Photo & bio (2008): nahemi.org

Born in Newport, Arkansas. McGaugh received a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech University where he graduated with highest honors. He then made the leap into Visual Effects as a technical assistant at Industrial Light and Magic. He started developing ground breaking VFX tools at ILM in 1996. In his four years there as Technical Director, he developed the now industry-wide technique of ambient occlusion and ambient occlusion texture baking. This led the way for a production-friendly image-based lighting approach. This was first used in production for ILM's work in PEARL HARBOR (2001). Additionally he was heavily involved in the ground-breaking techniques developed for water in AMISTAD (1997) and DEEP IMPACT (1998).

McGaugh then moved to Double Negative where he was instrumental in developing volumetric underwater environments for BELOW (2002) and creating a robust pipeline capable of rendering significant amounts of photo-real full frame CGI.

In his year and a half at WETA, his leading role in sub-surface scattering techniques and shader development for Gollum earned him a VES Award and a Technical Achievement Academy Award.

After working behind-the-scenes for a couple of years developing Double Negative's colour and image pipeline, Ken moved into compositing and now VFX Supervising.

Other notable visual effects credits include TWISTER and DAYLIGHT (both 1996), MEN IN BLACK (1997), THE HAUNTING (1999), THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY & BULLWINKLE (2000), CUBBYHOUSE (2001), THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (2002), THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003), BATMAN BEGINS, DOOM and HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (all 2005), THE REAPING and 28 WEEKS LATER (both 2007), and THE RUINS (2008).

 Technical Achievement Award (Certificate) 2003: For their groundbreaking implementations of practical methods for rendering skin and other translucent materials using subsurface scattering techniques. (w. Christophe Hery and Joe Letteri)
 Technical Achievement Award (Certificate) 2009: For advancing the technique of ambient occlusion rendering. (w. Hayden Landis and Hilmar Koch)