Elijah Nicol.

MrRay

A passion-driven path-tracing renderer that began as a hobby and now has taken on a life of its own. It's the result of my fascination with physically based rendering and has turned into a creative sandbox where I tinker with various algorithms and ideas.

Rather than developing a custom scene description format exclusive to the engine, I've chosen to create a "USD Hydra render delegate" instead. This strategic decision empowers MrRay to function as a renderer for any software capable of channeling scene description to Hydra. This approach not only removes the need for crafting individual translators for each software I intend to integrate MrRay with but also streamlines its compatibility across multiple platforms.

SPH Fluid Simulator.

This project is an implementation of SPH simulation in C++. I have a love/hate relationship with this project - I was first tasked to complete it as a final assignment to a Computer Animation class, however I could not seem to get the physics right. After many nights spent trying to debug the problem, I handed it in incomplete, leaving me dissapointed. 8 months later I was determined to get it right and it only took me one hour to find a solution to my problem - I only had to remove one direction vector from the viscosity calculations and it fixed everything. After this fix, I implemented spatial hashing to speed up neighbourhood search, and set up instanced rendering to reduce rendering bottlenecks. The system is capable of simulating ~3000 particles in real time before it starts to drop below 25fps.

Virtual Camera Controller.

Ever wondered what it would be like to control a virtual camera like a camera in real life?

The mobile virtual camera controller is a research project I proposed as part of my undergraduate degree. It was inspired by the virtual production technology used in Avatar and The Lion King, and allows users to control cameras in their virtual scenes by walking around the real world. It utilises AR mapping technology so that your position in the real world can be mapped into the virtual world. My research paper looks into the practicality behind such a technology for use in film production - with aims that I could create something that gets virtual production into the hands of the younger generation.

Cinema Engine.

This project reflects my love for movies and modern video games - it is a graphics engine that incorporates many post-processing and aesthetic features. Most of the work was dedicated to the rendering in the 2 weeks I had to work on it - I designed an engine that integrates motion blur, bloom, fog, and exposure control, all wrapped up in a deferred rendering pipeline.

Cloth Toy.

Cloth Toy is an interactive application that allows the user to move a piece of cloth around the scene through direct control of individual vertices or by controlling the "wind". The cloth itself is made up of a collection of interconnected springs which give the illusion of an elastic material. All physics and rendering were programmed myself in C++ and OpenGL.

The Book of Nehemiah.

This is a short promotional video that I shot, scored and edited for Waterfront Christian Church. This film drew heavy inspiration from promotional videos shot by MOSAIC - I aimed to combine simplicity and storytelling into one video.