Max Liani
@maxliani.bsky.social
Tracing rays at NVIDIA. Former lighting artist, working on computer graphics rendering tech for all humans and robots alike.
I mostly post stuff about light transport simulation, and my hobby project Workbench.
I mostly post stuff about light transport simulation, and my hobby project Workbench.
First rather naive implementation of Stochastic Light Cuts. Here comparing uniform sampling vs SLC with 1spp over 16,000 lights.
July 26, 2025 at 8:59 AM
First rather naive implementation of Stochastic Light Cuts. Here comparing uniform sampling vs SLC with 1spp over 16,000 lights.
The Vulkan porting is complete 🎉 The last missing piece was the primordial raster renderer, which I am not sure why I keep around :)
All in all, it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
All in all, it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
May 25, 2025 at 7:29 AM
The Vulkan porting is complete 🎉 The last missing piece was the primordial raster renderer, which I am not sure why I keep around :)
All in all, it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
All in all, it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
The amount how pieces to track to share a texture between Vulkan and CUDA feels a bit over the top. Each of these need to be constructed and destroyed, otherwise GPU memory leaks...
I wish we just had pointers and that's it.
I wish we just had pointers and that's it.
May 23, 2025 at 7:05 AM
The amount how pieces to track to share a texture between Vulkan and CUDA feels a bit over the top. Each of these need to be constructed and destroyed, otherwise GPU memory leaks...
I wish we just had pointers and that's it.
I wish we just had pointers and that's it.
Components selection and editing work again.
May 18, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Components selection and editing work again.
Some progress: the grid, selection, wireframe, light gizmos, reverse Z-buffer, path-tracer/raster compositing and a few more bits. It's all coming back together.
May 17, 2025 at 2:55 AM
Some progress: the grid, selection, wireframe, light gizmos, reverse Z-buffer, path-tracer/raster compositing and a few more bits. It's all coming back together.
I appreciate.
Your scribbles seems more orderly than mine. I tend to write on whatever piece of paper I find.
Your scribbles seems more orderly than mine. I tend to write on whatever piece of paper I find.
May 14, 2025 at 5:14 AM
I appreciate.
Your scribbles seems more orderly than mine. I tend to write on whatever piece of paper I find.
Your scribbles seems more orderly than mine. I tend to write on whatever piece of paper I find.
And... it's upside down 🤣
May 11, 2025 at 8:14 AM
And... it's upside down 🤣
The frame for a populated UI (i.e. something is selected) takes longer... rendering at 7.5kHz. Whereas when the CUDA renderer is updating, the context transition (between graphics and compute) takes its toll, dropping to 3.5kHz (something that will take me time to figure out)
May 10, 2025 at 3:32 AM
The frame for a populated UI (i.e. something is selected) takes longer... rendering at 7.5kHz. Whereas when the CUDA renderer is updating, the context transition (between graphics and compute) takes its toll, dropping to 3.5kHz (something that will take me time to figure out)
It's still a mess, but bit progress today, UI fully working. With an empty scene the program renders at 12kHz, which is ridiculous! This compared to 4kHz of the OpenGL implementation. To get there I had to hack through GLFW and dear imgui docking where some "expensive" windows system calls were made
May 10, 2025 at 3:32 AM
It's still a mess, but bit progress today, UI fully working. With an empty scene the program renders at 12kHz, which is ridiculous! This compared to 4kHz of the OpenGL implementation. To get there I had to hack through GLFW and dear imgui docking where some "expensive" windows system calls were made
Small progress today: my GUI library system is partially working. Textures and picking are still missing though.
May 3, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Small progress today: my GUI library system is partially working. Textures and picking are still missing though.
And most of my time today went into figuring out how to load the texture that shows here... This is going to take a while!
April 26, 2025 at 8:43 AM
And most of my time today went into figuring out how to load the texture that shows here... This is going to take a while!
The easy part of porting to VK the imgui-based portion of Workbench UI is done. Now to the hard part...
April 26, 2025 at 5:49 AM
The easy part of porting to VK the imgui-based portion of Workbench UI is done. Now to the hard part...
Rainbow cubes are back!
