Normand BRIÈRE (nbriere@noware.ca )

3384 Lacombe #13 Montréal, Québec H3T-1L8 (514) 342-5971

Web page: http://www.noware.ca

Industrial experience

My Virtual Model, 3D software developer (oct 2008 - jan 2009)

Real-time features development (C#, DirectX)

• Mass-spring physics engine for dynamic garment creation

• Stable and fast for highly stiff fabrics (stretching, bending, shearing)

• Constant-time system integration and AABB collision detection

• Automatic discretization from bezier-outlined input pattern

• 2D display: polyline, textures, transformations

• 3D display: realistic shading (cloth and skin)

• Global lighting heuristic (HLSL)

CAE Inc, Real-time visual system programmer (2007 – april 2008)

Various environment effects (VC++, Windows XP)

• procedural lightning strike + illumination

• vertex-based scene deformation for rain distortion

• seam edge removal for billboard/scene intersection

• satellite imaging improvements (raster GIS)

  • performance (no more than one tile update per frame)

  • display (continuous precision through adaptive LOD bias)

  • fix of grazing angle artifacts (due to horizon compression)

  • NVidia port

Automatic (brute-force) texture antialiasing

• low-cost simulators had to support 16x to 2x downsampling

• fix of major aliasing artifacts (flicking, moiré) of DXT textures

• Fourier transform for removing texel-pixel interference frequencies

• Per-level mipmap filtering

Volumetric clouds rendering (up to 500 Hz, 3/8 sky coverage)

• improvements of impostor-based billboarding framework

• various tuning parameters for realism (phase, density, shading, hazing)

• performance issue is addressed through exact angular tolerance

• two-pass solution for popping artifacts (RGB + alpha)

• new tile allocation scheme for dynamic cloud resolution

SOFTIMAGE, Mental Ray Rendering (2006)

Generic particle-based volume shader (C++, Windows XP)

• Physically-based rendering of participating media

• Density function behavior control (Perlin)

• Medium shader parameters

• fire: emission and filter

• steam: time and radius-varying control

• smoke: spherical gradient and self-shadowing

• dust: analytic density gradient

• Envelop shading for liquids

• Automatic particle radius generation

Generic material surface shader

• Microfacet-based realistic rendering

• Produces a wide variety of materials

• plastic, velvet, ice, metal, skin, etc

• anisotropic effect for brushed metal, satin, and hair

• reflection, transparency and subsurface scattering

• Ambient occlusion heuristic, curvature-based shading

• Bevel-like normal generation

INTePLAN Inc, CAD Software engineer (2003-2005)

• Industrial-strength 3D viewer (PLM) (Java + Java3D, Linux)

• Very fast loading and displaying of large scenes (plants, etc.)

• Hierarchical views, annonations, auto-zoom features.

• Picking, snapping and transformation tools

  • Body-in-white features (Weld orientation)

  • Welding cross-section validation for multiple components

• Serialized file format + VRML 1 and 2 loaders maintenance

• Physical simulation mode

• Logarithmic collision detection (translation/rotation speedup)

• Analytic body properties computation (volume, mass, inertia)

• Cutting tools (2D/3D + solid fill)

• Incremental rendering features using JOGL

  • Global illumination solutions

  • Constant-time antialiasing

TAARNA Studios Inc, 3D Software developer (1999-2002)

• Interactive lighting and shading module (C++, OpenGL, SGI)

• Fast updates of light, surface or volume parameters (5 to 10 FPS)

• light color, intensity, from/to positions, cone angle

• surface color, diffuseness, specular and roughness

• fog color and density

• Preprocessing supports texture and displacement maps

• Spotlight fog shadowing (1 to 2 FPS)

• Low resolution and interlace modes for faster rendering

• Reprojection for camera changes

• Various tools for users (intensity, diffuse, specular, shadow)

• Sets the intensity of a pixel using a double-click

• Allows click&drag of diffuse or specular highlights

• Allows interactive click&drag of shadows

• RenderMan shaders (silk, velvet, satin, perl, metal, skin, fur and nylon)

• Light version (C++) of these shaders for interactivity

• Complete and intuitive GUI

Technical Overview

Programming languages: C/C++/C#, JAVA, LISP, Dylan, Python, PROLOG, PASCAL/MODULA, COBOL, BASIC, Intel/Motorola assemblers

Systems: Windows, Mac OS/X, Linux, SGI, Solaris

Environments: NetBeans, Visual Studio, Xcode, CodeWarrior

Graphics: AWT, Direct3D, OpenGL, Java3D, VRML, PostScript, POVray

Rendering: HLSL, GLSL, ARB vertex/pixel, Mental Ray, Renderman, Cg

UI: SyncFusion, Swing, Motif, Xview Editors: JEdit, vim, Xemacs

Others: J2SE, JNI, CVS/SVN, StarUML, XLM, SQL, IRC, Excel

Academic background

Ph.D. computer graphics (1999), Université de Montréal (4.3 / 4.3)

