

My role for this project is technical artist and gameplay programmer. As a technical artist, I've designed and maintained asset production pipeline, built pipeline and PCG tools, created Art Bible, and managed art team. As a gameplay programmer, I've implemented multiple gameplay mechanisms, multiplayer GameMode for our project, and IK animation for players' avatars.

Environment Tech Art Collection

Infinity's House

This section holds my artwork collection, including my work sample at The Forge

On the right is my environment art piece made in Blender.

Skills I used:
Modeling (sculpting and hard surface)
Procedural technical shading and texture painting
animation and video editing.

Software:
Blender
Substance Painter
Photoshop

Ocean Simulator

A GLSL shader.

Graphics Programmer | 3 mo | 2-person project

This is a Ocean Simulator shader based on Raytracer (See GLSL Raytracer below).
The shader is written in GLSL run with OpenGL.

My contribution includes caustics effect, mouse clicking interaction, and ripple effect.

GPU Raytracer in OpenGL

Graphics Programmer | 4 mo | solo project

This is my individual project assignment for CSCI-711 Global Illumination.
I recreated the Whitted-style ray tracing image using OpenGL and GLSL by defining spheres and triangles in the shader.
Utilizing the power of modern GPU, I could generate the image in real time.

My work consists of ray-object intersection (object includes sphere and triangles),
global lighting and shadowing using ray tracing,
texture, reflection, refraction, as well as tone reproduction as post processing.

Ellic Exercise Game - User Study

A research on user's exercise intensity

Gameplay Programmer | 3 mo | group research project

This is my summer work as Graduate Research Assistant in RIT. The research focuses on how gameplay parameters affect user's exercise intensity.

Based on an existing project made with Unity, I optimized the gameplay to fit for long-time user data collection, configured a wireless live testing environment, and implemented an auto-aiming, block-avoiding AI shooter.