Short bio

My name is Ilja Gubins. I'm a y.o. aspiring programmer. Most of my life I've spent in Riga, Latvia, where I've graduated University of Latvia with BSc Computer Science degree. Now, I'm in Utrecht, Netherlands, where I study for my MSc Game and Media Technology at Utrecht University and expect to graduate in June of 2017.

I have experience in Java (incl. Android), Javascript (incl. NodeJS), C++ (mostly embedded programming and graphics) and different frameworks for them, as well as some DevOps (Docker, Zabbix, Graphite) stuff. For 2 years I've worked as a backend Java developer at Exigen Services Latvia and half a year as a frontend developer at Tawk.to. In summer 2016 I've interned at Moving Picture Company as a FX Software Developer Intern.

I had 2.5 years in web-related development, but I hope to break into graphics/visual/VFX technology. Feel free to contact me by any means listed in the sidebar.

Portfolio of VFX-related works

I have more personal software projects, like zabbix-angularjs, comfy-home, heartbeat-monitor and some others, but this portfolio is specifically tailored to consist only of VFX-related works.
Most of the images below can be clicked to open full-view or descriptive image!

Interactive real-time OpenCL (incl. GPU) ray-tracer (C++/OpenCL)

As a part of Advanced Graphics course I've been given a task of creating interactive real-time OpenCL ray-tracer. Final version has:


Character animation motion capture (Vicon Blade, Autodesk Motionbuilder)

Final assignment of Computer animation course was to create a short CGI movie with the requirement of using motion capture for character animation in groups. Me and two of my coursemates have captured motion data in VHTLab mocap lab with 14 MX40 Vicon IR cameras and Vicon Blade software. After that, it was my responsibility to clean-up animations in Autodesk MotionBuilder and retarget them to the character in Unreal Engine 4. In the images below can be seen one of resulting animation, a character standing and looking up around holding the torch vertically.

Torch fire particle system (Unreal Engine 4)

Working on the previously mentioned computer animation assignment, our team had trouble finding a ready to use torch fire unreal particle system and at the same time, I was curious to understand how particle system are produced. Killing two birds with one stone produced this particle system, by combining low- and high-height flames, smoke, embers and sparks, and distortion effect to simulate air heat distortion.

Physical-based materials (Substance Designer 5)

I wanted to research modern texturing approaches and decided to learn basics of Substance Designer - node-based texturing tool. In the process of learning, I've created several procedural physical-based materials. One of the simplest, but at the same time realistic turned out to be a rough concrete wall texture.