TheOwlforge - Portfolio

Projects

About Me

mae govannen! | Salve | 初めまして。

Or simply put: Hi.

I am a computer scientist with a Master degree in Informatics: Games Engineering at the Technical University of Munich. During my studies I mainly specialized on computer graphics and numerical simulation, but I also have experience with statistical analysis and data visualization.

My research interests range from image denoising on the GPU to enhancing learning experiences via AR. I am also very enthusiastic about everything connected to climate change and disaster control. Lately, optimization-based aproaches to 3D reconstruction and scene understanding sparked my interest.

Currently I am looking for a PhD project.
If you think our areas of research align, feel free to reach out to me.

Contact Me

Games

Teaching

I worked as a teaching assistant at TUM for the following modules:

Game Engine Design (IN0038, IN0039)
Real-time Computer Graphics (IN0038, IN0039)
Game Physics (IN0037)
Fundamentals of Programming (IN0002)
Preparatory Course: Mathematics for Computer Scientists
Introductory Programming with Python (IN8026)

Do you need help with exam preparations? I am also available as a private tutor.

Contact Me

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Noise Reduction for Interactive Volume Visualization Using Volumetric Path Tracing

Languages: C++, CUDA, R, Matlab, Python
IDE: Visual Studio 2019, RStudio, Matlab, PyCharm
Tools/Libraries: ImGui, PowerShell, ffmpeg

In my Master's Thesis I researched various spatial and temporal denoising techniques for Volumetric Path Tracing (VPT) using stochatic Monte Carlo Methods. Interactive volume rendering requires a low sample count. The resulting low quality can be compensated by post-processing techniques like temporal anti-aliasing or utilizing linear regression models.

To compare multiple techniques and combinations, I extended an existing volume renderer by implementing single scattering VPT using delta tracking. As spatial filters I considered bilateral, non-linear means and percentile filters. Additionally, I explored different ways to construct the depth buffer, which is used for temporal reprojection, and considered non-linear dependencies in the regression model.

This work was graded with: 1.3 German Grade System: 1.0 - 5.0 with passing grade 4.0

Code

Thesis

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The Value of Map Projections for the Visualization of Meteorological Data

Languages: C++, OpenGL
IDE: CLion
Tools/Libraries: Qt, PROJ4, Ubuntu

My Bachelor's Thesis was based on Met.3d, which is a framework for meteorological data visualization. I compaired multiple ways to implement map projects with regard to efficiency, focusing on the commonly used equidstant cylindrical projection and the stereographical projection used for polar aspects. On the CPU side I compared the library PROJ4 with a self-implemented C++ version and on the GPU side I used fragment, geometry and tesselation shaders.

For interpolation on the stereographically projected grid I compared three different interpolation methods: linear, distance-based/Shepards and spherical barycentric interpolation. Depending on the purpose of the map visualization (frequent changes vs. static), either compute shaders or tesselation were found to be most efficient, whereas spherical interpolation turned out to be only slightly different from the linear version.

This work was graded with: 1.7 (overall), 1.0 (presentation) German Grade System: 1.0 - 5.0 with passing grade 4.0

Code

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Projective Augmented Reality in a Museum:
Development and Evaluation of an Interactive Application

Language: C#, R
IDE: Unity3D, Rstudio
Tools/Libraries: UbiInteract, Autodesk ReCap Photo

In cooperation with the "Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke" in Munich we developed an application to augment an antique sculpture using Unity3d. The project started as a Lab Course within a group of four people, whereas I mainly focused on the development part in particular of the color picking screen (which contained information about ancient pigments in the prototype) and the communication of the app with a PC connected to a beamer via WiFi using UbiInteract. Later, I continued the project as a Guided Research within a group of two. My part was the refinement of the info screen, as well as designing and evaluating user studies on the usability and the learning effect of the application. This work was published at ICAT-EGVE 2020 as a full paper.

This work was graded with: 1.3 German Grade System: 1.0 - 5.0 with passing grade 4.0

Paper Code Evaluation Website

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Modern Wave Propagation - Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Hyperbolic Problems

Language: Julia
IDE: Visual Studio Code, Atom/Juno
Tools/Libraries: VTK/Paraview

As a group of three we implemented a high-order Discontinuous Galerkin solver for systems of hyperbolic conservation laws and tested it with the advection, acoustic and euler equations. Later, we focused on the elasticity equation to simulate earth quakes. My part was upgrading the code to support 3D with respect to the grid and equation/solver structure, as well as exporting the result using VTK. In the process, I also optimized the performance of the plotter and extended it to support displacements, where the position of grid points is arbitrary. Additionally, I researched the theoretical foundation of the elasticity equation based on "Finite Volume Methods for Hyperbolic Problems" by Randall J. LeVeque. As a side project, I implemented a small Unity3D application, which allows to visualize a 2D simulation as a 3D heightmap mesh and interpolates between frames to allow for a smoother transition.

This work was graded with: 1.0 German Grade System: 1.0 - 5.0 with passing grade 4.0

Code