Catalin Moldovan
@andun.bsky.social
Loves computer graphics. Programmer by trade. Geek at heart. Interested in technology. Ex Twitterverse lurker (https://x.com/catalinmoldovan).
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
The post on using spatial hashing with raytraced ambient occlusion attracted quite a bit of interest so I expanded it into a blog post to discuss how it works behind the scenes to both reduce the noise and its cost. interplayoflight.wordpress.com/2025/11/23/s...
November 23, 2025 at 9:06 PM
The post on using spatial hashing with raytraced ambient occlusion attracted quite a bit of interest so I expanded it into a blog post to discuss how it works behind the scenes to both reduce the noise and its cost. interplayoflight.wordpress.com/2025/11/23/s...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 418 - November 30th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
December 2, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 418 - November 30th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Ok, the experimental sokol-gfx Vulkan backend has been merged:
PR: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Changelog: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Blog post: floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
Remember that this currently only works on Linux, and has only been tested on an Intel GPU.
PR: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Changelog: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Blog post: floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
Remember that this currently only works on Linux, and has only been tested on an Intel GPU.
Add Vulkan backend (wip) by floooh · Pull Request #1350 · floooh/sokol
...this will take a while, don't hold your breath.
Reading material:
https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/presentations/Ensure_Vulkan_Synchronization_Vulkanised_Oct_2021.pdf
https...
github.com
December 2, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Ok, the experimental sokol-gfx Vulkan backend has been merged:
PR: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Changelog: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Blog post: floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
Remember that this currently only works on Linux, and has only been tested on an Intel GPU.
PR: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Changelog: github.com/floooh/sokol...
Blog post: floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
Remember that this currently only works on Linux, and has only been tested on an Intel GPU.
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
My co-founder Jelle wrote an article about a custom data structure he came up with for Superluminal to efficiently store millions of callstacks.
Check it out!
Check it out!
Ever wondered how to store millions of call stacks efficiently? So did we. Many times.
Check out this new article by Jelle about designing a data structure to efficiently compress and store large amounts of call stack data!
superluminal.eu/compressing-...
Check out this new article by Jelle about designing a data structure to efficiently compress and store large amounts of call stack data!
superluminal.eu/compressing-...
Compressing callstacks: a bitpacked DAG powered by a keyless hashmap - Superluminal %
In Superluminal we need to store potentially millions of callstacks very efficiently. This article describes how we went from naive storage taking up gigabytes of memory in the worst case, to a very c...
superluminal.eu
December 1, 2025 at 3:09 PM
My co-founder Jelle wrote an article about a custom data structure he came up with for Superluminal to efficiently store millions of callstacks.
Check it out!
Check it out!
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
League of Legends has been around for over 15 years. It's changed and evolved constantly, releasing new versions nearly every 2 weeks. This is a talk on the start of the refactoring process for our Particle System - how do we refactor something that is constantly shipping? Why would we even do that?
Refactoring League's Particle System: Part 1
YouTube video by GCAP
www.youtube.com
December 1, 2025 at 11:55 PM
League of Legends has been around for over 15 years. It's changed and evolved constantly, releasing new versions nearly every 2 weeks. This is a talk on the start of the refactoring process for our Particle System - how do we refactor something that is constantly shipping? Why would we even do that?
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
The blog post about the upcoming experimental sokol-gfx Vulkan backend is up:
floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
(as always I'll need to do a couple more edits to fix typos and repetitions but first I'll need some food intake)
floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
(as always I'll need to do a couple more edits to fix typos and repetitions but first I'll need some food intake)
The experimental Sokol Vulkan backend
In a couple of days I will merge the first implementation of a sokol-gfxVulkan backend. Please consider this backend as ‘experimental’, it hasonly received l...
floooh.github.io
December 1, 2025 at 6:16 PM
The blog post about the upcoming experimental sokol-gfx Vulkan backend is up:
floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
(as always I'll need to do a couple more edits to fix typos and repetitions but first I'll need some food intake)
floooh.github.io/2025/12/01/s...
(as always I'll need to do a couple more edits to fix typos and repetitions but first I'll need some food intake)
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
As promised I recorded the creation of a morph (from scratch) using the tech we developed for Keeper. In about an hour I show how we capture the “Essence” of meshes, blend between them, and spice things up with spatial warps.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9V_...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9V_...
Making a morph from scratch using Keeper's Essence system
YouTube video by p1xelcoder - Oliver Franzke
www.youtube.com
December 1, 2025 at 7:18 PM
As promised I recorded the creation of a morph (from scratch) using the tech we developed for Keeper. In about an hour I show how we capture the “Essence” of meshes, blend between them, and spice things up with spatial warps.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9V_...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9V_...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Strand-Based Hair And Fur Rendering In Indiana Jones and The Great Circle" by Sergei Kulikov from MachineGames is now online: youtu.be/jSE1XXBEK-w
SIGGRAPH 2025 Advances: STRAND-BASED HAIR AND FUR RENDERING IN INDIANA JONES AND THE GREAT CIRCLE
YouTube video by SIGGRAPH Advances in Real-Time Rendering
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 11:45 PM
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Strand-Based Hair And Fur Rendering In Indiana Jones and The Great Circle" by Sergei Kulikov from MachineGames is now online: youtu.be/jSE1XXBEK-w
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Stochastic Tile-Based Lighting in HypeHype" by Jarkko Lempiäinen from HypeHype is now online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O44...
