MAK
@makramd.bsky.social
⚠️Actively looking for work⚠️
Freelance & Consulting work.
Photogrammetry
Environmental tech artist
GFX & rendering historian
http://www.artstation.com/makram
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@makram
Freelance & Consulting work.
Photogrammetry
Environmental tech artist
GFX & rendering historian
http://www.artstation.com/makram
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@makram
Pinned
MAK
@makramd.bsky.social
· Dec 17
Been a while since I did some photogrammetry based work & man was I rusty. No fancy Structured light/Photometry setup. Just n old Sony ILC-E6000 with its 16-50 kit lens in horrendous lighting conditions and everything else done by hand (cleaning/sculpting, materials creation etc).
Reposted by MAK
Reposted by MAK
I just posted part two of my career retrospective during which time I work at four different companies, blog, and then retire:
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/r...
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/r...
November 11, 2025 at 6:32 AM
I just posted part two of my career retrospective during which time I work at four different companies, blog, and then retire:
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/r...
randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/r...
Reposted by MAK
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 MAK
🚨 "The Making of Double Fine's Keeper" is now available! 🚨
Many of you have been asking for this one; we're happy to say the cameras continued to roll here at the studio during Keeper's development. Come see how this very special game came to be, from the team themselves! 😊
youtu.be/1OOfRTfMnx0
Many of you have been asking for this one; we're happy to say the cameras continued to roll here at the studio during Keeper's development. Come see how this very special game came to be, from the team themselves! 😊
youtu.be/1OOfRTfMnx0
The Making Of Double Fine's Keeper
HEADLINE - Double Fine shocks with unprecedented development transparency!
Wait, what do you mean we do this all the time? ....33 episodes? Who has time for that in this day and age!? Thankfully,…
youtu.be
November 12, 2025 at 8:23 PM
🚨 "The Making of Double Fine's Keeper" is now available! 🚨
Many of you have been asking for this one; we're happy to say the cameras continued to roll here at the studio during Keeper's development. Come see how this very special game came to be, from the team themselves! 😊
youtu.be/1OOfRTfMnx0
Many of you have been asking for this one; we're happy to say the cameras continued to roll here at the studio during Keeper's development. Come see how this very special game came to be, from the team themselves! 😊
youtu.be/1OOfRTfMnx0
Reposted by MAK
I’ve talked about how Keeper’s morphs use distance fields (DFs) as their surface representation. But if there are no polys, how do we render them? A DF gives the distance to the nearest surface at any point, which we can exploit for rendering by marching along the view ray until we hit the surface.
November 12, 2025 at 6:45 PM
I’ve talked about how Keeper’s morphs use distance fields (DFs) as their surface representation. But if there are no polys, how do we render them? A DF gives the distance to the nearest surface at any point, which we can exploit for rendering by marching along the view ray until we hit the surface.
Specs of the Steam Machine & Steam Frame are underwhelming as fuck. Steam Machine is definitely aimed at non enthusiast given its low specs & Frame is worst than a Quest (it doesn't support pass-through Wtf ?)
#valve
#valve
November 12, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Specs of the Steam Machine & Steam Frame are underwhelming as fuck. Steam Machine is definitely aimed at non enthusiast given its low specs & Frame is worst than a Quest (it doesn't support pass-through Wtf ?)
#valve
#valve
Reposted by MAK
Announcing: New @steampowered.com Hardware, coming in 2026:
Steam Controller
Steam Machine
Steam Frame.
Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware
Steam Controller
Steam Machine
Steam Frame.
Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware
Steam Hardware
The Steam Hardware family officially expands in early 2026.
steampowered.com
November 12, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Announcing: New @steampowered.com Hardware, coming in 2026:
Steam Controller
Steam Machine
Steam Frame.
Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware
Steam Controller
Steam Machine
Steam Frame.
Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware
Reposted by MAK
I wrote a bunch of compute shader code to hook into Lumen which evaluates mathematical light shapes. On the CPU side we are using perceptual filtering to pick the most important lights. It was a lot of fun! :)
bsky.app/profile/leep...
bsky.app/profile/leep...
