jan novák

about

I am a principal research scientist at NVIDIA working at the cross-section of rendering and machine learning. Prior to joining NVIDIA, I worked as a research scientist leading the Rendering Group at Disney Research Zürich. I received a B.Sc. (2007) and a M.Sc. (2009) degree from the Czech Technical University in Prague, and a Ph.D. degree (2014) from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology under the supervision of Carsten Dachsbacher.

I interned at DRZ (2011), and at Pixar Animation Studios (2012), and also worked as a senior software engineer at the Walt Disney Animation Studios where I contributed to the development of the Hyperion Renderer. My research interests span (volumetric) light-transport simulation, acceleration data structures for ray tracing, GPU computing, and machine learning.

I am happily married and fully occupied with training four remarkably hard to train neural nets.

publications

Real-Time Neural Appearance Models

Authors:

Tizian Zeltner*, Fabrice Rousselle*, Andrea Weidlich*, Petrik Clarberg*, Jan Novák*, Benedikt Bitterli*, Alex Evans, Tomáš Davidovič, Simon Kallweit, Aaron Lefohn

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (presented at SIGGRAPH 2024)
March, 2024

Inverse Global Illumination using a Neural Radiometric Prior

Authors:

Saeed Hadadan, Geng Lin, Jan Novák, Fabrice Rousselle, Matthias Zwicker

Published:

ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 Conference Proceedings
Los Angeles, USA, July, 2023

Recursive Control Variates for Inverse Rendering

Authors:

Baptiste Nicolet, Fabrice Rousselle, Jan Novák, Alexander Keller, Wenzel Jakob, Thomas Müller

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2023), vol. 42, no. 4
Los Angeles, USA, July, 2023

MesoGAN: Generative Neural Reflectance Shells

Authors:

Stavros Diolatzis, Jan Novák, Fabrice Rousselle, Jonathan Granskog, Miika Aittala, Ravi Ramamoorthi, George Drettakis

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (presented at EGSR 2023), vol. 42, no. 6
Sep, 2023

Neural Scene Graph Rendering

Authors:

Jonathan Granskog, Till N. Schnabel, Fabrice Rousselle, Jan Novák

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2021), vol. 40, no. 4
August, 2021

Real-time Neural Radiance Caching for Path Tracing

Authors:

Thomas Müller, Fabrice Rousselle, Jan Novák, Alexander Keller

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2021), vol. 40, no. 4
August, 2021

An Unbiased Ray-marching Transmittance Estimator

Authors:

Markus Kettunen, Eugene d'Eon, Jacopo Pantaleoni, Jan Novák

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2021), vol. 40, no. 4
August, 2021

Zero-variance Transmittance Estimation

Authors:

Eugene d'Eon, Jan Novák

Published:

Proceedings of EGSR 2021
June, 2021

NeRF-Tex: Neural Reflectance Field Textures

Authors:

Hendrik Baatz, Jonathan Granskog, Marios Papas, Fabrice Rousselle, Jan Novák

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 41, no. 6
Sept, 2022

Compositional Neural Scene Representations for Shading Inference

Authors:

Jonathan Granskog, Fabrice Rousselle, Marios Papas, Jan Novák

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2020), vol. 39, no. 4
August 17--28, 2020

Neural Control Variates

Authors:

Thomas Müller, Fabrice Rousselle, Alexander Keller, Jan Novák

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2020), vol. 39, no. 6
December, 2020

Neural Importance Sampling

Authors:

Thomas Müller, Brian McWilliams, Fabrice Rousselle, Markus Gross, Jan Novák

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (presented at SIGGRAPH 2019), vol. 38, no. 145
Los Angeles, USA, July 28--August 1, 2019

A Radiative Transfer Framework for Non-exponential Media

Authors:

Benedikt Bitterli, Srinath Ravichandran, Thomas Müller, Magnus Wrenninge, Jan Novák, Steve Marschner, Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2018), vol. 37, no. 6
Tokyo, Japan, December 4--7, 2018

Appearance Capture and Modeling of Human Teeth

Authors:

