Realtime Technical Director / AI-augmented pipeline architect
Dario Visaggio
I help Unity and Unreal teams reduce production risk when the build starts fighting back: frame spikes that come and go, shaders that looked fine yesterday, artists blocked by brittle tools, messy assets, unclear scope, and milestones that need decisions more than another pile of generic output.
Visual work index
Why teams call me
When the look is right, but the project is quietly slipping away.
Most of my work starts with an uncomfortable sentence: this scene looks good but does not run, this tool only works for one person, this shader is becoming debt, or nobody knows which feature should be cut before the next review. That is where technical art turns into production judgement.
How I usually come in
Less theatre. More grip on the build.
Realtime Production Audit
I come in cold, open the Unity or Unreal project, read the profiler, scenes, shaders, assets, build setup, and workflow friction, then point at the risks most likely to hurt the next milestone.
AI-Assisted Pipeline Setup
AI in the boring, useful places: validators, import checks, asset reports, naming rules, material warnings, LOD reviews, and suggestions that stay reviewable before they touch production.
Technical Direction Sprint
A focused sprint to reduce production risk when the team needs someone to say what stays, what goes, who owns what, and how the next delivery stops being so fragile.
AI in real production
AI can generate code. It still needs someone accountable for what enters the build.
The useful question is not whether AI can make a function, a material variant, or a quick concept. It can. The harder question is where AI belongs in a production pipeline, what it is allowed to change, what must be measured, and who catches the answer that is cheap, plausible, and wrong for this game.
I use AI around checks, documentation, reports, prototype scaffolding, and repeatable cleanup. The judgement stays human: performance budgets, IP boundaries, visual quality, platform constraints, and the responsibility of saying no when no is the useful answer.
Selected production work
Games and projects shaped by real production limits.
Locked case study
Undisclosed Contribution
Project Venture
Coloniser
Cancelled Tropico 7 UE5 Phase
Gotchi Guardians
Age of Battles
Desert Fires
Hypercasual Mobile Games
Locked case study
Undisclosed Contribution
What I diagnose
The production problems hiding between art direction and engine reality.
When the build stutters
Random spikes, memory creep, shader cost, batching, LOD, asset budgets, and the boring little numbers that decide whether the game survives real hardware.
Pipelines people can live with
Editor tools, import rules, naming, validation, material hygiene, prefab cleanup, and workflows that stop the same mistake from wasting another afternoon.
Direction when things get muddy
Scope calls, trade-offs, feature cuts, production reviews, and the kind of judgement you need when the project has too many promises and not enough frame time.
AI where it earns its place
AI-assisted reports, checks, documentation, and fix proposals inside a controlled pipeline where humans still own approval, IP safety, quality, and responsibility.
Personal craft
Studies, characters, materials, and older pieces that show the hand behind the tools.
The production work matters, but the personal archive shows the base underneath it: sculpting, hand-built assets, material studies, contest pieces, and the habit of building things until the visual and technical decisions agree.
Explore the full archiveOpen to the right conversations
Have a Unity or Unreal project that needs a clearer next move?
Send the context, the risk, and the kind of pressure the team is under. I am especially useful when the work touches rendering, shaders, procedural environments, optimization, AI-assisted pipeline checks, production leadership, or the strange middle ground where art, code, and schedule all disagree.