FriendsHangout "The Team Behind The Scenes!"
Jeff White - Project Manager

Jeff has been programming for over 25 years. In 1993, he started his own software company called Visual Inspirations Inc.

"Our main focus over the years have been video, 3D and web applications. We always wanted to work on virtual worlds, but never felt the available software packages were good enough. When we saw Unity, we KNEW our time had come. FriendsHangout is our first serious attempt in the gaming industry, but we are quite proud of the results and it is all because of the wonderful group of programmers, artist and animators we brought together for this project!"

Jeff over sees all aspects of FriendsHangout from game & web design to advertising and promotions.



Miguel Benitez - Lead Designer

Miguel has been doing 3D since 2004 and has focused on game scene design and layouts. He is in charge of putting all the 3D elements together for the scenes in Unity and to gather all the designs and models from the various animators then adding his magic touch. You can tell he LOVES working on game design, by the amount of detail he puts into each and every scene.



David Gutiérrez Palma - Unity Programmer

David is our game fanatic and is helping bring all the cool gaming features to FriendsHangout. He is our lead programmer using Unity and with his gaming background will help bring many new and interesting functions to our virtual worlds, from MMO to FPS to Arcade games. We are all very excited to see where this all leads us in the future.





Gregg Patton - Unity Programmer

Gregg has been developing computer software since 1981. Over the years his interest in developing computer graphics software has led him to create applications for 3D modeling, procedural 3D tree generation, games and more. He believes the future looks amazing for the application of immersive 3D computer graphics and he is very exited to be a part of that future.





Gil Teixeira - Unity Programmer

Gil loves games! Gil has been programming since longer then he can remember, longer then he learned English. His first "real" job was as a game programmer and he is still as passionate about games and programming has he was the first day. He loves creating new things, always looking for the next challenge, but mostly, just loves games!





Francesco Crocetti - Unity Programmer

Francesco is an italian old school programmer who has passion for software development since 1992 during high school. His first works involved management softwares for cars companies in CA Clipper and Visual Basic, until he was hired from several software houses in the years where he wrote a lot of different types of software, from warehouse management to web applications and finally specializing in web development in ASP.NET/PHP and desktop applications for Windows in C#. The natural passion for programming and games has finally been merged with the practice of game development, that represents now his current main interest. Visit his web site here





Nathan Warden - Unity Programmer

Nathan has been programming since he was in high school and considers himself a generalist when it comes to the computer. He loves "making things work" especially when it comes to making a process seem more simple to those using it. He has always loved to work with video games. To him, it's one of the few places where "work hard" can really mean "play hard" :) Visit his web site here.

Nathan created most of the core system for FriendsHangout.



Debra J Adamson - Vice President of Corporate Relations

Debra has been involved in 3D Graphics, Chat Applications and Virtual Worlds for over a decade. With FriendsHangout she is involved in Public Relations, Strategic Partnerships, and Intern Programs.

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Others that have helped along the way


Rich DiGiovanni - 3D Modeler

For a very long time, Rich loved video games and art. But it wasn't until 7 years ago that he realized he could combine those 2 great things, and became a 3D artist. Since then, he has been happily creating 3D environments. More work can be seen at
www.ancientidolstudio.com

Rich is in charge of creating many of the scene layouts & 3D models for FriendsHangout.



Larry Pendleton - Unity Programmer

Larry has been programming since 2001 and began game programming in 2002 with 3DGameStudio. He has been using Unity since 2009. He is fluent in javascript and has been transitioning to the C# programming language.

Larry's main focus at FriendsHangout has been with the Terrain Editor as well as our built-in Avatar Editor.



Wilson "Woody" Smith - 3D Animator

Woody graduated from the "Ringling School of Art and Design" in 2000 and has worked for a number of high end companies working on such titles as "Halo Wars", "Battle Zone", & "Terminator". His rigging and animation talents are among the best in the industry.

Woody amazed us at the speed and wide varity of talents he has and helped take FH to the next level! Visit his web site here.

Woody is in charge of most of the 3D animations in our scenes.



Vincent Foster - 3D Animator

Vincent has been a 3D modeler / animator for over 10 years, with experience in programming and game design. He also has been a professional musician for over 22 years. Check out his band's site at Reign IV.

Vincent is in charge of creating many of our 3D models as well as various animations through out all our scenes.



Jenna Bankhead - 3D Animator

I am a freelance 3d animator with a degree in animation, currently living in sunny Brisbane, Australia. I love game art and have always aspired to work creating content for all kinds of games. I consider myself very lucky to be able to contribute to many different game projects, and always have alot of fun animating whatever is needed.

You can see my work at www.flamingpaper.com.

Jenna has helped us out on many of the avatar and animal animations you see at FriendsHangout.



John "Iñaki" Lauret - Unity Programmer

In 1989, John founded "Lauret Producciones" in Spain, a company focused in multimedia technologies, John has developed activities in fields from tv advertising to multimedia applications for brands like Citibank, Toyota, L'Oréal, Visa and Bausch & Lomb.

John has been in the Game Arena since 2004 and has worked on many diverse projects including "La Casa Encendida" In Second Life & "Suceso Tierra" for Toyota. Visit his web site here.

John is in charge of vehicle programming such as the hang glider, hover craft and more.



Cemre Ozkurt - 3D Animator

Cemre started animation when he was just 7 years old working on his brother's Amiga computer. He went to Carsaf Caricature School for 7 years and won several awards at international competitions. Later he entered the Graphic Design Academy at the Mimar Sinan University. Right now he is living in San Francisco and working at Electonic Arts Studios as a Senior Character Modeler. Visit his web site here.

Cemre helped with animating our avatars on FriendsHangout.



Russ Menapace - Network Programmer

Russ has been programming since 1992 and had been a professional musician before that. He received his BS in Computer Engineering at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. His main focus for the past few years has been Games and Multimedia Networking. Visit his web site here.

Russ helped us get our game networking up and running.



Unity - 3D Game Engine

We would not be here if it was not for the great team of programmers and designers that make up Unity. They created the unity Game engine that we used to create FriendsHangout. While not directly linked to these folks, we felt it only right to include them here.

Thanks guys!



Smart Fox Server - Game Server

We would also like to thank the folks at Smart Fox Server. They created the multiplayer game server we used for FriendsHangout to help speed up production time and to be able to handle all our various scenes.






Darwin Dimensions - Avatar Editor

We are happy to announce that we will now be working with the folks at Darwin to use their new Evolver Avatar system. With this collaboration, users will be able to customize their avatar like never before. Create millions of versions to match your vision in 3D.

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Special Thanks to the following that also helped in some way or other on this project.

Ilan Aizelman - Unity Programmer

TrueBones - Motion Capture

Arteria 3D- Models

3DRT - Models

Dexsoft-Games - Models

3DMedia - Models

Thomas Lund- SFS API For Unity

Danny Larence - Unity Programmer

Shawn Kaschafsky - Interface & TShirt Designs

Eric Haines - Unity Programmer

Nikola Dechev - Model Textures

Lloyd Walker - Animator

Levan Iordanishvili - Sound FX

Raul Martin - Animator

Jeff Geis - Animator

Mikey Day & Michael Naughton - Magic Videos

SuperHandz - Magic Videos

Shaun Abernathy - Magic Video

Live Face On Web - Live Action Avatars

Ascap - Licensing for Music & Videos in our scenes