March 4, 2009

Tweak Software Hires Alan Trombla as Director of Product Development

San Francisco, Calif. - Tweak Software, developers of the RV image and sequence viewer for animation and visual effects, has hired visual effects industry veteran Alan Trombla. He has worked at all levels of visual effects and digital animation production, from writing software and managing large engineering teams to lighting shots and leading CG productions, joins Tweak Software as director of product development.
Trombla launched his career in VFX with 10 years at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) primarily as a principal engineer and R&D supervisor. At ILM, he supervised the design and production rollout of major new proprietary tools for matte painting and lighting, and he contributed to many other technologies and techniques that are in wide use.



Trombla joins Tweak Software from Digital Domain, where he worked as lead technology architect for the special projects group. Prior, Trombla worked as technology development lead at Lucasfilm Animation, where he recruited and managed the Animation Tools Group and was responsible for maintaining and extending production technology for Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Trombla first joined ILM in 1996, working in both the production and R&D divisions over the course of the next decade. Trombla’s early R&D contributions include work on MeshGen, a multiresolution and dynamically paged terrain geometry system used for the Star Wars I Pod Racer sequence and Irender, ILM’s second-generation lighting tool, which was first used extensively on Galaxy Quest. He later supervised the design and development of Zenviro, ILM’s new matte-painting tool, and Lux, ILM’s third-generation lighting tool. Trombla also oversaw creation of the stereo 3D rendering pipeline for Chicken Little. During his time at ILM, Trombla spent a number of years working as an artist in ILM’s commercial and feature production divisions, serving as CG Lead on several projects.

“Filmmaking has always required a mix of art and engineering, but it's rare to find people who can do both things well,” says Seth Rosenthal, co-founder and president, Tweak Software. “Alan is one of those few people who can move easily between technology and art. He is the right person to steer our future product development.”

Trombla looks forward to joining the Tweak team: "I am excited to work with [Tweak founders] Seth and Jim. Jim is a unique individual who combines an amazing facility with computer graphics and cutting-edge algorithms together with refined engineering skills, and Seth has a great history of pushing the envelope to drive development of better, more useful pipeline tools. Creating elegant tools that can adapt to how artists work is core to Tweak, and RV is only the first step. I look forward to applying that same philosophy to developing new tools that are empowering and enjoyable for artists to use," Trombla concludes.