It's likely most of you didn't know me when all my posts were rainbow cubes... As I am preparing to port Workbench to VK, I am back to basics.
It's likely most of you didn't know me when all my posts were rainbow cubes... As I am preparing to port Workbench to VK, I am back to basics.
April 21, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Rainbow cubes are back!
It's likely most of you didn't know me when all my posts were rainbow cubes... As I am preparing to port Workbench to VK, I am back to basics.
It's likely most of you didn't know me when all my posts were rainbow cubes... As I am preparing to port Workbench to VK, I am back to basics.
What do you do on Easter break? ... f***
April 18, 2025 at 7:51 AM
What do you do on Easter break? ... f***
Also, this! The whole GUI draws at a ridiculous 4200 fps.
April 12, 2025 at 8:17 AM
Also, this! The whole GUI draws at a ridiculous 4200 fps.
<250ms roundtrip in batch mode 🎉
April 12, 2025 at 6:51 AM
<250ms roundtrip in batch mode 🎉
It's hard to find time and energy to work on my project lately. I haven't written a single line of code for it in months...
But today I have upgraded my workstation from an old Intel 10th gen i9 to a Ryzen 9950X and how boy!..
If you thought Workbench opened quickly, wait until you see this:
But today I have upgraded my workstation from an old Intel 10th gen i9 to a Ryzen 9950X and how boy!..
If you thought Workbench opened quickly, wait until you see this:
April 12, 2025 at 6:47 AM
It's hard to find time and energy to work on my project lately. I haven't written a single line of code for it in months...
But today I have upgraded my workstation from an old Intel 10th gen i9 to a Ryzen 9950X and how boy!..
If you thought Workbench opened quickly, wait until you see this:
But today I have upgraded my workstation from an old Intel 10th gen i9 to a Ryzen 9950X and how boy!..
If you thought Workbench opened quickly, wait until you see this:
Go to Settings → Accessibility → Audio & Visual → Headphones Accomodations. Enable it and select “Custom Audio Setup”. Follow the prompt and select the the latest Audiogram profile you captured by doing the hearing test.
March 3, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Go to Settings → Accessibility → Audio & Visual → Headphones Accomodations. Enable it and select “Custom Audio Setup”. Follow the prompt and select the the latest Audiogram profile you captured by doing the hearing test.
Back to the AirPods… In the health App you can take a hearing test. If you do it very diligently it will create a frequency spectrum plot or your hearing.
March 3, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Back to the AirPods… In the health App you can take a hearing test. If you do it very diligently it will create a frequency spectrum plot or your hearing.
I saw this today: a guy wearing a t-shirt saying “make money, not friends”.
Chances are it’s a failed strategy where you end up with no money and no friends.
Chances are it’s a failed strategy where you end up with no money and no friends.
March 2, 2025 at 10:29 PM
I saw this today: a guy wearing a t-shirt saying “make money, not friends”.
Chances are it’s a failed strategy where you end up with no money and no friends.
Chances are it’s a failed strategy where you end up with no money and no friends.
Installed new drivers, upgraded to CUDA 12.8 and cuDNN 9.7. Now Workbench graphical session start and is fully functional in just 450ms. Process RSS at startup went from 570MB to 428MB.
February 9, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Installed new drivers, upgraded to CUDA 12.8 and cuDNN 9.7. Now Workbench graphical session start and is fully functional in just 450ms. Process RSS at startup went from 570MB to 428MB.
I would never be able to make my mind for what the node graph should look like, and everyone has their rightful opinion of colors vs gradients. So, look controls FTW!! :D
February 1, 2025 at 6:12 AM
I would never be able to make my mind for what the node graph should look like, and everyone has their rightful opinion of colors vs gradients. So, look controls FTW!! :D
Quick round of GUI polishing. Left is v1, right is v2. It's an improvement, I think... but I am still very much puzzled about what this should look like. I can't point my finger on what it is that I don't like about it. Maybe simply I don't like widgets in the nodes, I don't know... 🤔
January 31, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Quick round of GUI polishing. Left is v1, right is v2. It's an improvement, I think... but I am still very much puzzled about what this should look like. I can't point my finger on what it is that I don't like about it. Maybe simply I don't like widgets in the nodes, I don't know... 🤔