Meet the Simtopia Team!
Iris Hwang – Technical Artist / Programmer | Link to Portfolio
Iris grew up in both Taiwan and the U.S. Influenced by her unique cultural background, Iris is passionate about storytelling through various mediums. She believes a good story can overcome the cultural and language barriers and touch people’s heart.
Sahar Kausar – Producer / Technical Artist | Link to Portfolio
Sahar has a B.S. degree in Computer Science Engineering and Art. She wants to pursue a career as a technical artist and in this CMU ETC project, she is providing her rigging, VFX, design, and 2D/3D art skills. She is also the producer and manages the team’s agile development through scrum and serves as a liaison between Simtopia and Maxis Studios.
Mengqi Wu – Experience Designer / Programmer | Link to Portfolio
Mengqi has a B.S in Computer Science and also minor in Music. She in excited in experience design and VR/AR game development. Her focus is on programming and prototyping. In this project, she wants to make some special experience while using both design and programming knowledge.
Tianyi Zhao – Lead Programmer | Link to Portfolio
Tianyi Zhao is a professional gameplay programmer, who experts in multiple programming languages including C#, C++ and JavaScript. He is also enthusiastic in level design and music composing.
Xuefan Zhou – Designer / Programmer | Link to Portfolio
Xuefan has a background in computer science and she is interested in interactive experience design and development in VR/AR/game/themed entertainment. In this project, she is focusing on game design and programming and trying to gain some experience in graphics programming/VFX as well.
Special thanks to our faculty advisors at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center: Carl Rosendahl and Ricardo Washington.
Additional special thanks also goes out to the team at Maxis Studios for collaborating with us on this project as well!