Lucio Arseni is a Design Technologist whose work is grounded in a single method: noticing a recurring friction, decomposing it, and building, then teaching, a response. That method, design thinking in practice rather than in name, has been running underneath a decade of hands-on 3D and VFX craft for most of that time, long before it had this label.
It expresses itself through two branches. The first is Creative Sensibility: a trained eye, rooted in an illustration and fine-arts background, expressed as judgment, reading what an image, a brand, or a user actually needs before building anything. It shows up as cinematic craft at the highest technical and visual bar, from film-quality automotive configurators to virtual production environments for independent cinema, as visual language read from two directions, translating an external brand's voice, or inventing form when the reference is partial or absent, and increasingly as judgment in user-centered design, deciding what a person actually needs from an interface, not just how it should look.
The second is Technical Depth, the branch with the deepest concrete evidence today: real-time 3D and pipeline systems, built on procedural systems thinking as its base. Its clearest fruit is Control Layer Architecture, a pattern recurring across four otherwise unrelated projects, a SaaS configurator prototype, a no-code AR tool, a live-broadcast virtual venue, and a team knowledge infrastructure, each giving a non-technical operator real authority over a complex system. Pipeline leadership at organizational scale (Scaling 3D Infrastructure for SaaS Products) sits alongside it on the same branch.
Leadership and project management run through both branches conceptually, teaching a workflow, documenting it, handing it to a team or external suppliers, though the concrete evidence today sits mostly on the technical branch.
Both branches are grounded in the same root craft: ten years of hands-on 3D and VFX across Houdini, Unreal Engine, Substance Suite, and 3ds Max.
He holds a background in illustration and fine arts from Brera (Nuove Tecnologie dell'Arte, Milan), has taught rendering and motion at IED Milano, and currently works as Head of 3D at Zakeke (Future Fashion / Futurenext SRL), where he leads pipeline architecture, asset standards, team workflows, and AI integration.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Primary Role | Design Technologist |
| Root Method | Design thinking — notice recurring friction, decompose it, build and teach a response; practiced for years before it had this name |
| Creative Sensibility Branch | A trained eye applied to cinematic craft (Ferrari SF90, Virtual Production), visual language (Motion Direction, Technical Craft), and increasingly to judgment in user-centered design |
| Technical Depth Branch | Procedural systems thinking (base) → Control Layer Architecture, signature pattern across 4 projects, and pipeline leadership at organizational scale (Scaling 3D SaaS) |
| Connective Thread | Leadership & project management, across both branches; concrete evidence today sits mostly on the technical side |
| Root Craft | 3D / VFX — Houdini, Unreal Engine, Substance Suite, 3ds Max (~10 years deep) |
| Complementary Skills | Visual language and brand reading, UX / product thinking, light team leadership (3–5 people), AI pipeline integration |
| Domains | Real-Time 3D, Interactive Systems, Product Configurators, Virtual Production, AR/WebXR, AI Workflows, Pipeline Architecture, Motion Design |
| Industries | Automotive, Luxury, Fashion, SaaS, Media, Finance, Transportation, Virtual Events |
| Seniority | Senior / Principal IC — with light mentoring; open to management in future |
| Experience | ~10 years |
| Career Preference | Stability over startup pace, R&D time over fast shipping |
| Project | Type | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rethinking a Product Platform from First Principles | Field Notes · System | AI-assisted prototype for a hybrid authoring platform connecting Canvas-based personalization and 3D configuration. Friction analysis grounded in ~350 support tickets, role decomposition, two-layer architecture (Dashboard + Builder), design system with reusable slot patterns. Broken down into individual features, now prioritized on the actual product roadmap. | View |
| Automotive Real-Time Configurator | Case Study · Experience + Craft | Film-quality interactive experience for the Ferrari SF90. Real-time 3D in Unreal Engine, cinematic camera work, technical direction across rendering and performance optimization. | View |
| Scaling 3D Infrastructure for SaaS Products | Field Notes · System | Read the pipeline by its users first: technical artists, product team, brands and clients, each with different needs. A four-step problem-to-supplier loop turns recurring friction into shared standards; a five-stage default workflow, plus dedicated branch pipelines for edge-case production paths, handles the work itself. Quantified operational improvements. | View |
| An Interactive System for Virtual Production | Case Study · Experience + Craft | Real-time VFX environment in Unreal Engine (Niagara) for the independent film WhoWon. Technical direction across lighting, simulation, and camera systems for live on-set use. | View |
| AI Knowledge Layer for a Working Team | Field Notes · System | A personal knowledge assistant already running day to day, and the same principle designed at company scale: heterogeneous sources collected and audited, a shared hub, a single routing layer, and two specialists split by project/sales and product needs. Architecture designed in detail; implementation sequencing left to engineering. | View |
| WebXR No-Code Prototyping System | Case Study · System | Visual scripting system for WebXR built inside Unity, inspired by PlayMaker: stack-based interactions without code, distributed as a Unity package. Removes the TypeScript bottleneck for non-developer designers. | View |
| A Live-Broadcast Architecture for Virtual Events | Case Study · Experience + System | Virtual venue with real-time broadcast control layer — lighting, video mixing, audience tools — designed under COVID constraints for live conventions. Tested with sixty simultaneous users. | View |
| From Procedural Thinking to Reusable Tools | Collection · System + Craft | Tools and experiments across Houdini, Substance, Blender, Unity, Figma, and AI workflows built on a single principle: design the rule once, let it govern everything beneath it. | View |
| Motion Direction & Visual Storytelling | Collection · Experience | Art direction and motion design across broadcast, events, finance, and public institutions — each piece built by reading a client's existing visual language, not overwriting it. | View |
| Visual Taste in Technical Craft | Collection · Craft | 3D and VFX work where the primary challenge was giving concrete form to something that existed only as intention — an emotion, a sketch, an inconsistent reference, a technical constraint. | View |
Ferrari · Pirelli · Gucci · Armani · Valentino · L'Oréal · Mazda · Trenitalia · UniCredit · RAI · Sky · Oknoplast · Zakeke
Design Technologist Design Thinking Creative Sensibility Empathy UX Research User-Centered Design Information Architecture Information Hierarchy Taxonomy Design Systems Visual Language Brand Reading Judgment Psychology of Perception Harmony & Composition Strategy Experience Design Motion Design Graphics Spatial Interfaces Spatial Computing Creative Technologist Team Leadership Real-Time 3D Control Layer Architecture Interactive Systems Product Configurators Unreal Engine Houdini Substance Designer VFX Virtual Production WebXR AR Pipeline Architecture Procedural Systems Generative AI AI Workflows Agentic AI Technical Direction SaaS Luxury Automotive
Email: lucioarseni@gmail.com
Portfolio: https://lucioarseni.it/
Resume: Download PDF