Lev Panov // Creative Software Engineer

2020-2021

I. Closer - Immersive Video Chat & Party App
Haven’t you ever wanted to feel more connection while talking through video?

In our app you can meet with your friends or partners, and interact close to each other in a fun creative way:

For whom this app:

II. Shader Showdown preparation visuals (live coded in glsl)

2017-now

Demolition Media Hap: a high-performance GPU-accelerated video playback plugin for Unity and vvvv / VL with very fast seeking and alpha transparency support

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Unity Asset Store
Network Synced Version
vvvv project page | VL nuget

2016

I. The Complex Mixed Reality Playscape

Taking part in making of interactive playscape where people can jointly explore and interact with a mixed reality environment.

Tasks solved:

  1. Building a decent motion tracking system
    — capable of tracking multiple people at once (3-4 people are tracked simultaneously for the needed usage scenarios, but able to work with more)
    — scailable (currently tracking the entire 5x5m room space, easy to adapt for another configureation)
    — client-server architecture
    — fail-safe and controllable from external applications via network

  2. Integrating motion tracking engine with the main game engine.

  3. Making a Final Battle game scene.

    Custom multi-layer particle system was used to create a musical planet. Each layer is assigned to a certain audio track and its parameters are controlled from the game engine (PopcornFX, Unity, UE4)

  4. Making gameplay prototypes with UE4.
    — A custom solution for rendering a single scene onto multiple displays was created. Used UE4 network replication capabilities having client-server architecture in the end.
    — Receiving compressed texture data from Kinect V2 sensor and uploading to the GPU (UE4 network and RHI C++ APIs used)


II. No Solitude
Dance performance with interactive particles.





GLSL Optical Flow for motion tracking, fully GPU compute shader particle system with indirect draw (~8 millions of particles at 30 fps), SDF collisions and various particle forces. Spiralling Galaxy simulation, smooth particle transitions. Live part was done with a midi controller.

III. Pythia: digital oracle (intractive installation)

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Was shown on several digital media festivals in Norway, China and Russia in 2016-2017 period

Tools used: Python, HTML5, Google Speech API, Ableton Live, Touch Designer, Unreal Engine 4
Team: made in collaboration with Taras Mashtalir and Alexander Letcius
Time spent: several months of experiments

2015

  1. An interactive logo for Digital Art Museum Center MARS

    Tools used: three.js
    Time spent: 1 week

  2. VVVV speech recognition plugin
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    A project for IvanRastr company.
    I also made a speech recognition module which supports free speech input via google speech API (JS + AJAX + python).
    Tools used: C#
    Time spent: a couple of days

  3. Augmented reality application for an art exhibition.
    Tools used: Vuforia, Unity, C#, GLSL
    Team: just me
    Time spent: a week

  4. An interactive installation with kinect.
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    I’ve done the technical support of the project: fixing performance bottlenecks in the kinect v2 plugin, shader programming.
    The installation was shown on LifeZone exhibition in MARS audiovisual center in Moscow.
    Tools used: C#, HLSL, vvvv
    Team: 2 people
    Time spent: a couple of days

  5. OSC plugin for Tooll
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    Tooll2 is a new multi-purpose application for creating interactive 3d content and animations. I’ve developed a set of operators which provide Open Sound Control input functionality to it, which was recently included in the latest version of Tooll by its maintainer Pixtur.
    Tools used: C#
    Time spent: a couple of days
    Video

  6. Navigation system for shopping mall
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    A navigation system which allows to find the shortest paths inside a shopping mall. Uses heuristic pathfinding algorithms and effiective computational geometry algorithm for determining intersections with obstacles.
    The end result is a custom node for vvvv.
    Made for IvanRastr company.
    Tools used: C#, vvvv
    Time spent: 2 weeks

2014

  1. Raymarching distance fields
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    Raymarching is a technology which allows to procedurally create dynamic geometry, and visualize it in real-time using advanced rendering techniques such as soft shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections/refractions. It’s also possible to apply procedurally generated textures (which also can be dynamic).
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    Volumetric effects are also possible to do with ray marching.
    Some optimizations of the basic algorithm were investigated (bounding volumes, stencil buffer pre-pass), they allowed us to increase the framerate up to 10 times in some cases.
    Tools used: HLSL, Directx11
    Team: 2 members
    Time spent: A month or two of episodic work

  2. Iterative 3d reconstruction for mammography
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    A research & develop project for Philips Medical Systems (Hamburg). Investigation of possible reconstruction algorithms for 3d mammography image reconstruction. Implementation of SART/ICD reconstruction algorithms for the upcoming Philips HighRex digital breast tomosynthesis slit-scanning system.
    Tools used: python, C++, CUDA, Philips dtools
    Team: just me
    Time spent: 1 year

  3. Void
    A demoscene production made for Chaos Constructions 2014 festival.
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    Tools used: vvvv, HLSL
    Team: 2 members + musician
    Time spent: 2 weeks
    Video

  4. Lev’s brainwaves visualization
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    Interactive EEG visualization made during Enzo Varriale’s “Art & Brainwaves” workshop in Moscow.
    Tools used: vvvv, epoc emotiv
    Time spent: 2 days

  5. Bees colony simulation
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    A simulation of bees colony. Multi-threaded application, behavior of each actor is determined by finite state machine. Bear which steals honey from the hive interactively appears when you call him with your voice.
    Tools used: C#, Appccelerate State Machine, vvvv
    Team: just me
    Time spent: 2 weeks of eventual work

  6. New Year renders
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    Several renders I made to send greeting cards to my friends.
    Tools used: vvvv, dx11
    Time spent: 2 days

2013

  1. F*ck that vector
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    Real-time audio-reactive visualization of a dancer (also made completely real-time).
    Awarded 2nd place on Animation compo of Chaos Constructions 2013 demoscene & media festival.
    Tools used: GLSL, Z Vector, Kinect, Fraps
    Team: 2 members + musician + dancer
    Time spent: couple of days (a single weekend, actually)
    Video

  2. Atomic Cyclic Durability Testing Suite
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    Project for a RosAtom company. Used for testing the durability of atomic stations construction details. My role was a graphics programmer: interactive scene gizmos, effective visualization of extremely large finite element model, fast element picking/area selection, visualization of calculated nodes total stress factors, etc.
    Tools used: GLSL, OpeGL 3.3 core profile, Qt
    Team: 4 members
    Time spent: 1 year

2010

Chaos Bomber
A game for Cowon D2 Digital Audio Player.
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Custom AI & sprite animation system.
Awarded 1st place on Mobile Game competition of Chaos Constructions 2010 demoscene & media festival.
Tools used: Rockbox, C, GIMP
Team: 3 members + musician
Time spent: 1 week
Video