Siyu (C_U) Zhang

I am a CG enthusiast and a Game Client Engineer at Lightspeed Studios of Tencent. Currently, I'm focusing on GPU optimization and physics-based simulation in games.

Before that, I received my Master degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley under the track of VCCG and my B.S. degree from the Department of Computer Science, the University of Pittsburgh in Dec 2020. With a Computer Science major,

I'm fascinated by the Art made and enhanced by technology, including visual effects in films and Augment Reality. As such, I also took film and media related classes in my undergrad and obtained the Digital Media Certificate, focusing on Film Studies.







CV [2024.2]

Portfolio [2022.2]





Last update date: 2024-02-04



Education

University of California, Berkeley

Master Student at EECS Department
Computer Science - VCCG (Visual Computing & Computer Graphics)

GPA: 3.95 / 4.0; Major GPA: 4.0 / 4.0

  August 2021 - December 2022

University of Pittsburgh

Bachelor of Science
Computer Science (honors)

GPA: 3.99 / 4.0

  August 2017 - December 2020

University of Pittsburgh

Digital Media Certificate

Publication

Real-time Height-field Simulation of Sand and Water Mixtures

Haozhe Su, Siyu Zhang, Zherong Pan, Mridul Aanjaneya, Xifeng Gao, Kui Wu.

SIGGRAPH Asia (Conference Track). 2023.

[Project Page] [Video]

GPU Cloth Simulation Pipeline in Lightchaser Animation Studio

Haowei Han, Meng Sun, Siyu Zhang, Dongying Liu, and Tiantian Liu.

SIGGRAPH Asia Technical Communications. 2021.

[Paper] [Video]


Experience

Tencent America

Game Client Engineer (Physics Simulation)
 Jan 2023 - Present

Tencent America

Physics Simulation Programmer, Intern
 May 2022 - Dec 2022

Light Chaser Animation Studio

R&D (Physics Simulation) Engineer, Intern
 Jan 2021 - July 2021

Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh

Undergrauate Teaching Assistant
 CS 0445: Data Structure (Spring 2020)

Department of English, University of Pittsburgh

Undergrauate Teaching Assistant
 ENGCMP 0201: Seminar in Composition - Film (Spring 2019)

Projects

(🤔 Try to hover on the images?)

Cloth Wrinkles Synthesis Tool

 Feb 2022 - May 2022

Parallelized BVH Construction for Path Tracer

 Apr 2022 - May 2022
  • Integrated the GPU parallelized version of BVH (LBVH) construction for an existing ray tracer project
  • Analyzed the runtime and proposed an adaptive method for accelerating ray-intersection test
  • Tags: Acceleraation Structure Rendering C++ CUDA
  • [Project Report]

Real-time Vision Correcting Displays Implemented with Parallel Computing

 Sep 2021 - May 2022
  • Supervised by Professor Brian A. Barsky
  • Worked on accelerating the existing algorithms by parallelization
  • Tags: Parallelization OpenMP OpenCV

OpenARK: Using Deep-learning based Keypoint Extraction

 Sep 2021 - Dec 2021
  • Supervised by Professor Allen Y. Yang
  • Evaluated deep learning algorithms for key-point feature extraction
  • Adpated better key-point feature extraction algorithm into OpenARK
  • Tags: AR Deep Learning C++
  • [Slides] [Video]

ATTT - Augmented Tic-Tac-Teo

 Oct 2021 - Nov 2021
  • Designed and developed an augmented version of Tic-tac-toe game in AR mode using Unity3D, C# and AR Foundation
  • Designed the UI and helper information of the application and deployed it on Android devices
  • Tags: AR Unity 3D C# AR Foundation
  • [Video]

Simple FEM-StVK

 Feb 2021
  • An individual practice project finished during the internship at Light Chaser Animation Studio
  • Implemented a simple version (only contains tetrahedral and collision constraints) of FEM for simulating StVK material using C++ and Houdini for visualization
  • Tags: Simulation C++ Houdini
  • [Github] [Video]

Simple PBD-Cloth

 Jan 2021
  • An individual practice project finished during the internship at Light Chaser Animation Studio
  • Implemented a simple version (only contains distance, point, and collision constraints) of Position Based Dynamics method by Matthias Muller for cloth simulation (demo GIF on GitHub) using C++ and OpenGL
  • Tags: Simulation C++ OpenGL
  • [Github]

C_U Fish

 Sep 2020 - Nov 2020
  • A Blender project led by Professor Brian A. Barsky
  • Designed for illustrating the pros and cons of ray tracing (with Cycles Engine), as well as strengths and weaknesses of rasterization (with Eevee) typically in food rendering
  • Modeled, sculpted, texturized, and rendered a plate of grilled fish and other food such as donuts with Blender
  • Wrote a report on comparing and analyzing rasterization and ray tracing typically in food rendering in Blender
  • Tags: Rendering Blender ZBrush Substance Painter
  • [Github]

PickMe

 Sep 2020 - Nov 2020
  • A group project finished in “She Innovates 2020” Hackathon
  • Took charge of building UI, connecting scenes, enabling AR effects, animations and visualizing the data
  • Tags: AR Unity 3D C#
  • [Project Page] [Github] [Video]

Skills

Programming Languages

C++ C# HLSL GLSL C Python Java MATLAB R JavaScript HTML CSS

Frameworks & Tools

CUDA OpenGL OpenMP MPI Docker Flask Arduino

Software
  • Houdini Unreal Engine 4/5
  • Unreal Engine 4 Unity
  • Blender
  • Unity Houdini
  • ZBrush
  • Substance Painter
  • 3ds Max
  • Maya
  • Premiere Pro
  • Photoshop

Film&Media Essays

Apart from working on projects related to Computer Science (especially Computer Graphics), I also wrote many analysis essays on films during my undergraduate years.

Secret Base

Motto

“A CG enthusiast who does not dream to become an animation director is not a good researcher!” -- C_U

“不想当动画导演的CG爱好者不是个好的researcher!” -- C_U

More about me

In my spare time, I love watchingfilms andanimations, playing theguitar, and traveling for having good food! Here are some... emmmm... interesting staff?🤥


How the Foodie was Tempered / Final project for FILMST0001: Filmmaking Foundation / 02.2019 – 04.2019
  • How the Foodie was Tempered is a kind of documentary that presents three typical stages in adapting the American diet that international students may experience when they begin to study in the US
  • If you are interested in exploring delicious food at Pittsburgh, these reviews and photos could be helpful 👉




Playing 《偏爱》 (a insert background song in 《仙剑奇侠传3》) in fingerstyle.