SIGGRAPH 2025 Advances: STOCHASTIC TILE-BASED LIGHTING IN HYPEHYPE
YouTube video by SIGGRAPH Advances in Real-Time Rendering
www.youtube.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:40 PM
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Stochastic Tile-Based Lighting in HypeHype" by Jarkko Lempiäinen from HypeHype is now online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O44...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
New blog post! Behind the scenes of some of the techniques involved in making our last PC demo 💫 gboisse.github.io/posts/this-i...
November 5, 2025 at 9:15 PM
New blog post! Behind the scenes of some of the techniques involved in making our last PC demo 💫 gboisse.github.io/posts/this-i...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 415 - November 2nd, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
November 4, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 415 - November 2nd, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 414 - October 26th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
October 29, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 414 - October 26th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
A retrospective of my tech career - a work-focused autobiography, basically - feels a bit vain, but I'm hopeful that it is interesting or useful enough to justify that.
If nothing else writing it up forced me to try to remember what actually happened.
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/r...
If nothing else writing it up forced me to try to remember what actually happened.
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/r...
Reflections on My Tech Career – Part 1
I’ve been lucky enough to have had a successful career as a software developer. Spanning six companies and thirty-seven years I’ve had the opportunity to work on Elastic Reality, Xbox, Windows, Ste…
randomascii.wordpress.com
October 22, 2025 at 9:05 PM
A retrospective of my tech career - a work-focused autobiography, basically - feels a bit vain, but I'm hopeful that it is interesting or useful enough to justify that.
If nothing else writing it up forced me to try to remember what actually happened.
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/r...
If nothing else writing it up forced me to try to remember what actually happened.
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/r...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
So, I made a hair shader that doesn't require any specially made meshes or textures.
Initially I made this work by sampling many normal directions rotated around the hair strand direction, but I eventually got an approximation working that doesn't rely on multi-sampling.
github.com/runevision/H...
Initially I made this work by sampling many normal directions rotated around the hair strand direction, but I eventually got an approximation working that doesn't rely on multi-sampling.
github.com/runevision/H...
October 23, 2025 at 7:58 AM
So, I made a hair shader that doesn't require any specially made meshes or textures.
Initially I made this work by sampling many normal directions rotated around the hair strand direction, but I eventually got an approximation working that doesn't rely on multi-sampling.
github.com/runevision/H...
Initially I made this work by sampling many normal directions rotated around the hair strand direction, but I eventually got an approximation working that doesn't rely on multi-sampling.
github.com/runevision/H...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Finished documenting work on optimized wireframe rendering: precision, clipping & math details for stable, performant edges in OpenGL.
Includes an analysis of NVIDIA’s wireframe paper & fixes its issues.
fauder.github.io/posts/2025/1...
#GraphicsProgramming #Rendering #OpenGL #ShaderDev #GameDev
Includes an analysis of NVIDIA’s wireframe paper & fixes its issues.
fauder.github.io/posts/2025/1...
#GraphicsProgramming #Rendering #OpenGL #ShaderDev #GameDev
Optimized Wireframe Rendering: Part III
Detailed technical breakdown of precision pitfalls, clipping logic, and geometry shader implementation for high-quality wireframe rendering.
fauder.github.io
October 21, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Finished documenting work on optimized wireframe rendering: precision, clipping & math details for stable, performant edges in OpenGL.
Includes an analysis of NVIDIA’s wireframe paper & fixes its issues.
fauder.github.io/posts/2025/1...
#GraphicsProgramming #Rendering #OpenGL #ShaderDev #GameDev
Includes an analysis of NVIDIA’s wireframe paper & fixes its issues.
fauder.github.io/posts/2025/1...
#GraphicsProgramming #Rendering #OpenGL #ShaderDev #GameDev
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 413 - October 19th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
October 20, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 413 - October 19th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
#MaterialMaker 1.4 (#GodotEngine based PBR material authoring and 3D model texturing tool) is now available on @itchio .
It is based on Godot 4, had a huge UI redesign and has quite a few new nodes.
rodzilla.itch.io/material-mak...
It is based on Godot 4, had a huge UI redesign and has quite a few new nodes.
rodzilla.itch.io/material-mak...
Material Maker 1.4
Material Maker 1.4 is now available for download... I would like to apologize for all the time it took, I seriously underestimated the effort needed to port everything to Godot 4 and the temptation to...
rodzilla.itch.io
October 5, 2025 at 10:39 AM
#MaterialMaker 1.4 (#GodotEngine based PBR material authoring and 3D model texturing tool) is now available on @itchio .
