Ben Cressman
Software engineer based in Dallas, Texas.
Currently a Pipeline Technical Director at Pixel Foundry, a Full-Stack Engineer for HytaleModding, and finishing my MFA in Game Development.
My expertise is in Python for game development and visual effects, especially in Houdini, Unreal, and Nuke, C# for Unity, and full-stack development with Python, Typescript, Next, React, Tailwind, nginx, Redis, Docker, and FastAPI.
Get in touch: ben@utdallas.edu
Work
Universal Asset Browser
Developing the Pixel Foundry's Universal Asset Browser, a tool for digital creators to unify asset access and usage across content creation applications.
vfxdirs
A Python library for easily accessing useful paths for visual effects software on any operating system. Implements common software packages but is easily extensible with others.
Grimhook
Technical artist on Grimhook at Unlimited Fries. Developed a variety of tools and shaders, like a fast Fourier transform ocean and a procedural hand-painted generator.
Pixel Foundry Pipeline
Developing the Pixel Foundry's photo-real effects and photogrammetry pipeline, working on the environment launcher, production manager, and CI/CD pipeline.
HytaleModding
Developing HytaleModding, a community organization of 8000+ developers for modding Hytale, hosting docs, guides, forums, game jams, and partner project backends.
Experience
Full-Stack Engineer
HytaleModding
Jan 2026 - Present
Working on the frontend of the main website and the fumadocs integration with Next.js, React.js, and Tailwind, authoring backends for multiple real-time partner projects with FastAPI, Redis, and Docker, and writing the forum site with nginx, flarum, Less.js, and Mithril.js.
VR Developer
Multimodal Interaction Lab
Jan 2025 - May 2025
Integrated novel VR haptics hardware with Unity and Meta's XR SDK. Third coauthor of the corresponding paper, accepted to CHI 2026.
Python Teaching Assistant
The University of Texas at Dallas
Aug 2023 - May 2026
TA for Programming for Digital Artists, an introductory Python course. Wrote the Bass School's educational programming infrastructure to automate most testing, grading, and feedback, reducing server costs by 16x as compared to the previous system.
Technical Artist
Unlimited Fries Studios
May 2023 - Sep 2023
Technical artist on Grimhook, for which I developed multiple shaders and tools to meet the production needs of a hand-painted 3D bullet-hell. These included a real-time ocean using fast Fourier transform and a procedural hand-painting generator.
Lead Artist
The University of Texas at Dallas
Jan 2023 - May 2023
Lead artist on Death Bloom, for which I developed a variety of assets, tools, and shaders to meet the production needs of a realistic horror game, and managed a team of 13 artists.
Blog
Dynamically Loading EXR and HDR Files During QT's Paint
How I implemented dynamically loading EXR and HDR files for the asset thumbnails in the Universal Asset Browser.
January 28th, 2026
What I Learned from 3 Months of Building My First Large Application, and Why I Spent January Rebuilding it from Scratch
Building a large application from the ground up is challenging. Here's what went wrong with my first attempt, and how I fixed it.
January 24th, 2026
Universal Asset Browser Progress Update: Plugins, External Libraries, and the Registry Pattern
Adding a plugin system using the registry pattern, allowing the integration of third-party asset libraries.
December 31st, 2025
Universal Asset Browser Progress Update: Assets as Objects
Refactoring the application to use the new Asset object and its subclasses, rather than passing dictionaries around.
December 11th, 2025
Universal Asset Browser Progress Update: GUI Enhancements, Launcher Shenanigans, and a New Server/Client Model
New functionality for the GUI, detached subprocesses, and how the server interacts with its client GUI's.
November 22nd, 2025
Universal Asset Browser: Browser Resize Algorithm
Writing an algorithm to dynamically resize grid cells and grid dimensions.
November 15th, 2025
Universal Asset Browser: Houdini Integration
Integrating the Universal Asset Browser with Houdini.
November 8th, 2025
Houdini 21: How to Create a Package
A quick guide to creating a Houdini package in Houdini 21 with a custom Python library and Python panel.
November 1st, 2025