Home Blog Talks Papers Projects

Curriculum Vitae

As it was in September 2023.

Aras Pranckevičius
Lives in Kaunas, Lithuania; born in 1981
Contacts: aras@nesnausk.org; @aras_p on twitter, also on mastodon.

Job experience

2022 - now

Not working anywhere! I am contributing a bit to Blender and several other open source projects. I quite like it so far and not looking for a “real” job :)

2006 - 2021

Code plumber at Unity Technologies. Working on Unity game engine. Empowering developers to create awesome games and interactive content!

In general I did anything that is needed: editor improvements, internal tools programming, occasionally leading some small team, rendering code, shaders, optimizations, platform specific code, documentation, supporting the customers, reviewing code, technical guidance for other developers, doing presentations, creating my own bugs and fixing them, etc. You get the idea.

I’ve seen the company grow from 3 to 5000+ people, it’s quite an amazing thing to watch!

Some of what I’ve been doing there:

  • 2021: Working in a small team focusing on “quality of life” improvements and optimizations across the editor.
  • 2020: Leading & mentoring a small team focusing on “quality of life” improvements and optimizations across the editor.
  • 2019: Improving Version Control (mostly Perforce) integration in Unity, leading & mentoring a small team. Some build systems work.
  • 2018: Internal developer tooling team. Build systems, developer happiness.
  • 2017: Shader scalability & features for large productions and scriptable render pipelines, legacy code removal. Also stopped doing graphics, moved into internal developer tooling team: build systems, developer happiness.
  • 2016: Scriptable render pipelines, various graphics features, optimizations, bug fixing, legacy code removal, code reviews.
  • 2015: Frame debugger, graphics command buffers, workflow improvements, management, hiring, bugfixing, janitoring, optimizations, code reviews.
  • 2014: New shader import pipeline, physically based shading, deferred shading, iOS Metal renderer, shadow improvements.
  • 2013: Mobile shadows, shader compilers/improvements, OpenGL ES 3.0, unity hardware stats, management, 2D (sprite/physics) work.
  • 2012: D3D11 renderer, Flash/Stage3D renderer, multithreaded rendering, R&D on demo team, optimizations, fixes, janitoring.
  • 2011: Mobile graphics/shader optimizations, various graphics features, shader compiler work, leading graphics team, bugfixes.
  • 2010: Graphics engine rewrite; Deferred Lighting; surface shaders; OpenGL ES 2.0 shader translator + optimizer.
  • 2009: Unity editor port to Windows, multithreading, Google Chrome support in web plugin, SSAO, Profiler, bug fixes.
  • 2008: Terrain+Lighting integration, shader replacement rendering, a lot of bug fixing.
  • 2007: Graphics platform abstraction, D3D9 renderer, shadow mapping, optimizations.
  • 2006: Windows web plugin, Vista support, misc. graphics work, driver workarounds, performance.

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. Implemented physics for RTS game PSI: Syberian Conflict. C++, ODE physics library with custom tweaks.

2004 Aug-Oct

Contractor for Microsoft; developed 3D viewer for Imagine Cup 2005 Visual Gaming competition here.

2001 - 2004

Researcher & software developer at InteraMotion LLC.

We were almost trying to do what Microsoft did 10 years later with Xbox 360 Kinect: a system for controlling games by physical motions, driven by cameras observing the player. We did R&D on the computer vision system, as well as the engine, toolchain and a 3D fighting game.

It didn’t really go anywhere though, so we did a bunch of other stuff as well; smaller computer vision demos, small games and contracting work.

I worked on the computer vision systems, 3dsmax asset exporters, various parts of the engine/toolchain. Worked mostly with C++, STL/Boost, HLSL, Lua, maxscript.

2000 - 2001

Developer at Geras Partneris Software. Web, e-commerce and accounting projects. Used Java, Swing, J2EE (JBoss), databases, Castor.

Spare time

Recent open source projects are on github. Old 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.

Publications

Full list of papers & articles on Papers page.

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.

Talks

Did presentations at SIGGRAPH, GDC, Unite, Develop etc. Full list on Talks page.

Achievements

2006 & 2007: Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in DirectX.
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.

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).

Personal info

Married, has two kids; occasionally plays guitar, tends to a garden, takes photos, watches demoscene demos, launches kites or rides a unicycle.