Curriculum Vitae

As it was in February 2009. At the moment I have a job and I am not looking for other opportunities.

Common info

Name: Aras Pranckevičius
Date of birth: 1981 May 20
Residence: Kaunas, Lithuania
E-mail: nearaz at gmail dot com

Job experience

2006 - present Code Chef at Unity Technologies ApS (I think officially the title is 'Lead Graphics/Windows programmer'). Working on Unity game/media development tool. Some of my work includes realtime shadowing system, Direct3D based renderer, the whole rendering pipeline, Unity web browser plugin for Windows, Unity editor development on Windows, optimizations and so on. In general I am doing anything that is needed: rendering code, shaders, optimizations, Windows code, documentation, supporting the customers, fighting driver bugs, creating my own bugs and fixing them etc. You get the idea.
2004 - 2005 Senior software developer at Alna Software. All kinds of "usual software"; using C++/C#, various databases, CAD systems, document management systems etc.
2005 Feb-Apr Contractor for Wireframe Dreams Studios. Implementing physics for their RTS game PSI: Syberian Conflict.
2004 Aug-Oct Contractor for Microsoft; developed 3D viewer for Imagine Cup 2005 Visual Gaming competition (see here).
2001 - 2004 Researcher, software developer and systems architect at Interamotion LLC.
  • Developed realtime computer vision system for 3D fighting game (human motion recognition using optical cameras).
  • In-house 3D engine and toolchain (rendering, animation, resource, physics systems; art asset exporters and viewers for 3dsmax).
  • 3D action game pre)Thing, published by V2 Music. Published on the same-named music band's CD.
  • Computer vision demos for Visionary Interactive.
  • Misc: computer networks management utilities for Verizon Corp.; system for passport recognition running on Psion Teklogix handheld; other small projects.
Used: C++, STL/Boost, DirectX 8/9, HLSL, Lua, maxscript, OpenCV. Others: Java, InCharge6, Windows CE.
2000 - 2001 Developer at Geras Partneris Software. Web, e-commerce and accounting projects. Used Java, Swing, J2EE (JBoss), databases, Castor.

Freetime and non-commercial projects are here. I've been doing various game / graphics stuff since 1994, starting on Sinclair / Atari XE, moving onto PC; and a bit of PlayStation One. Worked alone and with some friends. The funny thing is that I'm still obsessed with computer graphics (but not so much with games).

Achievements

2006 & 2007 Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in DirectX award.
2005 First place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2005 realtime rendering competition.
2004 scene.org "breakthrough performance" award for Syntonic Dentiforms demo.
2004 Second place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2004 realtime rendering competition.
2003 First place in ATI / Beyond3D shader programming competition.
2000-2002 Participated in the annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (North-East European subregion; quarter- and semi-finals).

Publications

Soft Projected Shadows (2006)
ShaderX4: Advanced Rendering Techniques, Charles River Media, ISBN 1-58450-425-0.

Tips and Tricks for D3DX Effects Based Renderer (2006)
ShaderX4: Advanced Rendering Techniques, Charles River Media, ISBN 1-58450-425-0.

Fake Soft Shadows Using Precomputed Visibility Distance Functions (2004)
ShaderX3: Advanced Rendering With DirectX And OpenGL, Charles River Media, ISBN 1-58450-357-2.

Shaderey - NPR Style Rendering (2004)
ShaderX3: Advanced Rendering With DirectX And OpenGL, Charles River Media, ISBN 1-58450-357-2.

Certificates

Brainbench certificates (ID: 238559) taken in 2005:
Programmer/Analyst Aptitude4.36 out of 5 (master)
C++4.53 out of 5 (master)
Programming Concepts4.53 out of 5 (master)
C3.72 out of 5

Education

2003-2005 Kaunas University of Technology, Master degree in Computer Science.
Master's thesis was "Rendering Soft Shadows in Real Time" (see here).
1999-2003 Kaunas University of Technology, Bachelor degree in Computer Science.
Thesis was on real-time cloth simulation and rendering (see here).

Other info

Professional: this used to be a list of programming languages, libraries, platforms and whatnot. I don't see a point in maintaining a list of buzzwords and acronyms though.

Personal: married, has a daughter; obsessed with computer graphics; plays classical guitar.