Zdravko Velinov, Marios Papas, Derek Bradley, Paolo Gotardo, Parsa Mirdehghan, Steve Marschner, Jan Novák, Thabo Beeler

Published:

Transaction on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2018), vol. 37, no. 6
Tokyo, Japan, December 4--7, 2018

Denoising with Kernel Prediction and Asymmetric Loss Functions

Authors:

Thijs Vogels, Fabrice Rousselle, Brian McWilliams, Gerhard Röthlin,
Alex Harvill, David Adler, Mark Meyer, Jan Novák

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2018), vol. 37, no. 4
Vancouver, Canada, August 12--16, 2018

Monte Carlo Methods for Physically Based Volume Rendering

Authors:

Jan Novák, Iliyan Georgiev, Johannes Hanika, Jaroslav Křivánek, Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

ACM SIGGRAPH Courses
Vancouver, Canada, August 12--16, 2018

Machine Learning and Rendering

Authors:

Alexander Keller, Jaroslav Křivánek, Jan Novák, Anton Kaplanyan, Marco Salvi

Published:

ACM SIGGRAPH Courses
Vancouver, Canada, August 12--16, 2018

Denoising Deep Monte Carlo Renderings

Authors:

Delio Vicini, David Adler, Jan Novák, Fabrice Rousselle, Brent Burley

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 38, no. 1
2018

Reversible Jump Metropolis Light Transport using Inverse Mappings

Authors:

Benedikt Bitterli, Wenzel Jakob, Jan Novák, and Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (presented at SIGGRAPH 2018), vol. 37, no. 1
New York, NY, USA, October, 2017

Monte Carlo Methods for Volumetric Light Transport Simulation

Authors:

Jan Novák, Iliyan Georgiev, Johannes Hanika, Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (presented at EUROGRAPHICS 2018 - State of the Art Rep.), vol. 37, no. 2
Delft, Netherlands, April 16-20, 2018

Deep Scattering: Rendering Atmospheric Clouds with Radiance-Predicting Neural Networks

Authors:

Simon Kallweit, Thomas Müller, Brian McWilliams, Markus Gross, Jan Novák

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2017), vol. 36, no. 6
Bangkok, Thailand, November, 2017

Spectral and Decomposition Tracking for Rendering Heterogeneous Volumes

Authors:

Peter Kutz, Ralf Habel, Yining Karl Li, and Jan Novák

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2017), vol. 36, no. 4
Los Angeles, USA, July 05--August 03, 2017

Kernel-Predicting Convolutional Networks for Denoising Monte Carlo Renderings

Authors:

Steve Bako*, Thijs Vogels*, Brian McWilliams, Mark Meyer, Jan Novák,
Alex Harvill, Pradeep Sen, Tony DeRose, and Fabrice Rousselle

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2017), vol. 36, no. 4
Los Angeles, USA, July 05--August 03, 2017

Practical Path Guiding for Efficient Light-Transport Simulation

Authors:

Thomas Müller, Markus Gross, and Jan Novák

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EGSR 2017), vol. 36, no. 4
Helsinki, Finland, June 20-22, 2017

Image-space Control Variates for Rendering

Authors:

Fabrice Rousselle, Wojciech Jarosz, and Jan Novák

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2016), vol. 35, no. 6
Macao, China, December 05-08, 2016

Efficient Rendering of Heterogenous Polydisperse Granular Media

Authors:

Thomas Müller, Marios Papas, Markus Gross, Wojciech Jarosz, and Jan Novák

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2016), vol. 35, no. 6
Macao, China, December 05-08, 2016

Reduced Aggregate Scattering Operators for Path Tracing

Authors:

Adrian Blumer, Jan Novák, Ralf Habel, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Pacific Graphics 2016), vol. 35, no. 7
Okinawa, Japan, October 11-14, 2016

Nonlinearly Weighted First-order Regression for Denoising Monte Carlo Renderings

Authors:

Benedikt Bitterli, Fabrice Rousselle, Bochang Moon, José A. Iglesias-Guitián,
David Adler, Kenny Mitchell, Wojciech Jarosz, and Jan Novák

