Cem Yuksel

My local wireframe teapot appreciates the story!

Martin Newell, Jim Blinn, and I told the story of the #UtahTeapot at #SIGGRAPH2026, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first appearance at SIGGRAPH in 1976, which quickly turned it into a symbol of Computer Graphics. Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-23...

At SIGGRAPH 2026 I saw this absolute banger of a paper by James and James. Beautiful imagery, matched by beautiful technical work, by a father and son team, which won a best paper award. I've always loved marbleization patterns. dougjam.github.io/mixwell-2026/ www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Utah Teapot's first appearance at #SIGGRAPH in 1976. Martin Newell, Jim Blinn, and I will have a Talk at #SIGGRAPH2026 celebrating it on Thursday. Don't miss it! Also, check out the 2026 version of the #UtahTeapot: graphics.cs.utah.edu/teapot/

The #SIGGRAPH2026 #Real-TimeLive! Trailer is out! I have one piece representing my company (Cyber Radiance) and another one with my students at the University of Utah. youtu.be/EaqhJVy1YRc?... There will be a free live stream on Twitch and YouTube. I'll post the links to them later.

TinyBVH has just been 𝘂𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝟭.𝟴.𝟬. For CPU ray tracing, it is now the fastest option in most cases - Outperforming Intel Embree and Madmann91 for BVH build time and single-ray performance. On GPU, performance exceeds 4B rays per second - 4 rays per pixel at 4k/120Hz. github.com/jbikker/tiny...

Our #HPG2026 paper "Memory-Efficient Bounding Volume Hierarchies with Merged Nodes for Hardware Ray Tracing" introduces new ways of constructing BVHs that consistently outperform state-of-the-art BVHs for GPU ray tracing. Project page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro... @ebrunvand.bsky.social

New YouTube Short about "Continuity-Enhancing Degree Elevation and Splits": youtube.com/shorts/Au9ng... Project page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro... #SIGGRAPH2026

Our #SIGGRAPH2026 paper "High-Fidelity 4D Cloth Capture Pipeline with a Two-Level Pattern" uses a custom marker pattern to capture temporally coherent, penetration-free cloth animations with 1 mm resolution. Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJsX... Project Page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro...

I made a video about the smooth-maximum function, I hope you like it! youtu.be/6Qb6QtC6QMs

Our #SIGGRAPH2026 paper "Multi-Layer Reservoir Splatting for Temporal Reuse under Disocclusion" improves #ReSTIR by reusing previously occluded samples. Video: youtu.be/-ya1bBnwx38 Project Page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro...

I'm happy to endorse Sheldon Andrews @uboolean.bsky.social for the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee. He will be a great person for this important role.

At SIGGRAPH 2026, I will present a paper titled "Continuity-Enhancing Degree Elevation and Splits" that can form C2 (or higher) curves from a given C1 curve, because we can only do C1 with Bezier handles. Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzDO... Project Page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro...

TinyBVH has been updated to 1.6.8 on the main branch. Notable changes: * New C++17 threading system * TinyOCL now uses OpenCL 3.1.1 * Fix: watertight tri test for shadows * Added BVH::BuildAABB EA SEED (Gigi), SideFX and Remedy are using TinyBVH! Check it for yourself: github.com/jbikker/tiny...

There's a new paper out in JCGT by @jamportz.bsky.social et al. that proposes a super simple modification of existing microfacet models to implement a retroreflection model. What's interesting is that although insanely simple, the model fits measured data pretty well! jcgt.org/published/00...

Remember it's not too late to get on board with this. I think it's important to stand up for underrepresented people even in minor ways. You can always send your submissions to TOG which has a new EIC and new faster turn around times. #SIGGRAPHAsia 2026

Today, I received this wonderful porcelain figurine as a gift from one of my students, Ziheng Liu (libero0809.github.io), who defended his PhD last week.

Our Y1 IGAD programming students just finished the Ray Tracing block. After the basics, many added depth of field, path tracing, reprojection, filtering (including SVGF), a Teardown-style TLAS, and much more. (by the way.. You can still sign up for CMGT/BUas before May 1st - be quick!) #thisisigad

@cemyuksel.com I’m with you, I definitely will not see you at SIGGRAPH Asia No submissions, no reviewing, no service.

