Alex Kozlowski's Homepage

Carousel at Night

This was my final project for CSE-168: Rendering Algorithms , Spring 2005. In this course I learned how to design my own ray tracer and implement some complex techniques. The final carousel image features photon mapping, spherical area lights, a BSP tree, depth of field, supersampling, glossy reflections, tone mapping, bump-mapping, perlin textures, and soft shadows. For this project I also taught myself Blender, a free modeling program, which I used to model the carousel and horses. My image won the Grand Prize in the CSE-168 Rendering Competition! Click on the picture for more details, but be aware that the page may take a while to load.

Sphere Inversion

Since 2003 I've been modeling and animating a mathematical concept known as a sphere inversion. It's the process by which a sphere turns itself inside out through a continuous deformation that allows the surface to penetrate itself but disallows any tears or holes to form in the surface. I've also had the opportunity to join a group of scientists in sculpting a 12 foot version of one of these inside out spheres at the 2004 International Snowsculpting Championships in Breckenridge, CO.

CHaMUE - Collaborative Haptic Mark-Up Environment

This project researched the integration of virtual reality and 3D input devices with force feedback response in a networked environment. The design station we developed allowed virtual parts to be seen through head-tracked stereo goggles. A haptic stylus--a robotic arm with force-feedback effects--allows the user to touch, annotate and deform virtual parts in real-time. My primary contributions to the project included redesigning the core code for better modularity, developing a proper scene management hierarchy, and integrating my own VRML parser.

Dynamic Real Time Tesselation of Spline Surfaces

I was involved with the development of a software simulation for a new graphics hardware geared towards real time rendering of spline surfaces. The architecture offers a dynamic level of detail for surfaces based upon their depth from the viewer, eliminating the need for offline tesselation and consequently freeing up bandwidth over the graphics bus.

Gamescrafters

Gamesman is an exhaustive game tree solver originally designed by Dan Garcia at UC Berkeley. The program solves small board games of no-chance and uses the game tree to play a perfect game. My contributions to the project include developing a robust graphical event loop for GUI design in Tcl/Tk. I also helped port the core code from C to Scheme (a dialect of Lisp) and created a Tk-Scheme abstraction library.


		Carousel at Night This was my final project for CSE-168: Rendering Algorithms , Spring 2005. In this course I learned how to design my own ray tracer and implement some complex techniques. The final carousel image features photon mapping, spherical area lights, a BSP tree, depth of field, supersampling, glossy reflections, tone mapping, bump-mapping, perlin textures, and soft shadows. For this project I also taught myself Blender, a free modeling program, which I used to model the carousel and horses. My image won the Grand Prize in the CSE-168 Rendering Competition! Click on the picture for more details, but be aware that the page may take a while to load.

		Sphere Inversion Since 2003 I've been modeling and animating a mathematical concept known as a sphere inversion. It's the process by which a sphere turns itself inside out through a continuous deformation that allows the surface to penetrate itself but disallows any tears or holes to form in the surface. I've also had the opportunity to join a group of scientists in sculpting a 12 foot version of one of these inside out spheres at the 2004 International Snowsculpting Championships in Breckenridge, CO.

		CHaMUE - Collaborative Haptic Mark-Up Environment This project researched the integration of virtual reality and 3D input devices with force feedback response in a networked environment. The design station we developed allowed virtual parts to be seen through head-tracked stereo goggles. A haptic stylus--a robotic arm with force-feedback effects--allows the user to touch, annotate and deform virtual parts in real-time. My primary contributions to the project included redesigning the core code for better modularity, developing a proper scene management hierarchy, and integrating my own VRML parser.


		Dynamic Real Time Tesselation of Spline Surfaces I was involved with the development of a software simulation for a new graphics hardware geared towards real time rendering of spline surfaces. The architecture offers a dynamic level of detail for surfaces based upon their depth from the viewer, eliminating the need for offline tesselation and consequently freeing up bandwidth over the graphics bus.

		Gamescrafters Gamesman is an exhaustive game tree solver originally designed by Dan Garcia at UC Berkeley. The program solves small board games of no-chance and uses the game tree to play a perfect game. My contributions to the project include developing a robust graphical event loop for GUI design in Tcl/Tk. I also helped port the core code from C to Scheme (a dialect of Lisp) and created a Tk-Scheme abstraction library.