Nicolas Muller
Verified Expert in Engineering
Virtual Reality Developer
Villeurbanne, France
Toptal member since April 12, 2022
Nicolas is a passionate virtual reality (VR) developer, which he discovered when the Oculus DK1 came out. He graduated from one of the most prestigious French engineering schools with a VR specialty. Nicolas completed his internship at EON Reality's R&D team. Since then, he got a PhD in the use of VR for training, developed a VR training application for Numix, and made the Invisible Hand. Nicolas is eager to offer the best user experience and make virtual worlds accessible to everyone.
Portfolio
Experience
- Unity - 6 years
- C# - 6 years
- Virtual Reality (VR) - 4 years
- User Interface (UI) - 4 years
- Git Extensions - 4 years
- Virtual Reality App Design - 4 years
Preferred Environment
Unity, SteamVR, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Git, C#, Unity3D
The most amazing...
...thing I've developed is my thesis project that convinced mechanical engineering teachers that VR learning could be used as a teaching tool.
Work Experience
Senior Unity Developer
Power Struggle Games | Self-employed
- Made overall game design decisions, resulting in the game happening in a virtual office where players interact with their coworkers and world objects.
- Developed game systems, including a first-person controller, object placement, cinematic systems, and subtitles.
- Oversaw acquisition and integration of assets into the game, such as an office environment, non-player character (NPC) creation with Fuse, animations from Mixamo, "low-polyfication" of NPCs with blender, texture adaptations, and maps with Gimp.
- Integrated the NPCs in the game, including an animation controller, inverse kinematics, navigation mesh, root motion, and behavior.
- Localized the whole game after it was finished. Scripted the replacement of UI text by TMP components and the update of their references. Localized all static and dynamic texts using the Localization package.
- Added a feedback system to the game with a Node.js back end to receive the feedback.
- Optimized UI and game systems. Identified bottlenecks using Unity Profiler and Frame Debugger.
- Oversaw the rendering process, including lighting, post-processing, and probes. Modified the physically-based rendering (PBR) standard shader to get a toon-like effect.
Unity Developer
NUMIX | Freelance
- Communicated with the clients and participated in the elaboration of the design documents, particularly on VR interactions and the dynamics of the cherry picker.
- Implemented the pedagogical scenario and the feedback systems that tell the learner what he did wrong, how to do better, and if he succeeded, which meant he was apt at securing a cherry picker.
- Implemented the dynamics of the cherry picker that respected the documents given by the manufacturer.
- Implemented the VR interactions, including buttons, teleportation, picking up items, the ground control panel for the cherry picker, removing a security pin, and hand animations corresponding to these interactions.
- Integrated the animations and piloted the animator controllers of the NPCs, playing voice-acted lines synchronized with the animations.
- Set up lighting, probes, emissive materials, and post-processing.
PhD Student
Toulouse Institute of Computer Science Research
- Studied subjects on VR interactions, game-based learning, immersive virtual environments, and user experience evaluation.
- Implemented most of the VR interactions described in the Leap Motion and Motion Controllers literature. Studied their performance and usability among novice users.
- Designed and implemented a VR interaction framework for Motion Controllers with compatibilities for desktop (mouse or keyboard) and Leap Motion.
- Optimized CAD models to allow for real-time rendering.
- Designed and implemented a virtual workshop in which users can use machine tools.
- Implemented several pedagogical scenarios that teach students the basics of machine processing and how to set up one of the machines.
- Wrote several articles and a PhD thesis, "Interaction Metaphors for Training in Interactive Virtual Environments: Application to Meca 3D," focusing on human-computer interaction (HCI) and UX experience in virtual reality.
Experience
The Invisible Hand
https://store.steampowered.com/app/628200/The_Invisible_Hand/Cherry Picker Security Training in VR
Meca 3D
https://youtu.be/FT4lk-vI0WISuper Polygon
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462557Education
PhD Degree in Computer Science
Toulouse Institute of Computer Science Research - Toulouse, France
Master's Degree in Computer Science
Nantes Central School | Centrale Nantes - Nantes, France
Skills
Libraries/APIs
NumPy
Tools
Git, Blender, BibTeX, LaTeX
Languages
C#, Python, R
Frameworks
Unity, Unity3D
Platforms
SteamVR, Oculus, Vuforia, Oculus Rift
Paradigms
Rapid Prototyping, Human-computer Interaction (HCI)
Other
User Interface (UI), Virtual Reality (VR), Leap Motion, Motion Control, Oculus Quest 2, Git Extensions, Localization, Virtual Reality App Design, Physics, Augmented Reality (AR), X Reality (XR), 3D Games, Gimp, Optimization, Oculus Quest, Interactive UX, Game-based Learning, 2D Games, UX Research, User Experience (UX), Human-machine Interface (HMI), HTC Vive, Statistical Methods, Applied Research, Game Design, VR Interfaces, Mobile Game Development, Unity3D Native Plugin Interface, Shaders, Visual Effects (VFX)
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