
Diego Montoya
Verified Expert in Engineering
AR/VR Developer
Diego is an engineer and creative technologist with 10 years of experience in AR/VR and other spatial computing fields. After five years in an AR/VR startup from Munich, he co-founded VRdirect and served as its CTO. He has done groundbreaking AR/VR work for Audi, Porshe, BMW, Hyperloop, Henry Schein, the Cologne Cathedral and many agencies. With a passion for emergent technologies, Diego excels at pushing the limits of 3D interactivity through creativity, ingenuity, and drive.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Mixed Reality (MR), C#, Unity, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR)
The most amazing...
...project I have done: a special relativity simulation in VR. Feel the speed of light, see space contraction, time dilation, and the relativistic Doppler effect.
Work Experience
Creative Coder and Freelance XR Expert
Freelance
- Developed a 3D visualization web tool for medical procedures for a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500® index.
- Engineered and developed a system for AR and VR NFTs which included creating a VR player for the browser, including OTP access, asset loading, locomotion system, and animations.
- Researched different spatial (3D) audio technologies and developed an app with support for head-tracked 3D audio for iOS.
- Digitized (made 3D scans of) works of art to be presented as a metaverse gallery in Q3 2022.
CTO and Co-founder
VRdirect
- Co-founded the startup as a spinoff, bringing the whole development team and IP to the new company.
- Managed companywide technology and innovation efforts and led the development team to fulfill product and engineering requirements.
- Co-formulated the company's vision and product strategy, which helped secure several funding rounds.
- Established IT, engineering, and Agile development processes, using Atlassian and Azure Cloud tools.
Senior Software Engineer | Interactive Media Specialist
RE'FLEKT
- Developed breakthrough VR research work for Audi, which was presented at Unity's Vision VR/AR Summit.
- Led the team and product development of an interactive 360 VR platform that went on to become a new company.
- Participated in the development of the WDR Cologne Dome interactive 360 experience for the cathedral. After its release on Android, iOS, and Oculus, it had 15,000+ users.
- Played a key role in the company's growth from nine to 60+ employees. Took part in recruiting and establishing internal and engineering processes.
- Worked on a wide range of projects with clients, ranging from small agencies to big corporations such as Porsche, Audi, BMW, and P7S1, one of Europe's most successful media companies.
- Spearheaded innovation efforts for the Hyperloop augmented windows project.
Experience
TheHaus On Chain
https://thehaus.de/My role in the project was the development of the VR viewer and AR models, as well as participating in the design of the system architecture and blockchain integration.
Spacetime
https://diego-montoya.com/spacetime.htmlI led the overall concept, design, and development. The main goal of the experience is to allow for a more intuitive and natural understanding of how space, time, and light behave when an observer approaches the speed of light.
Audi VR Experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At_Zac4XezwMy work was to research the best way to explore the car in VR, being able to walk around it in an intuitive, realistic manner. A series of prototypes were developed and user tested to determine how the target audience interacted with the locomotion schemes.
VRdirect | Interactive 360 VR Platform
https://www.vrdirect.com/I was the CTO and co-founder, taking over companywide responsibilities for all innovation, development, and IT tasks.
Hyperloop Augmented Windows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp5n1cunMtURetzompantli
https://foundation.app/@arturo.zv/rtz/17Each sculpture is very unique so the process had to be very robust but scalable at the same time. The full 3D creation pipeline included photography mechanization and automation, reconstruction scripts for RealityCapture (command line, Python), and Photoshop scripts.
• Information about the project: retzompantli.art/
• NFT collection: foundation.app/collection/rtz
SuperWorld
https://www.superworldapp.com/As part of my role as a software engineer, I was in charge of researching and prototyping new AR technologies for their app, as well as being part of the development team of the production AR app. I evaluated different AR technologies to decide whether or not they should be integrated as part of the production app, was one of the two engineers in charge of rebuilding the app with an improved, more maintainable architecture, ported the UI into a more performant and extensible system, and worked on CI/CD automation.
Skills
Languages
C#, Python, JavaScript, Objective-C
Frameworks
Unity, Unity3D, ARKit, .NET, Unreal Engine
Tools
Jira, Git, Bitbucket, Xcode, Visual Studio, Microsoft Teams, Blender, Photoshop CC
Paradigms
Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Clean Code, Agile Software Development, UX Design
Other
Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Software, 3D, Game Engine Programming, Digital Art, Software Engineering, 3D Art, Creative Coding, Computer Graphics, Hardware, Digital Signal Processing, Computational Photography, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Mixed Reality (MR), Software Architecture, Research, UX Research, Web-based AR, Spatial Audio, Game Development, Games, Crypto, Non-fungible Tokens (NFT), Generative Art, Photogrammetry, RealityCapture, USDZ, Deep Learning, Machine Vision, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Networks, Image Processing, Mobile App Development, Cloud, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Video Players, Convolutional Neural Networks, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Recursive Neural Networks, Autoencoders, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), CTO, Interaction Design (IxD), Prototyping, Physics, Simultaneous Localization & Mapping (SLAM), Projection Mapping, User Experience (UX), Video Streaming, 3D Modeling, GLTFs, VPS, User Interface (UI), AR Foundation
Libraries/APIs
WebVR, Three.js, WebGL, WebXR
Platforms
Arduino, iOS, Android, ARCore, MacOS, Windows, Raspberry Pi, Blockchain
Industry Expertise
Telecommunications, Automotive
Education
Master's Degree in Information Systems Technology
Ulm University - Ulm, Germany
Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering
ITESO, Jesuit University of Guadalajara - Guadalajara, Mexico
Certifications
Deep Learning Bootcamp
Udemy
Certified Product Owner
Scrum Alliance