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This is me.
As far as I remember I put my face in front of a scanner and pushed the button.
Not my best photo but for now will do.

I have been interested in computer graphics for many years. Of course not all of them in production. I needed some time for self education before getting into the industry.
In my childhood i used to draw on paper all the time. Later, in front of a monitor, i had a lot of fun with PC-Paint, Deluxe Paint and bunch of other small apps. A turning point was the day when my cousin shown me Autodesk Animator 1.0 and 3D Studio 2.0. Until then everything was about this unclear feeling of joy when visualizing my ideas, but after I saw him (he is a die-hard programmer) pulling fast ugly animation out of the aa.exe thing I literaly got a call from "above".
From that moment I knew what I was born about.
In the next couple of years I spent enormous amount of time learning how to do 3D. I did it all by myself. And I did it that way not because I like doing things the hard way, but because I had no other option - no quality literature at the time and very slow internet access in my region. The situation thought me how to solve problems by myself without relying on help from outside, of course I realized that years later.
Time passed, at some point I got into the University, wasted 3 years there, but then something happened - the cuttest girl in the grade turned eye on me, lucky I ... she got me :)
In the next 2 years we were like in the Heaven. Hanging around, lying on the beach, pretending that graduating - what a life ! Later we married and got our first child (a wild boy). Then I realized that things will not work the way they did in the past - my little family needed better financial support. We were at the last stage of finishing the University and the time was right to move forward and find a job.
I spent 1-2 years coding web data bases and designing web sites, but that was not very reliable source of income. The next step was to get a job in the CG industry. That was what I really wanted to do. Shortly after that I got the first job offer from a film studio. This was the beginning of my real career. In the next few years I switched several studios, software platforms, moved to the States and got my second child (a baby girl) ...

I know that for many people CG is work just like any other but for me it is like hobby. Actually it is much more than that - it is my true passion. Even now, devoted husband and father of two kids, I am spending good part of my free time to improve my skills and learn new things.
Sharing knowledge and ideas with people around me is another thing I really like and appreciate when others are doing the same.

You can always write me at pshipkov@yahoo.com if you want to talk about something, or just to say "hi".

[ DEVELOPMENT ]
SOuP - the procedural toolset for Maya
SOuP is a set of plug-ins that extend the procedural (and other) capabilities of Maya.
Muscles 4.1
Tools for muscles creation. Muscles can be used as smooth skin influences, sculpt and wrap deformers, collision objects for dynamic skin, etc.
OverBurn 1.6 including VoxelEditor

OverBurn uses combination of fluids and particles to create effects similar to SitniSati's AfterBurn plug-in for 3DS MAX and LightWave's HyperVoxels.
VoxelEditor gives ability to select and edit voxels directly in the viewport.
PaintSkinWeights 1.2
Complete hack of the Maya's artisan system for painting of skin weights. The default tools are powerfull but the workflow can be better. The key word here is Efficiency.
StretchMap 1.0
Houdini VEX SOP node that generates point attributes based on geometry deformations. The produced data can be passed to shaders for local control over texture maps (like displacement, bump, specular, etc.), or can be used for further manipulations of the geometry.
PointsManager 1.0
Attribute manager - operates on point and multi attributes. Supports all Maya deformers and geometry shapes (+ vertexColors for mesh primitives). Among other things it can transfer point attributes between shapes with different topology - this part is slowish because it is MEL based.
ShoulderRig 1.3
Old but very solid technique for preserving of shoulder/armpit volume in extreme poses for better looking deformations.
SmartCalc 1.2
Calculator with many cool functions - numeric systems ( HEX / DEC / OCT / BIN ), 3 memory banks, metric systmes, equations, extended aritmetic functions and many others.
Flatten 1.0
Simple tool for flattening of geometry. Usefull in many cases when objects have to move in and out from character body - spikes, horns, nails, tentacles, etc.
WaterDrops 2.5
Combination of particles and expressions that produce waterdrops sliding on a surface. Current implementation gives precise control over every aspect of the motion - positionPP, velocityPP, scalePP, colorPP, massPP, dropping ...
SolarSystem 1.0
Approximated simulation of the Solar System. All major objects are listed here except comets, meteorites and recently discovered satellites. Included is UI for easy control over many aspects of the "simulation". Open the scene and run "solarSystem" in the script editor to access the UI.
RubicCube 1.0
This is a game with full interactive control over the cube.
InteractiveCameraControl 2.2
Visualization and manipulation of Environment Fog Distances and Camera Clipping Planes in the viewport.
[ TUTORIALS ]
[ forceFields, particles, fluids ]
[ fun with nucleus ]
[ oceanSurface ]
[ blendShape tricks ]
[ motionBlurred SW particles ]
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