Ken Birdwell

Ken Birdwell is the Senior software developer enginer for Valve.

Biography
On Valve's official website, his function was described that way: "Ken interrupted his fine art studies to join Gabe at Valve as one of their first employees. With a background mostly in simulation and medical software, Ken's primary focus at Valve has been Animation software, and is responsible for most of the acting systems that underlie the characters in Half-Life 2. Ken is the only Valve employee to actually grow up here in Bellevue, and spends countless hours regaling his office mates with tales of what the town was like "when I was a boy"."

Ken has contributed to a wide range of projects in the last 15 years. These include in-circuit emulators (CodeTap), 3D surface reconstruction (Surfgen), 3D prosthetics design tools (Shapemaker), and satellite networking (Microsoft's Broadcast PC). He also wrote one of the first graphical shells for multiplayer online games for Compuserve's Sniper.

Oddly enough, Ken has a BFA from Evergreen State University, where he studied painting, photography, and animation. Ken designed and implemented the skeletal animation system and many other engine components for Half-Life.

Others
Birdwell create a demo for E3 1997, that feature monsters created with Valve's proprietary skeletal animation system. This system gives game characters the most fluid and complex motion seen in a first-person action game. It also allows them to be much more structurally complex than ever before. For instance, while current action games have difficulty handling monsters with more than 500 polygons, Half-Life will contain monsters with over 6000 polygons, demostration of this is the Zentraedi Tactical Battle Pod.

Ken Birdwell do the coding and AI development for the Hydra


 * In the Episode Two commentary, information is given about the spectacular battle between Dog and the Strider:

According to Birdwell], the Strider for that sequence was custom built and, with big parts of it being ripped off and "goo" being spewed everywhere, was used as a test bed for new modeling technology and Valve's new particle system introduced in Episode Two. He further adds that with their episodic process, a lot of new technology comes online throughout development. Since any new technology takes a year or more to really work out all the bugs, they like to look for insolated areas - like this one - where they can test out new things without risking all the things they already know work. They did the same thing with HDR in Lost Coast; once they are sure they did not break anything, they can move the features back into general use. Since this consider the Strider has worked out really well in that sequence, it will be the new Strider as they move forward, and they will be applying what they have learned to any new monsters in Episode Three.

Trivia
His name appears in Half-Life as an Easter egg on a Sector C locker and can be heard in announcements.

Works on

 * Portal 2 (2011), Valve Corporation
 * Alien Swarm (2010), Valve Corporation
 * Left 4 Dead 2 (2009), Akella
 * Left 4 Dead (2008), Valve Corporation
 * Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007), Buka Entertainment
 * The Orange Box (2007), Valve Corporation
 * Portal (2007), Buka Entertainment
 * Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006), Valve Corporation
 * Counter-Strike: Source (2004), Valve Corporation
 * Half-Life 2 (2004), Valve Corporation
 * Half-Life (2001), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
 * Half-Life: Blue Shift (2001), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
 * Half-Life (Game of the Year Edition) (1999), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
 * Half-Life: Opposing Force (1999), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
 * Half-Life (1998), Sierra On-Line, Inc.