About me

Who am i?
I'm Rafael Mendonça, a Unreal Engine designer working in broadcast.
Like most people I started my journey in Unreal Engine to make games, as a passion for interactivity and creating amazing experiences. But I soon discovered the world of virtual production where I can bring my creations to a whole other level, immersing people in virtual environments and real-time graphics for live shows and events. Finding the most creative ways to blend both real and virtual worlds in such a way that leaves people wondering what is and isn't real while I keep improving my work and accepting new challenges.
My goal is to keep pushing Unreal Engine's capabilities, contributing to innovative projects that captivate and engage audiences on a global scale.
Rafael Mendonça
21
Lisbon, Portugal
Main Skills
Design
Excelling at creating something amazing and easy to use will ensure it is used live.
Visual Programming
Blueprints and materials are my main tools to bring life & dynamics to all my works.
3D Modelling
Creating something from scratch or tweaking existing assets for a specific purpose.
Digital Compositing
Allows me to seemlessly blend both real and virtual worlds in real time.
Broadcast
Understanding what is needed and expected, norms and conventions in this space.
Tracking & Space Calibration
Ease of handling 3D space and calibrations to get accurate and mathmatical results.
Prototyping
Fast prototyping ideas and graphics to quickly understand what works and what doesn't.
Problem Solving
Theory crafting or finding the root causes to problems and presenting solutions.
Automation
Whenever possible and worth it, allows for faster experimentation on current and future projects
Portfolio
- All
- Augmented Reality
- Virtual Reality
- Other
- Experimental






Label Tag Mockup
- Client:
Envato
- Categories:
- Date:
12 May, 2019
- Technologies:
HTML5, SCSS, JS






3D Bag Mockup
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Obcaecati dignissimos culpa deserunt aspernatur ipsa veritatis alias labore tempore laboriosam commodi! Ab neque sunt, odio voluptatibus, dignissimos nisi consequuntur atque qui explicabo eligendi, harum in? Amet aspernatur atque quam. Illo natus tempora explicabo deleniti molestias numquam debitis repudiandae, repellendus voluptatum soluta?
- Client:
Envato
- Categories:
- Date:
12 May, 2019
- Technologies:
HTML5, SCSS, JS






Modern Bag Design
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- Client:
Envato
- Categories:
- Date:
12 May, 2019
- Technologies:
HTML5, SCSS, JS






Coffee Cup Design
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Assumenda aut sapiente quo explicabo, quasi incidunt aperiam laudantium, nemo cum eaque inventore ut voluptas voluptatibus nihil! Amet soluta, ea illo sint?
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Obcaecati dignissimos culpa deserunt aspernatur ipsa veritatis alias labore tempore laboriosam commodi! Ab neque sunt, odio voluptatibus, dignissimos nisi consequuntur atque qui explicabo eligendi, harum in? Amet aspernatur atque quam. Illo natus tempora explicabo deleniti molestias numquam debitis repudiandae, repellendus voluptatum soluta?
- Client:
Envato
- Categories:
- Date:
12 May, 2019
- Technologies:
HTML5, SCSS, JS




Stock Car 2023
This was an adaptation of the IBC 2023 graphic.
The client (Stock Car) saw what we did and wanted a "simple" readaptation for the Stock Car race.
Objective: Adapt the IBC 2023 graphic.
Creative Direction: Client.
Technical Direction: Independent.
Comment:
- Client:
Stock Car
- Categories:
- Date:
15 Dec, 2023
- Technologies:
Unreal Engine, StudioCG





IBC 2023
Created for a demonstration of wTVision's Augmented Reality solutions in IBC 2023.
Integrated with StudioCG (wTVision's controller), fully dynamic with interchangeable pilots and cars.
Objective: Create a graphic that can demonstrate all the StudioCG's capabilities when controlling Unreal Engine.
Creative Direction: Independent, first graphic I had (almost) full creative independence.
Technical Direction: Independent.
Comment: This graphic had a lot of tecnical prototyping behind it, each car has almost a milion polygons and 4k textures, which all had to be downscaled to a reasonable format. I wasn't sure if it would be possible to have 2 cars transitioning from each other given the fact this would need to run on a laptop GPU at 50fps. Nanite is out of the question for these types of graphics for its (at the time) incompatibility, so the only real solution was creating a good material only transition.
- Client:
wTVision (Internal)
- Categories:
- Date:
15 Sep, 2023
- Technologies:
Unreal Engine, StudioCG





Elections Autárquicas 2021
- Client:
RTP
- Categories:
- Date:
26 September, 2021
- Technologies:
Unreal Engine







Orriols 2022
This is one of my most unique projects as it is not real-time nor dynamic. The objective was to create a short video demonstrating the capabilities of Unreal.
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Praesent gravida ligula a neque dignissim, in dapibus eros consectetur. Ut porta arcu mollis fermentum molestie. Nulla commodo, ipsum sed venenatis dapibus, mauris nibh laoreet dolor, non ornare nulla lorem quis dolor. Nullam tincidunt venenatis eleifend. Donec in suscipit augue, ut scelerisque velit. Ut ut pellentesque dolor, vitae bibendum felis. Vivamus ac erat id enim laoreet sodales nec non velit. Donec pretium, quam in rutrum scelerisque, erat nisi scelerisque turpis, sed vulputate nunc nisl sit amet tellus.
- Client:
RTP
- Categories:
- Date:
26 September, 2021
- Technologies:
Unreal Engine






Elections Autárquicas 2021
My first serious project with a client and the first Unreal project done at the company, there was a lot to research and develop leaving almost no time to make things as pretty as they can be.
The briefing was about creating dynamic augmented reality graphics to process and represent all the necessary real time information, which was quite challenging especially when filling the map. All the graphics and their respective dynamics were created from scratch using blueprints and clever UV mappings.
I learned an immense amount of things from this first big step, color spaces, compositing, signals, audio, data processing, tracking, profiling, etc... really opened my eyes to what I was getting into.
Overall a great experience with amazing professionals that helped me understand what was needed and open to discussing different solutions for all the issues we faced along the way. And for sure is only getting better from here.
- Client:
Mediapro
- Categories:
- Date:
26 September, 2022
- Technologies:
Unreal Engine