AI · Real-Time 3D · Enterprise
New technology arrives as a promise — new tools, new ways of working. I make it deliver: practical, production-grade work shaped to the ground truth of a company’s landscape, goals, and resources, and teams built to keep delivering long after the demo ends.
Promises don’t ship themselves.
New platforms rarely lose on capability. They lose in the gap between a brilliant demo and a customer’s production line — where someone has to understand the pressures and motivations on both sides of the table, speak build and business in the same meeting, and hold trust through the hard middle until a pilot becomes a habit.
That gap is my work. I’ve run it from both sides: inside the platform company serving its most demanding customers, and inside the customer’s world shipping with the platform’s tools. Either way the job is the same — design it, build it, and defend it in the room where the renewal gets decided.
Came up inside elite, high-pressure agency creative departments. I understand the people who make the work — their pressures, their motivations, their bar.
Toyota’s Virtual Garage to Epic’s enterprise front line. Real-time 3D shipped under production constraints — hands still on the tools daily.
Ran the P&L. I understand what adopting new technology actually costs a business mid-production — and what makes it worth it.
Shown as concept. The originals shipped under NDA.
Net REC.01 — 02 · The Record
Lead Technical Account Manager · 2018–2026
Eight years building and leading Epic’s enterprise Technical Account Manager group — the front line between Unreal Engine and the companies betting real production on it. Inside the platform company, serving its most demanding customers.
Net REC.02 — 02 · The Record
3D Director · Publicis · 2006–2018
A single 3D/VR role grown into a 40-person profit center — the real-time and virtual production group behind Toyota and Lexus work, run with agency pressure and a P&L.
Net REC.03 — 02 · The Record
Art Director · The Designory · 2000–2004
Record in preparation.
TP1A capture-to-engine pipeline: a laser scan of a house rebuilt as a real-time environment by supervised agent crews.
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TP2Generative imaging run as a directed system — one mark carried from vector to fabricated circuit board to simulation.
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TP3Ten reference implementations stood up and metered on desk-side AI hardware.
ViewNet EXP.01 — 03 · Experiments
A laser scan of a house, rebuilt as a real-time environment by supervised agent crews and measured against the scan at every pass.
Net EXP.02 — 03 · Experiments
One mark, carried from vector to a fabricated circuit-board card to simulation. The simulation directs; the model finishes.
Net EXP.03 — 03 · Experiments
Ninety days with two desk-side AI systems: ten reference implementations installed, metered, and reported with their misses.
Emailmichael@michaelwilken.com
ProfileLinkedIn
Net J1 — 04 · Contact
michael@michaelwilken.com
LinkedIn
Record REC.01 · The Record
Unreal Engine was leaving the games industry — for factories, studios, design floors, and broadcast trucks. Someone had to stand where the platform met its most demanding enterprise customers, and stay there. I built that function: Epic’s enterprise technical account management group, from first hire to standing practice.
Eight years on the front line of adoption — designing the engagement, holding trust through the hard middle between pilot and production, and defending the work in the room where the renewal gets decided.
In the cabin · automotive HMI
Real-time engines were a promise to the car industry: one graphics stack from design review all the way to the dashboard itself. I worked the gap between that promise and start-of-production — Unreal Engine running as the human-machine interface in shipping vehicles.
35+ car models shipped with UE-based HMI across the programs I supported. Production constraints, safety sign-off, tier-one integration — the unglamorous middle where a demo becomes a habit.
Record REC.01 · on permanent display
DESCEND // THE SCREENING ▼ DESCEND // THE TEAM ▼Record REC.02 · The Record
Hired as a single 3D/VR generalist inside Toyota’s agency; left having grown that seat into a 40-person profit center — building Toyota’s Virtual Garage and shipping work for Toyota and Lexus.
Ran it as a business, not a lab: hiring, pipeline, and the P&L. That’s where I learned what adopting new technology actually costs a company mid-production — and what makes it worth it.
Record REC.02 · on permanent display
DESCEND // THE STUDIO ▼Net EXP.01 · Experiments
A capture-to-engine pipeline, run on a real building: 54 laser-scan stations and 1.47 billion points in, engine-clean geometry out. The scan is the ground truth and every pass is measured against it.
The building is done by agent crews run like a production team — versioned passes, a written checklist, an independent verifier, one owner per asset. The path from capture to engine should be a system, not a heroic one-off.
Bench log · EXP.01 · work in progress
DESCEND // THE BUILD ▼Net EXP.02 · Experiments
Generative imaging run as a directed system — model-agnostic, taste-driven. The models change monthly; the direction doesn’t.
The test piece is my own mark: written as code, fabricated as a circuit-board business card, then poured in simulation. The simulation decides where everything goes; the model only decides how it looks.
Bench log · EXP.02 · work in progress
DESCEND // THE POUR ▼Net EXP.03 · Experiments
Ninety days with two desk-side AI systems and one question: what can a 128 GB box under a desk do for a creative pipeline, measured, not assumed?
Ten reference implementations, each installed from a written recipe, run on a fixed job and logged — time, memory, watts, and whether the output earned its headline. The findings go out with the misses in them.
Bench log · EXP.03 · work in progress
DESCEND // THE BENCH ▼L3 · INNER LAYER
L3 · Inspection Archive
Every plate generated for the MW-01 board series — specimen renders, board art, and the dark field studies between them. Filed as shot.
