Kenny Mitchell
Kenny Mitchell

Prof Kenny Mitchell

Professor

 0131 455 4779

  K.Mitchell2@napier.ac.uk

   

Biography

Professor Kenny Mitchell is a senior at Walt Disney Animation Studios and chair of Video Game Technology at Edinburgh Napier University providing practical technology solutions for video games, Disney theme parks, movie production, and immersive media. Over the past 20 years he has shipped video games for Roblox, Disney and Electronic Arts with ground breaking high-end graphics technologies including voxels, volumetric light scattering, motion blur, light field, conversational AI, generative AI, and animation methods. His Ph.D. founded real-time 3D graphics for information visualization on consumer hardware. Whilst leading technology into movie franchise video games including Harry Potter, the BAFTA award winning Boom Blox with Stephen Spielberg, Star Wars augmented reality photos, and image quality for animation (Finding Dory) & live action (Pirates of the Caribbean) films, he currently has over 50 patent inventions. He has built and managed research groups up to 20 people, and projects with international consortia of up to 24 companies/universities.
He is Principal Investigator for Napier as part the EU ITN project DISTRO with PhD studentships to offer for immediate start.
Past and current PhD and MPhil supervisions
Simon Pilgrim (UCL), Babis Koniaris (Bath), Nick Swafford (Bath), Gwyneth Bradbury (UCL), Dan Calian (UCL), Isadora Sanna (Bath), Llogari Casas Cambra (ENU), Angeliki Glynou (ENU), Caio Brito (U Montreal), David Sinclair (Edinburgh University), Steven McSeveney (ENU), Adeyemi Ademola (ENU), Lewis Watson (ENU).
He's served on the advisory board of InGAME and EiC of ACM Games, as past chair of ACM SIGGRAPH I3D, CVMP and VRCAI and current Editorial Board of Elsevier Computers and Graphics and ACM Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, previously also served on the EPSRC strategic advisory network including the UK Digital Economy Impact Review, USA NSF scoping in immersive technologies.
https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,43106/, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7376664/, BAFTA member and awardee, ACM Pioneer and Distinguished Speaker, IEEE Senior.
Personal Page: farpeek.com

School

Research Groups

Themes

Research Areas

News

Esteem

Editorial Activity

  • Kenny Mitchell joins Editorial Board of IEEE Computers and Graphics

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Professor Kenny Mitchell gets Best Paper award at ACM Conference on Visual Media Production

 

Invited Speaker

  • Prof K Mitchell to give Keynote talk at Eurographics UK.

 

Membership of Professional Body

  • IEEE Senior Member

 

Non-executive Directorship

  • Cobra Simulation Ltd

 

Spin-outs and Licences

  • 3FINERY Ltd co-founder and CTO

 

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98 results

Machine learning for animatronic development and optimization

Patent
Mitchell, K., Castellon, J., Bacher, M., McCrory, M., Stolarz, J., & Ayala, A. (2025)
Machine learning for animatronic development and optimization. US12236168B2
Techniques for animatronic design are provided. A plurality of simulated meshes is generated using a physics simulation model, where the plurality of simulated meshes correspo...

Synchronous Patterned Motion Avatars

Patent
Mitchell, K., Sinclair, D., Koniaris, B., & Ademola, A. (2024)
Synchronous Patterned Motion Avatars

DanceMark: An open telemetry framework for latency sensitive real-time networked immersive experiences

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Koniaris, B., Sinclair, D., & Mitchell, K. (2024, March)
DanceMark: An open telemetry framework for latency sensitive real-time networked immersive experiences. Presented at IEEE VR Workshop on Open Access Tools and Libraries for Virtual Reality, Orlando, FL
DanceMark is an open telemetry framework designed for latency-sensitive real-time networked immersive experiences, focusing on online dancing in virtual reality within the Dan...

Method and system for visually seamless grafting of volumetric data

Patent
Mitchell, K. J. (2024)
Method and system for visually seamless grafting of volumetric data
Visually seamless grafting of volumetric data. In some implementations, a method includes obtaining volumetric data that represents a first volume including one or more three-...

Design Considerations of Voice Articulated Generative AI Virtual Reality Dance Environments

Conference Proceeding
Casas, L., Mitchell, K., Tamariz, M., Hannah, S., Sinclair, D., Koniaris, B., & Kennedy, J. (in press)
Design Considerations of Voice Articulated Generative AI Virtual Reality Dance Environments.
We consider practical and social considerations of collaborating verbally with colleagues and friends, not confined by physical distance, but through seamless networked telepr...

Expressive Talking Avatars

Journal Article
Pan, Y., Tan, S., Cheng, S., Lin, Q., Zeng, Z., & Mitchell, K. (2024)
Expressive Talking Avatars. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 30(5), 2538-2548. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3372047
Stylized avatars are common virtual representations used in VR to support interaction and communication between remote collaborators. However, explicit expressions are notorio...

Augmented Reality Methods and Systems

Patent
Cambra, L. C., & Mitchell, K. (2024)
Augmented Reality Methods and Systems. US11908068
Methods and systems employing augmented reality techniques via real-world objects for various purposes. Computer implemented methods are provided for animated augmentation of ...

MoodFlow: Orchestrating Conversations with Emotionally Intelligent Avatars in Mixed Reality

Conference Proceeding
Casas, L., Hannah, S., & Mitchell, K. (in press)
MoodFlow: Orchestrating Conversations with Emotionally Intelligent Avatars in Mixed Reality.
MoodFlow presents a novel approach at the intersection of mixed reality and conversational artificial intelligence for emotionally intelligent avatars. Through a state machine...

DanceGraph: A Complementary Architecture for Synchronous Dancing Online

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Sinclair, D., Ademola, A. V., Koniaris, B., & Mitchell, K. (2023, May)
DanceGraph: A Complementary Architecture for Synchronous Dancing Online. Presented at 36th International Computer Animation & Social Agents (CASA) 2023, Limassol, Cyprus
DanceGraph is an architecture for synchronized online dancing overcoming the latency of net-worked body pose sharing. We break down this challenge by developing a real-time ba...

Method of content generation from sparse point datasets

Patent
Mitchell, K. (2023)
Method of content generation from sparse point datasets
(EN) There is described a method of content generation from sparse point datasets, such as remote sensed aerial LiDAR scan data. Content for the landscape of a three dimension...

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