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EGSR 2016), vol. 35, no. 4
Dublin, Ireland, June 22-24, 2016

Subdivision Next-Event Estimation for Path-Traced Subsurface Scattering

Authors:

David Koerner, Jan Novák, Peter Kutz, Ralf Habel, and Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

Proceedings of EGSR 2016, Experimental Ideas & Implementations
Dublin, Ireland, June 22-24, 2016

Portal-Masked Environment Map Sampling

Authors:

Benedikt Bitterli, Jan Novák, and Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EGSR 2015), vol. 34, no. 4
Darmstadt, Germany, 2015

Residual Ratio Tracking for Estimating Attenuation in Participating Media

Authors:

Jan Novák, Andrew Selle, and Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 2014), vol. 33, no. 6
Shenzen, China, December 3-6, 2014

Efficient Many-Light Rendering of Scenes with Participating Media

Authors:

Jan Novák

Published:

Ph.D. dissertation
Karlsruhe, Germany, 2014

Progressive Visibility Caching for Fast Indirect Illumination

Authors:

Justus Ulbrich, Jan Novák, Hauke Rehfeld, and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

Proceedings of International Workshop on Vision, Modeling, and Visualization (VMV'13)
Lugano, Switzerland, September 11-13, 2013

Path-Space Manipulation of Physically-Based Light Transport

Authors:

Thorsten-W. Schmidt, Jan Novák, Johannes Meng, Anton Kaplanyan, Tim Reiner, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2013), vol. 32, no. 4
Anaheim, USA, July 21-25, 2013

Scalable Realistic Rendering with Many-Light Methods

Authors:

Carsten Dachsbacher, Jaroslav Křivánek, Miloš Hašan, Adam Arbree, Bruce Walter, and Jan Novák

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (presented at EUROGRAPHICS 2013 - State of the Art Rep.), vol. 33, no. 1
Girona, Spain, May 6-10, 2013

Progressive Virtual Beam Lights

Authors:

Jan Novák, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Carsten Dachsbacher, and Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EGSR 2012), vol. 31, no. 4
Paris, France, June 27-29, 2012

Virtual Ray Lights for Rendering Scenes with Participating Media

Authors:

Jan Novák, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Carsten Dachsbacher, and Wojciech Jarosz

Published:

ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2012), vol. 31, no. 4
Los Angeles, USA, August 5-9, 2012

Approximate Bias Compensation for Rendering Scenes with Heterogeneous Participating Media

Authors:

Thomas Engelhardt, Jan Novák, Thorsten-W. Schmidt, and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Pacific Graphics 2012), vol. 31, no. 7
Hong Kong, China, September 12-14, 2012

Rasterized Bounding Volume Hierarchies

Authors:

Jan Novák and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of EUROGRAPHICS 2012), vol. 31, no. 2
Cagliary, Italy, May 13-18, 2012

Screen-Space Bias Compensation for Interactive High-Quality Global Illumination with Virtual Point Lights

Authors:

Jan Novák, Thomas Engelhardt, and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

ACM Siggraph Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D '11)
San Francisco, USA, February 18-20, 2011

Path Regeneration for Random Walks

Authors:

Jan Novák, Vlastimil Havran, and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

GPU Computing Gems - Emerald Edition
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., 2011

Instant Multiple Scattering for Interactive Rendering of Heterogeneous Participating Media

Authors:

Thomas Engelhardt, Jan Novák, and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

Technical Report
KIT - Karlsruhe Institut of Technology, December 8, 2010

Path Regeneration for Interactive Path Tracing

Authors:

Jan Novák, Vlastimil Havran, and Carsten Dachsbacher

Published:

EUROGRAPHICS 2010 - Short papers
Norrköping, Sweden, May 3-7, 2010

teaching

SS 2013 (KIT)

WS 2012/2013 (KIT)

SS 2012 (KIT)

WS 2011/2012 (KIT)

SS 2011 (KIT)