I did a lot of lighting on Keeper and it was a joy to have a fully dynamic lighting system, which made shifts in areas like this easy to do. We also had custom Lumen-based lights that @p1xelcoder.bsky.social put together that helped us hit the painterly/stage lighting look we were after.
November 11, 2025 at 7:07 PM
I wrote a bunch of compute shader code to hook into Lumen which evaluates mathematical light shapes. On the CPU side we are using perceptual filtering to pick the most important lights. It was a lot of fun! :)
bsky.app/profile/leep...
bsky.app/profile/leep...
Reposted by MAK
I did a lot of lighting on Keeper and it was a joy to have a fully dynamic lighting system, which made shifts in areas like this easy to do. We also had custom Lumen-based lights that @p1xelcoder.bsky.social put together that helped us hit the painterly/stage lighting look we were after.
November 11, 2025 at 4:17 PM
I did a lot of lighting on Keeper and it was a joy to have a fully dynamic lighting system, which made shifts in areas like this easy to do. We also had custom Lumen-based lights that @p1xelcoder.bsky.social put together that helped us hit the painterly/stage lighting look we were after.
Reposted by MAK
#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
SIGGRAPH 2025 Advances: STOCHASTIC TILE-BASED LIGHTING IN HYPEHYPE
advances.realtimerendering.com/s2025/conten...
youtu.be/8O44TBN4sQc?...
advances.realtimerendering.com/s2025/conten...
youtu.be/8O44TBN4sQc?...
SIGGRAPH 2025 Advances: STOCHASTIC TILE-BASED LIGHTING IN HYPEHYPE
YouTube video by SIGGRAPH Advances in Real-Time Rendering
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 9:35 PM
SIGGRAPH 2025 Advances: STOCHASTIC TILE-BASED LIGHTING IN HYPEHYPE
advances.realtimerendering.com/s2025/conten...
youtu.be/8O44TBN4sQc?...
advances.realtimerendering.com/s2025/conten...
youtu.be/8O44TBN4sQc?...
Reposted by MAK
A LOT of industry folks need to take "I think there's a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit" to HEART.
November 7, 2025 at 11:43 PM
A LOT of industry folks need to take "I think there's a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit" to HEART.
GN's upcoming investigation on Nvidia & Jensen's corruption is going to be a banger 👀 💥
youtu.be/qG4ektofzkI?...
youtu.be/qG4ektofzkI?...
Contacted by the US Secret Service & the AI Surveillance Center Dystopia
YouTube video by Gamers Nexus
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 9:13 PM
GN's upcoming investigation on Nvidia & Jensen's corruption is going to be a banger 👀 💥
youtu.be/qG4ektofzkI?...
youtu.be/qG4ektofzkI?...
Reposted by MAK
⚙️ Patch 1.0.5.0 for The Outer Worlds 2 is now available to all players. Please update your game when you see that this update is available to receive the following fixes and changes. outerworlds2.obsidian.net/news/the-out...
November 11, 2025 at 7:26 PM
⚙️ Patch 1.0.5.0 for The Outer Worlds 2 is now available to all players. Please update your game when you see that this update is available to receive the following fixes and changes. outerworlds2.obsidian.net/news/the-out...
Reposted by MAK
You can see this nicely in this closeup. Notice how the number and orientation of the edges changes on the left side as both meshes are merged.
November 11, 2025 at 7:15 PM
You can see this nicely in this closeup. Notice how the number and orientation of the edges changes on the left side as both meshes are merged.
Reposted by MAK
I wanted to clarify what I mean by fixed vs. dynamic topology. In game graphics meshes can normally be not merged smoothly because the edges and connectivity is static and holes can't be closed or created. Dynamic topology recomputes the connectivity when needed.
November 11, 2025 at 7:14 PM
I wanted to clarify what I mean by fixed vs. dynamic topology. In game graphics meshes can normally be not merged smoothly because the edges and connectivity is static and holes can't be closed or created. Dynamic topology recomputes the connectivity when needed.
Reposted by MAK
Normal polygonal meshes have a fixed topology. Roughly speaking this means the number of holes in an object can't change. Also the (explicit) surface of two meshes can't be blended smoothly into one. This is no problem for distance field morphs with implicit surfaces.
