ShaderX Programming

Section Editors

About the Section Editors (in alphabetical order)

Wessam Bahnassi
Wessam's professional career started about 8 years ago when he started the development of the real-time 3D engine “DirectSkeleton” and its pipeline tools for In|Framez. He led the development team for several games and real-time demos based on the same engine in addition to his many contributions and publications in graphics and programming in general. Wessam has been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for DirectX technologies for 4 years and until now. Currently, he works at Electronics Arts Montreal, doing console and PC graphics and game programming for some of EA's great titles.

Kristof Beets
Kristof is the 3rd Party Relations Manager for PowerVR within the Business Development Group at Imagination Technologies. Through the PowerVR Insider program he manages technical support and co-marketing activities for the Mobile Graphics Ecosystem. He has a background in Electrical Engineering and received a master's degree in Artificial Intelligence. Prior to joining the Business Development Group he worked on SDKs and Tools for both PC and Mobile products as a member of the PowerVR Developer Relations Team. Previous work has been published in ShaderX2, ARM IQ Magazine and online by 3Dfx Interactive and Beyond3D.

Carsten Dachsbacher
Carsten Dachsbacher is a Ph.D. student in computer graphics at theUniversity of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. His research focuses on interactive, hardware-assisted computer graphics; in particular he is working on interactive global illumination techniques, proceduralmodels for rendering photo-realistic virtual terrains and point-basedrendering. He worked as a freelancer for various (game) companiesprogramming mainly real-time 3D graphics and published some of hiswork at conferences and in books and magazines.

Wolfgang Engel
Wolfgang is a Senior Graphics Programmer in the core technology group at Rockstar San Diego. He is the editor of the ShaderX book series and the author of Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders. Wolfgang is a frequent speaker on conferences world-wide and publishes articles on several websites. Since July 2006 he is a Microsoft MVP DirectX.

Tom Forsyth
Tom Forsyth has been obsessed by 3D graphics since seeing Elite on his ZX Spectrum. Since then he has always tried to make hardware beg for mercy. Tom has written triangle-drawing routines on the Spectrum, Sinclair QL, Atari ST , Sega 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast, PC, GamePark32 and XBox, and he's getting quite good at them now. Tom's coding past includes writing curved-surface stuff for Sega and graphics drivers for 3Dlabs. Currently he works in Guildford at Muckyfoot Productions, where past projects are Urban Chaos, StarTopia and Blade II.

Kenneth Hurley
Kenneth has worked for notable game and technology companies such as Electronic Arts and Intel, and most recently was a senior engineer at NVIDIA Corporation. While there, he participated in the XBOX hardware and numerous video games including Tiger Woods Golf. Kenneth has been a consultant for several Silicon Valley companies and worked with the United States government on the latest military equipment, including the highly acclaimed Land Warrior. Kenneth’s passion and experience for the gaming industry is what brings him to the helm of Signature Devices. With over 20 years of experience, this is Kenneth’s second start-up as an independent developer, giving him perspective and a strong understanding of the demands of running an up and coming development company. He has contributed to best selling computer books on 3-D graphics and he is a requested speaker at conventions and workshops around the country. Kenneth received his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the University of Maryland.

Sebastien St-Laurent
Sebastien St-Laurent holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Sherbrooke University in Quebec (Canada) where he graduated at top of his class in 1999. Since then, he worked on many video game titles including: Space Invaders, Dave Mira Freestyle BMX, Dave Mira Freestyle BMX2, Aggressive Inline, BMX XXX. Sebastien is now currently employed with the Microsoft Corporation where he is a graphics developer for the Microsoft Game Studios. Sebastien St-Laurent is also a published author who has written "Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists" and "The COMPLETE Effect and HLSL Guide".

Natalya Tatarchuk
Natalya is a Senior Software Engineer in the ATI Research, Inc. 3D Application Research Group where she is investigating innovative graphics techniques in the real-time domain for current and future platforms as a contributor in the demo group. In the past she has been the lead for the tools group at the 3D Application Research Group, working on a pioneering real-time shader development environment RenderMonkeyTM IDE. Natalya has been in the graphics industry for many years, previously working on award-winning haptic 3D modeling software, scientific visualization libraries and various other projects. She has published articles in the ShaderX books, Game Programming Gems, Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com, amongst others. She has presented novel techniques at various conferences throughout the world, including Siggraph sketches and presentations, GDC, GDC-Europe, Microsoft Meltdown and Russian GDCs. Natalya graduated with BAs in Computers Science and Mathematics from Boston University and is currently pursuing an SM in Computer Science with concentration in Graphics at Harvard University.

Matthias Wloka
Matthias Wloka is a software engineer in the technical developer relations group at NVIDIA. His primary responsibility is to collaborate with game developers to enhance image quality and graphics performance of their games; he is also a regular contributor at game developer conferences, such as GDC. Matthias's passion for computer gaming started at age 15 when discovering that his school's Commodore PET 2001 computers also play Black Jack. He started writing his own games soon thereafter and continues to use the latest graphics hardware to explore the limits of interactive real-time rendering. Before joining NVIDIA, Matthias was a game developer at GameFX/THQ, Inc.
He received his M.Sc in computer science from Brown University in 1990, and his B.Sc from Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany in 1987.