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Biography Born in Rome,Italy and grew up in Nettuno, a small city on the Mediterranean sea. He graduated from the University of of Rome Tor Vergata with his thesis about a low-cost human-computer interface. After that, he remained at the University, taught programming languages, and tutored students in the Human-Computer interfaces Lab ISIM_Garage. During his university experience, Paolo had a chance to collaborate in various publications related to e-learning and human-computer interfaces and took his first steps into the world of Visual Effects. Moreover, he has been the curator of "Interfacce" and "3D-Day", two conferences held in Rome at the University of Tor Vergata, which allowed him to connect to Italians and International artists of the VFX industry. Later, Paolo decided to begin his VFX career and moved to London, where he worked at Jellyfish Pictures. In 2008 he moved to New Zealand and worked on James Cameron's Avatar at Wētā FX. Starting his Wētā experience as Scientific Coder, Paolo became Head of Software Engineering and now Principal Engineer in the Architecture Department. Within Wētā's family, Paolo has been instrumental in developing many of its key technologies. His work enabled high-performance computing that significantly optimised the delivery of large, complex shows like The Adventures of Tintin, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Jungle Book, The BFG, and the Avatar movies. Among his favourite accomplishments are tools like Mondrian (a scene-analysis tool ), TopoClouds (a set of specific tools used to create solutions in one of Wētā's ray-tracing systems PantaRay), hair- voxel-tracing for occlusion calculation, instancing-solutions for large environments. As the Head of the Software Engineering department, Paolo and his team delivered new tools for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which enabled artists to create high-resolution geometry for the fractal-spires and dress large environments. Furthermore, they improved their plant growth tool Lumberjack for War for the Planet of the Apes, by implementing Totara (a tool that procedurally grows entire naturalistic forests by adhering to the same growth principles found in nature). His recent focus is on rendering-optimization, which helps artists go through their day-to-day scene- management problems and the next Wētā pipeline based on Pixar's USD/Hydra. After 16 year at Wētā FX, in 2024 he joined ScanlineVFX, a company powered by Netflix, where he led the development of the next-gen Lighting pipeline based on Solaris and OpenUSD. In 2025, Paolo joined the Avatar's Family again with 880ProductionsNZ, working on making a whole new pipeline for the sequels. Biography (100 words) Throughout his university years, he developed a strong interest in human-computer interaction, researching, building, and programming new devices. After a brief stint at Jellyfish Pictures, he joined Wētā FX in 2008 to work on Avatar. As Head of Software Engineering, Paolo and his team delivered many of Wētā FX's key technologies, and later focused on rendering and scene-management optimization, and on the integration of Pixar's USD and Hydra in the next VFX pipeline. In 2024 he joined ScanlineVFX Powered-by Netflix, where he designed the new Lighting pipeline with Solaris and OpenUSD. He’s now working for 880Productions on the Avatar’s Sequels. Biografia (breve Italiano) Durante i suoi anni all'universita, Paolo si interessa di interazione uomo-macchine, dedicando il suo tempo alla ricerca e sviluppo per nuovi dispositivi. Successivamente si affascina di effetti speciali, e dopo una breve esperienza in Jellyfish Pictures a Londra, nel 2008 vola in Nuova Zelanda per unirsi al gruppo di ricerca e sviluppo di Wētā FX, per completare il film Avatar. Come Capo del dipartimento di Software Engineering, Paolo e il suo team hanno sviluppato molte delle tecnologie chiave di Wētā FX, utilizzate in films come Avatar, TinTin, The BFG, The Guardians of the Galaxy. Di recente, per il film Avatar La via dell'acqua, ha ricorperto il ruolo di Principal Engineer nell'Architecture Department, dove si e' concentrato sull'ottimizzazione del rendering e della gestione delle scene, nonche' sullo sviluppo della prossima pipeline per gli effetti speciali di Wētā FX. Dopo 16 anni a Wētā FX, nel 2024 e' entrato a far parte del team di ScanlineVFX, una compagnia di Netflix, per creare la loro nuova pipeline di Lighting basata su Solaris e OpenUSD. Nel 2025, Paolo lavora per 880Productions, sulla prossima pipeline per i sequels di Avatar. Activities Patents Publications https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ https://dl.acm.org/ Conferences Presentations |