About

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Zisen Ling at work

Background

My name is Zisen Ling. I'm 29 years old, born and raised in Shenzhen, China. I initially planned to pursue Fine Arts, but ultimately chose Computer Science, finding my niche at the intersection of technology and artistry.

I maintain a strong practice in traditional and digital art, exploring concept design, photography, and UI. This artistic background allows me to communicate effectively with art teams, understanding their visual goals while providing the technical solutions to achieve them.

On the technical side, I have a CS degree and over three years of Unity development experience. I specialize in Rendering Pipelines (HDRP/URP), Shader Programming (HLSL), and Toolchain Development. I also bring a competitive gamer's instinct to development—having ranked in the Top 500 (North America) in Overwatch, which gives me a sharp intuition for game mechanics, gameplay programming, and combat responsiveness.

Experience

Technical Artist & Programmer

Insomnia Development · Contract Full Time

Jun 2025 – Present

Project: Spriggan (Unity HDRP)
  • Architected a fully dynamic APV + SSGI lighting pipeline and engineered Texture-Based LOD to optimize draw calls.
  • Authored highly optimized environmental shaders via HLSL/Graph, including a mathematical Wind Corruption Decal and screen-space Crystal Distortion.
  • Deep-debugged third-party plugins (e.g., HDRP Time of Day), refactoring coupled C# code to expose clean APIs for Gameplay Programmers.
  • Developed custom Editor tools (e.g., Grid-based Prefab viewer) and decoupled art/tech workflows to streamline level design iteration.
  • Profiled and resolved critical rendering artifacts and memory leaks caused by unreleased Render Textures during weather transitions.
Localization QA Specialist

GlobalStep · Casual / On-call

Jan 2025 – Sep 2025

  • Traditional Chinese LQA for confidential AAA titles.
  • Executed full testing workflows: test planning, string reviews, and regression testing via JIRA.
  • Ensured linguistic consistency across CHT and English builds.
Gamification Developer (Intern)

Concordia's Next-Generation Cities Institute

Apr 2023 - Jul 2024 (Total: 8 mos)

CityPlayer: Voltage (Digital Twin)
  • Created a realistic digital twin of Montreal’s downtown using Unity 6 (APV).
  • Replaced legacy procedural geometry with Interior Mapping Shaders, drastically reducing GameObject overhead.
  • Designed an automated texture pipeline (360° Photo -> ShaderMap -> Unity) to process 60+ buildings efficiently.
  • Trained the design team on ProBuilder for modular adjustments.

CityPlayer: Chinatown
  • Implemented procedural window generation for variable facade details.
  • Used ChatGPT to classify and consolidate 100+ urban vegetation assets into a manageable library of 10 reusable prefabs.
Front-end Development Intern

Chiwan Oriental Smart IOT Technology

Apr 2022 - May 2022

  • Built and deployed report pages using Vue.js.
  • Implemented modules for a WeChat Mini Program, ensuring successful deployment.

Education

Bachelor of Computer Science

Concordia University (Computer Games Option)

Cumulative GPA: 3.2 / 4.3

(Demonstrated strong upward trajectory with a 3.60 GPA in the final two years.)

Skills

Development

C# / HLSL / Python

Unity (HDRP/URP) / Unreal

Gameplay Programming & Game AI

Shader Graph / OpenGL

Web (JS/Vue/CSS)

Art & Tools

Blender / ProBuilder

Photoshop / Lightroom

Substance / ShaderMap

Figma / UI Design

Digital Painting

Workflow & General

Iterative Development / Rapid Prototyping

JIRA / Git / Perforce

English (Professional) / Native Chinese

VR Development

AI Workflows (Stable Diffusion)