November 10, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Normal polygonal meshes have a fixed topology. Roughly speaking this means the number of holes in an object can't change. Also the (explicit) surface of two meshes can't be blended smoothly into one. This is no problem for distance field morphs with implicit surfaces.
Reposted by MAK
Here's a double shot of written lessons, the first is using everyday objects to design robots www.neilblevins.com/art_lessons/... the second goes over a ton of camera related terms like aperture, ISO, shutter speed, etc and how they relate to each other www.neilblevins.com/art_lessons/... #arttip
November 10, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Here's a double shot of written lessons, the first is using everyday objects to design robots www.neilblevins.com/art_lessons/... the second goes over a ton of camera related terms like aperture, ISO, shutter speed, etc and how they relate to each other www.neilblevins.com/art_lessons/... #arttip
Reposted by MAK
See what our research teams have been up to with our latest papers:
📝 Joint Denoising and Upscaling via Multi-branch Network.
📝 Cardioid Caustics Generation with Diffusion Models.
📝 Geometric Integration for Neural Control Variates.
📥 View here: gpuopen.com/learn/public...
📝 Joint Denoising and Upscaling via Multi-branch Network.
📝 Cardioid Caustics Generation with Diffusion Models.
📝 Geometric Integration for Neural Control Variates.
📥 View here: gpuopen.com/learn/public...
Publications - AMD GPUOpen
Discover our published publications.
gpuopen.com
November 10, 2025 at 3:31 PM
See what our research teams have been up to with our latest papers:
📝 Joint Denoising and Upscaling via Multi-branch Network.
📝 Cardioid Caustics Generation with Diffusion Models.
📝 Geometric Integration for Neural Control Variates.
📥 View here: gpuopen.com/learn/public...
📝 Joint Denoising and Upscaling via Multi-branch Network.
📝 Cardioid Caustics Generation with Diffusion Models.
📝 Geometric Integration for Neural Control Variates.
📥 View here: gpuopen.com/learn/public...
Pluribus is 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼
tv.apple.com/fr/show/plur...
tv.apple.com/fr/show/plur...
Regarder Pluribus - Apple TV
Alors que le bonheur menace la Terre, tous les espoirs reposent sur le plus malheureux des humains.
tv.apple.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Pluribus is 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼
tv.apple.com/fr/show/plur...
tv.apple.com/fr/show/plur...
I quite liked Guillermo's Frankenstein 👌🏼
November 7, 2025 at 11:38 PM
I quite liked Guillermo's Frankenstein 👌🏼
Reposted by MAK
Bonus post to end the week: If you are a graphics programmer do yourself a favor and get a MIDI board. It makes the work way more tactile and fun. Full props to Matt and @aaronmjacobs.com for getting me on the MIDI train. :)
November 7, 2025 at 10:43 PM
Bonus post to end the week: If you are a graphics programmer do yourself a favor and get a MIDI board. It makes the work way more tactile and fun. Full props to Matt and @aaronmjacobs.com for getting me on the MIDI train. :)
Reposted by MAK
Years of work and collab with an incredible team at #BBCStudios #AppleTV @framestore.bsky.social ... involving so many camera operators, writers, producers, effects people, artists and others, #PrehistoricPlanetaIceAge is out on #AppleTV Nov 26th. A definitive vision of Ice Age wildlife worldwide.
November 7, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Years of work and collab with an incredible team at #BBCStudios #AppleTV @framestore.bsky.social ... involving so many camera operators, writers, producers, effects people, artists and others, #PrehistoricPlanetaIceAge is out on #AppleTV Nov 26th. A definitive vision of Ice Age wildlife worldwide.
Reposted by MAK
The morphs in Keeper use distance fields as an (implicit) surface representation, which makes it possible to control the distance at which the surface should lie. In other words, it’s easy to deflate or inflate objects, and meshes become easily ‘moldable’.
November 7, 2025 at 6:40 PM
The morphs in Keeper use distance fields as an (implicit) surface representation, which makes it possible to control the distance at which the surface should lie. In other words, it’s easy to deflate or inflate objects, and meshes become easily ‘moldable’.