• Camera preprocessing for incremental ray tracing

• Light preprocessing for caustic rendering

M.Sc. computer graphics (1994), Université de Sherbrooke (3.8 / 4.0)

• Generation of optimal line clipping algorithms

B.Sc. computer science (1989), Université de Sherbrooke (3.86 / 4.0)

Teaching experience (1990-1993)

• Teacher, Université de Sherbrooke

• PROLOG and C++ (4 months)

• Computer graphics (8 months)

• Introduction to C language (3 months)

• Assistant, Université de Sherbrooke

• Computer graphics IFT 428, 528, 538 (2 years)

• Calculability and decidability (4 months)

Training periods (1986-1989)

• HENTER-JOYCE Inc, 2D Software developer (6 months)

• Screen zoom for visually-impaired people (C, Windows NT)

• Bitmap smoothing: remove aliased character, icon or edge

• Special modes for various character thickness

• Exploits screen coherence for faster scrolling

• EICON TECHNOLOGY, Programmer (4 months)

• EiconScript (PostScript) development and maintenance

• Scan-conversion of primitives (tris, quads, trapezoids)

• Optimized floating point routines (68000 assembly)

• Ramdisk tools (8088 assembly language)

• Screen preview of laser printer pages (68000)

• Creation of 2D and 3D images (PostScript)

• MICRO-TEMPUS, Programmer (8 months)

• Software development (8088 and IBM370 assembly languages)

• Tempus-Share : a mainframe used as a PC server

• Tempus-Link : a VSAM file used as a PC virtual disk

• LOTO-QUÉBEC (Vidéoway), Game Programmer (4 months)

• Computer game development (6809 assembly language)

• BurgerTime (complete)

• Styx and PingPong (parts)

• Various tools for games: random number and score display

Publications

Papers in refereed conference proceedings:

• Normand Brière & Pierre Poulin, Adaptive representation of Specular Light. Graphics Interface 2000 + Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 20, no. 2, june 2001.

• Normand Brière & Pierre Poulin, Hierarchical View-Dependent Structures for Interactive Scene Manipulation. Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH '96 (New Orleans, Louisiana). In Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series, 1996, pp. 83-90.

Technical reports:

• Ali Jaoua, Normand Brière & Kacem Zéroual, Reliable design programming: a preventive methodology

• Normand Brière and Jean-Pierre Dussault, An Optimal Tree for Line Clipping

Course notes:

• J.-P. Dussault and Normand Brière, Fondements de l'infographie tridimensionnelle. (~300 pages, TeX)

• Introduction au langage C++ (~100 pages, Word)

Scholarships, Awards

• FCAR, Université de Montréal

• CRSNG, Université de Sherbrooke

• FCAR, Université de Sherbrooke (not used)

• Prix Digital Equipment of Canada

• Médaille Fernand Séguin (BAHUS, 1989)

Personal developments

• 3D modeling and rendering systems (Swing / Motif / XView, Java / C++, OpenGL / GL / XGL, Mac / Sun / SGI)

• Hierarchical modeling, transformations, attribute inheritance

• Polygons, planes, spheres, cylinders, cones, superellipsoids, fractals, B-spline surfaces, butterfly, Catmull-Clark, CSG

• Automatic bounding volumes generation

• Procedural textures, bump maps and hypertextures

• Infinite object duplication

• Reflective and refractive ray tracing, BSP, Z-buffer renderings

• Optical effects: depth field, spherical projection, motion blur, soft shadows and reflection, uniform and non-uniform participating media, caustics

• Very-complicated-and-not-user-friendly interface

• Lots of computer-graphic images

• Animation tools

• Graphic-related projects

• Analytic hidden-surface removal (Modula, Mac +)

• Scene reconstruction from 2D wireframe (C, SunOS)

• 3D labyrinth walkthrough (C, Mac II)

• 4D exploration:wireframed/raytraced hypercubes/spheres

• Other projects

• Grammar-based french editor (Java, OS X)

• Billiard with collisions and friction effects (C, SunOS)

• Colorful fireworks (C, Mac II)

• Chess player (Pascal, IBM370); new good version (C++, Mac OS X)

• Various games: Tetris, Styx, PacMan, Asteroid, Golf, Small flight simulator (BASIC and 6809 assembler, TRS80)

• Text editor and assembler (6809, TRS80)

Other interests and activities

• Chess, Guitar, Camping, Skating, Mysticism

(** version française sur demande)