It is based on Godot 4, had a huge UI redesign and has quite a few new nodes.
rodzilla.itch.io/material-mak...
It is based on Godot 4, had a huge UI redesign and has quite a few new nodes.
rodzilla.itch.io/material-mak...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 411 - October 5th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
October 7, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 411 - October 5th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
For anyone who's tried to use spherical harmonics for lighting and found the notation- and terminology- heavy definitions confusing, highly recommend this classic: grahamhazel.com/blog/2017/12...
I think Graham Hazel's blog was down for a long time, years maybe, but works now!
I think Graham Hazel's blog was down for a long time, years maybe, but works now!
Alternative definition of Spherical Harmonics for Lighting – Graham Hazel
grahamhazel.com
October 4, 2025 at 7:46 PM
For anyone who's tried to use spherical harmonics for lighting and found the notation- and terminology- heavy definitions confusing, highly recommend this classic: grahamhazel.com/blog/2017/12...
I think Graham Hazel's blog was down for a long time, years maybe, but works now!
I think Graham Hazel's blog was down for a long time, years maybe, but works now!
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
New blog post! In "Billions of triangles in minutes" we'll walk through hierarchical cluster level of detail generation of, well, billions of triangles in minutes. Reposts welcome!
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
September 30, 2025 at 5:40 PM
New blog post! In "Billions of triangles in minutes" we'll walk through hierarchical cluster level of detail generation of, well, billions of triangles in minutes. Reposts welcome!
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 410 - September 28th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
September 29, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 410 - September 28th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 409 - September 21st, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
September 22, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 409 - September 21st, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
#GodotEngine 4.5 has finally arrived! 🎉
With this new release, we made meticulous efforts in order to amplify what is possible to do with our engine, guided by our goal of making gaming and game development for everyone!
godotengine.org/releases/4.5/
With this new release, we made meticulous efforts in order to amplify what is possible to do with our engine, guided by our goal of making gaming and game development for everyone!
godotengine.org/releases/4.5/
Godot 4.5, making dreams accessible – Godot Engine
From mind-blowing effects now made possible by the stencil buffer to accessible descriptions of your GUI elements that opens up the possibility for people with disabilities to play your game — we are ...
godotengine.org
September 15, 2025 at 8:30 PM
#GodotEngine 4.5 has finally arrived! 🎉
With this new release, we made meticulous efforts in order to amplify what is possible to do with our engine, guided by our goal of making gaming and game development for everyone!
godotengine.org/releases/4.5/
With this new release, we made meticulous efforts in order to amplify what is possible to do with our engine, guided by our goal of making gaming and game development for everyone!
godotengine.org/releases/4.5/
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
New blog post: developer.nvidia.com/blog/path-tr...
Path Tracing Optimizations in Indiana Jones™: Opacity MicroMaps and Compaction of Dynamic BLASs | NVIDIA Technical Blog
The first post in this series, Path Tracing Optimization in Indiana Jones™: Shader Execution Reordering and Live State Reductions, covered ray-gen shader level optimizations that sped up the main path...
developer.nvidia.com
May 15, 2025 at 4:39 PM
New blog post: developer.nvidia.com/blog/path-tr...
Reposted by Catalin Moldovan
TinyBVH 1.6.6 is out on main. Changes:
* Improved speed of FullSweep (thanks Julian)
* Reverted JobSystem to basic threading because of instabilities
* Wave_tracer now uses TinyBVH!
* Fixed speedtest of GPU BVH
Because of the threading issue: Please upgrade to 1.6.6 asap.
github.com/jbikker/tiny...
* Improved speed of FullSweep (thanks Julian)
* Reverted JobSystem to basic threading because of instabilities
* Wave_tracer now uses TinyBVH!
* Fixed speedtest of GPU BVH
Because of the threading issue: Please upgrade to 1.6.6 asap.
github.com/jbikker/tiny...
GitHub - jbikker/tinybvh: Single-header dependency-free BVH construction and traversal library.
Single-header dependency-free BVH construction and traversal library. - jbikker/tinybvh
github.com
September 2, 2025 at 8:46 AM
TinyBVH 1.6.6 is out on main. Changes:
* Improved speed of FullSweep (thanks Julian)
* Reverted JobSystem to basic threading because of instabilities
* Wave_tracer now uses TinyBVH!
* Fixed speedtest of GPU BVH
Because of the threading issue: Please upgrade to 1.6.6 asap.
github.com/jbikker/tiny...
* Improved speed of FullSweep (thanks Julian)
* Reverted JobSystem to basic threading because of instabilities
* Wave_tracer now uses TinyBVH!
* Fixed speedtest of GPU BVH
Because of the threading issue: Please upgrade to 1.6.6 asap.
github.com/jbikker/tiny...