WS 2010/2011 (KIT)

miscellaneous

reviewing for

Transaction on Graphics, Computer Graphics Forum, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Computers & Graphics, and others
SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, Eurographics, EGSR, HPG, Pacific Graphics, Graphics Interface, and others

professional activities

IPC member for SIGGRAPH 2019, EGSR 2017; 2020, HPG 2017; 2020, Pacific Graphics 2019
Posters co-chair for EGSR 2014

mentoring

Saeed Hadadan (NVIDIA) - internship, finished 1/2023
Baptiste Nicolet (NVIDIA) - 3-month internship, finished 9/2022
Stavros Diolatzis (NVIDIA) - 3-month internship, finished 10/2021
Pascal Chang (ETH) - Towards Photorealistic and Controllable Neural Appearance Transfer M.Sc. thesis, 10/2022
Alexandre Cavaleri (ETH) - Photorealistic Neural Appearance Transfer, M.Sc. thesis, 2021
Hendrik Baatz (ETH, NVIDIA) - NeRF-Tex: Neural Radiance Field Textures, M.Sc. thesis, 3/2021, and 3-month internship
Till Schnabel (ETH, NVIDIA) - Temporal Neural Scene Understanding, M.Sc. thesis, 8/2020, and 3-month internship
Thijs Vogels (NVIDIA) - 3-month internship, finished 8/2020
Ivo Kondapaneni (NVIDIA) - 3-month internship, finished 8/2020
Jonathan Granskog (ETH, NVIDIA) - Neural Scene Understanding, M.Sc. thesis, finished 9/2019
Thomas Müller (ETH) - Efficient Light-transport Simulation using Machine Learning, Ph.D. thesis, finished 4/2019
Ivo Kondapaneni (DRZ) - 3-month internship, finished 9/2018
Xi Deng (DRZ) - 3-month internship, finished 9/2018
Yu-chen Tsai (ETH) - Volumetric Reconstruction of Atmospheric Clouds from a Single Image, M.Sc. thesis, finished 4/2018
Delio Vicini (ETH) - Gradient-domain Rendering of Clouds, M.Sc. thesis, 2017
Lifan Wu (DRZ) - 3-month internship, finished 9/2017
Matthias Fauconneau (DRZ) - 9-month internship, finished 9/2017
Zdravko Velinov (DRZ) 3-month internship, finished 9/2017
Simon Kallweit (ETH) - Learning High-Order Scattering in Rendering from Data, M.Sc. thesis, finished 9/2016
Thijs Vogels (ETH) - Kernel-predicting Convolutional Neural Networks For Denoising Monte Carlo Renderings, M.Sc. thesis, finished 9/2016
Delio Vicini (DRZ) - 3-month internship, finished 9/2016
Parsa Mirdehghan (DRZ) 3-month internship, finished 9/2016
Thomas Müller (ETH) - Modeling and Rendering Heterogeneous Granular Media, M.Sc. thesis, finished 3/2016
Benedikt Bitterli (ETH) - Informed Choices in Primary Sample Space, M.Sc. thesis, finished 9/2015
Adrian Blumer (DRZ) - 3-month internship, finished 1/2015
David Koerner (DRZ) - 3-month internship, finished 12/2014
Shuoran Yang (DRZ) - 6-month part-time internship, finished 8/2014
Simon Kallweit (DRZ) - 2-month internship, finished 8/2014
Justus Ulbrich (KIT) - Visibility Caching for Progressive Many-Light Algorithms, B.Sc. thesis, finished 5/2012
Michael Sohm (KIT) - Progressive Virtual Spherical Lights for Rendering Glossy Scenes, B.Sc. thesis, finished 5/2012
Karsten Brand (KIT) - Realistic Screen-Space Subsurface Scattering, Diploma thesis, finished 1/2012
Martin Tillman (KIT) - 2D Path Tracing, Study thesis, finished 5/2011

about

publications

teaching

WS 2018 (ETH)

WS 2017 (ETH)

WS 2016 (ETH)

WS 2015 (ETH)

SS 2015 (ETH)

SS 2013 (KIT)

WS 2012/2013 (KIT)

SS 2012 (KIT)

WS 2011/2012 (KIT)

SS 2011 (KIT)

WS 2010/2011 (KIT)

miscellaneous

reviewing for

professional activities

mentoring