Real-time Snow Deformation

Terrain rendering using Compute Shaders

I have proposed a scalable real-time snow deformation technique implemented on the GPU using compute shaders and hardware tessellation. It is based on the approach used in Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds. The method was further improved by incorporating snow elevation along the deformation edges.

The algorithm captures snow-affecting objects into a depth buffer using an orthographic frustum positioned below the player. The rendered depth is then used to determine if the deformation should be applied. The deformation heightmap is accumulated in a persistent ping-pong buffer. The algorithm remaps the heightmap using a cubic function and filters the height using a separable Gaussian blur filter. The required texels are fetched into LDS using gather instructions, which gets the four texels that would be used for hardware bilinear interpolation. Finally, the normals are computed using the finite difference method based on the deformation heightmap.

The technique has a sliding window that moves the deformation heightmap with the player anywhere in the world, which allows this technique to be used in a massive open-world game.

2D Pixel Platformer

Programming in Unity Engine

Prepare to enter a perilous world hidden in a forgotten dimension. Armed with a sword, a bow, and your gamepad—can you survive?

This game is inspired by Heart of Darkness (PS1), developed by Amazing Studios. Together with my colleague Klára, I worked on bringing this world to life. My primary focus was on artificial intelligence and graph algorithms, designing challenging enemies that pushed the gameplay to a whole new level. In addition, I created enemy animations and designed environments that shaped the game’s levels.

Rendering of Biomolecular Datasets

Real-time Visualization

This was a university project focused on the real-time visualization of biomolecular datasets using deferred shading and outline rendering techniques. I implemented a variant of Metaball rendering technique, which filters the normals of the cells. The filtered result is then used for lighting calculations. Finally, the cell membrane is rendered using a semi-transparent pass with Fresnel effect. The application was developed using C++ and OpenGL.

Photogrammetry Pipeline

Creating materials and assets for games

During my studies at Czech Technical University in Prague, teams from Center for Machine Perception developed state-of-the-art algorithms for the reconstruction of 3D objects from images. The method involves comparing multiple images taken from different angles to estimate the object’s coordinates in 3D space. These techniques were also used in games such as Far Cry 5 and Star Wars: Battlefront to create realistic environments.

Building on their results and my own experiments, I developed a photogrammetry pipeline for creating game-ready PBR assets. This pipeline consists of several steps, focusing on data cleaning, efficient parameterization with proper UV density, and optimization. Below, you can find a sample of the results I achieved.

AK-47

Game-ready PBR asset

It’s possible to define a function that describes the reflectance properties of a surface, but programming is only one aspect of the process. In my spare time, I also worked as a technical artist to gain a deeper understanding of how the art department operates. One of the assets I created is an AK-47 with a physically based material. I used 3ds Max for low-poly modeling, high-poly modeling, and 2D unwrapping. The textures were created using Photoshop and Substance Painter.