About 6 months ago, I publicly announced that I would be boycotting #SIGGRAPHAsia 2026. Today, I released a video explaining my rationale and calling on others to do the same, because I believe it is important. Here it is: youtu.be/bZ6s0-EQp8M

We have a new 3D AVBD Web Demo for our "Augmented Vertex Block Descent" method. Thanks, Chris Giles! Try it yourself: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro... Source code available.

The University of Utah wrote a profile about my work. It covers an award-winning Olympics project I contributed to at The New York Times, my ACM SIGGRAPH leadership, and my research at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. sci.utah.edu/borkiewicz-n...

In 2026, I reprise my role as High-Performance Graphics papers chair, joined by Markus Kettunen. The papers deadline is 8 weeks from now. Submit your performance-oriented graphics research and present it in LA, just before SIGGRAPH (July 17-19 2026)! www.highperformancegraphics.org/2026/call-fo...

We had the Grand Finals of the Teapot Rendering Competition this week. These are original scenes by students at the #UniversityofUtah, rendered using their own ray tracers written in C++, commemorating the famous #UtahTeapot. You can see them all here: graphics.cs.utah.edu/trc/ #raytracing

This is really, really bad!

Our #SIGGRAPHAsia 2025 paper "Sample Space Partitioning and Spatiotemporal Resampling for Specular Manifold Sampling" improves #realtime #caustics rendering. Project Page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro... @daqilin.bsky.social @tizian.bsky.social

Our "Implicit Position-Based Fluids" (IPBF) paper will be presented at #SIGGRAPHAsia 2025 by my student Elie Diaz. Project Page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro...

Super nice! The interior really helps with glass materials.

A modernized Utah Teapot model with interior! You can see/customize/download it, along with historical versions on the official teapot page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/teapot/

Here's some cute bounding box functions for 2D shapes. A longer list here: iquilezles.org/articles/bbo...

Ray marching is a common approach to GPU-accelerated volume rendering, but gives biased transmittance estimates. My new #SIGGRAPHAsia paper (+code) proposes an amazingly simple formula to eliminate this bias almost completely without using more samples. momentsingraphics.de/SiggraphAsia...

This would be exactly 10 years ago! #BackToTheFuture

I am boycotting #SIGGRAPHAsia 2026 because it will be in Malaysia, where there are serious safety concerns for the LGBTQ+ members of our community, thereby excluding them. I will not attend, submit my work to, or perform any reviews for SIGGRAPH Asia 2026. Yet, I'm excited about #SIGGRAPHAsia 2025!

Cem Yuksel (Associate Professor, Kahlert School of Computing, University of Utah; founder of Cyber Radiance, a specialized software company focused on developing advanced tools for computer graphics professionals) leaves X (6.463 followers) Bluesky: @cemyuksel.com

We won the Audience Choice award last night at #SIGGRAPH Real-Time Live! showcasing the fastest general-purpose physics solver ever! We call it "Augmented Vertex Block Descent." www.youtube.com/live/ucRukZM...

Methods like NeRF and Gaussian Splats model the world as radioactive fog, rendered using alpha blending. This produces great results.. but are volumes the only way to get there?🤔 Our new SIGGRAPH'25 paper directly reconstructs surfaces without heuristics or regularizers.

A new #TwoMinutePapers video featuring our Particle Merging & Splitting paper from 2021. Károly really must have forgotten it. :) www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X5T... If you'd like to read the paper or watch my presentation video, here is the project page: graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/pro...

My general recommendation: don't ever miss a talk by Chris Wyman, regardless of the topic.

Is it even POSSIBLE?? 🟠 I talked to NASA scientists to find out. Listen here: link.podtrac.com/SciStuff_Mars

Use the code SIGGRAPHSAVINGS to get a free Exhibits Only pass or $50 USD off any registration level to #SIGGRAPH2025. s2025.siggraph.org/register

Code and other information coming soon; for now you can read the paper here: www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Pro... And find some supplemental information—including pseudocode—here: www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Pro...

Meshes with 90° angles are super useful, providing asymptotically faster convergence for finite element simulation, and optimal shape approximation (when aligned with curvature). Amazingly, no past quad meshing method could guarantee 90° angles under refinement—until now. #RSP