About LP Tools

I’m Kurt, and I’m a storyteller who works in CG. For more than a decade I’ve helped bring stories to the screen: in television VFX, then as a CG supervisor on game trailers, commercials and VR, and today as Head of CG and co-owner of a creative studio in Los Angeles. Much of that work has been character-driven, the kind where a shot only lands if the audience believes the character in it.

I’m not an animator, but I’ve spent my career working alongside them. When someone asks what I do, I usually say I make pretty pictures, and that’s mostly true. An animator hands me a shot that is usually gray and untextured, and my job is to light it, shade it and render it into something beautiful: sometimes photoreal, sometimes cartoony, and everything in between.

I also teach 3D as a community college instructor, and mentoring new artists is one of my favorite parts of the job.

Where the tools came from

For years I worked the way most artists do, inside the limits of whatever the software shipped with. Learning Python is the moment I’m proudest of, because it changed that. Once I could write my own tools, the defaults stopped being the ceiling. I started building what my shots and my team needed, and the time I saved went back into the part of the work that actually shows on screen.

LP Tools is that toolbox, cleaned up, documented and tested so other artists can use it too.

The job, honestly

Production means long nights. I’ve worked until 6 a.m. to get a client build out the door for a 7 a.m. review. I’ve LiDAR-scanned a ride at Disney World in the middle of the night after the park closed, then flown to Vancouver the next day to scan a completely different set before it was torn down.

It’s also the people. Late-night taco runs. A night at The Game Awards with a group of coworkers, and a dinner afterward that ran much later than the show. A rap battle between two coworkers that nobody has let go of. Learning to ride a hoverboard through the office. Nerf wars that ended the way every office Nerf war ends: with someone taking one to the eye.

And plenty of hours chasing the same error over and over, only to find it was something simple the whole time. That’s why I try to make my tools tell you what went wrong in plain words instead of failing silently.

How I build them

• Every tool starts as something I needed in my own work.
• Each tool page lists the versions I tested. When I haven’t tested something, like V-Ray in Material Generator, I say so.
• The docs are written the way I teach: clear steps, for someone opening the tool for the first time.
• Questions come straight to me at support@LPTools.store.

Browse the tools, read the guides, or get in touch.