Kostas Vardis Computer Graphics Researcher-Programmer

About me

I am a computer scientist with main focus in computer graphics R&D. I received my PhD from the Department of Informatics at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). I am currently located in Zürich, Switzerland, working as a Researcher at Huawei.

A compact version of my CV (~2 page) is available here and a full version here.

You can reach me at: kvardis [at] hotmail [dot] com.

Professional Experience

2024 - Now

Huawei

Position: Principal Researcher/Team Lead Research and development in computer graphics, vision and machine learning at the Cloud Graphics Research Group. Responsibilities:
  • Team lead in the Zürich Graphics Team.
  • Research and development in 3D Generative AI and Neural Rendering.
Huawei
2019 - 2023

AUEB Computer Graphics Group

Position: Postdoctoral researcher Research and development on interactive rendering and illumination algorithms. Projects:
  • Lumibricks (2020-2021)
    Modular Illumination Transfer for Photorealistic Visualization on Commodity Hardware
    15-month research program co-funded by the European Union and Greek National Funds.
  • Interactive Photorealistic Image Synthesis (2020)
    12-month research program funded by the AUEB Research Center.
  • Proof-of-concept implementation of coarse shading technologies for the ARM Mali-G76 Bifrost architecture (2019)
AUEB
2020 - 2022

NeuroPublic S.A.

Position: Software Engineer - Contract Software development and machine learning on the extraction, analysis and manipulation of satellite imagery (visible, invisible spectrum and radar).
Neuropublic
2018

Think Silicon

Position: Senior software engineer Responsibilities:
  • Development of drivers and software tools of ultra-low power GPUs. Testing was performed on both software reference mode and Xilinx FPGA SoCs for Nema GPUs.
  • Design and development of GLOVE, an open-source software library that acts as an intermediate layer between OpenGL ES applications and Vulkan.
  • Made GLOVE conformance compliant (EGL reached 92% and GLES2 98% on software mode and Intel GPUs).
 Research Projects: GPU-WEAR - Ultra-low power heterogeneous GPUs for Wearable/IoT devices. EU-funded H2020 project (GID: 717850), 2016-2018.
Think Silicon
2011 - 2018

AUEB Computer Graphics Group

Responsibilities:
  • Researched visibility determination problems for interactive and real-time global illumination on fully dynamic virtual environments.
  • Core developer of XEngine, the group's internal graphics engine and research platform.
  • Teaching assistant on BSc courses (during the PhD) (Computer Graphics, Databases), preparing course and exam materials for the labs, teaching, and examining over 300 BSc students each year.
Research Projects:
Nomitech Ltd - Visualization Engine for the CostOS software suite (2016-2017) Position: Senior researcher/developer Research, design and development of a high-performance, real-time visualization solution for large-volume 3D datasets to be integrated to CostOS, the BIM Cost Estimating software of Nomitech Ltd.
Nomitech
PRESIOUS - Predictive digitization, restoration and degradation assessment of cultural heritage objects 3-year EU-funded STREP project, 2013-2016 (GID: 600533). Position: Researcher/lead developer Research on real-time illumination algorithms and lead developer of Virtual Repair and Measurement System (VRMW), a multi-purpose platform for virtual operations on digitized cultural heritage objects.
PRESIOUS
GLIDE - Goal-driven Lighting for Dynamic 3D Environments (ARISTEIA II programme) 18-month research project co-funded by the General Secreteriat of Research and Technology and the European Union, 2014-2015 Position: Researcher/developer Research on real-time illumination algorithms
GLIDE
Technologies: C++, C#, OpenGL, WebGL, CUDA, Qt, etc.
2008 - 2013

Oraton (now SGP TACCON)

Position: Senior Software Engineer - Contract Development of desktop and web systems for map data visualization both in the private and public sector. An example product was OratonMaps, a flexible digital map content management system that provided high quality GIS, navigation, geocoding and routing services with support for multiple map providers (Bing Maps, OpenStreet Maps, Google Enterprise, etc.). Technologies: C#, Silverlight, PHP, SQL, ASP.NET, etc.
Oraton
2008 - 2009

Evorad (now I KNOW-HOW)

Position: Graphics and Medical Visualization Software Engineer Responsibilities:
  • Development of GPU and GPGPU based software for 3D visualization of medical images on the Evorad RIS-PACS (Radiology Information System - Picture Archiving and Communications Systems) software platform.
  • Technical direction in 3D graphics.
 Technologies: Java, OpenGL, CUDA
Evorad
2006 - 2008

SEGA - Creative Assembly

Position: Graphics Engine and UI Programmer Worked on Empire: Total War (released in March 2009 - BAFTA Award). Graphics engine and UI work in various areas of the project. Examples include:
  • Rendering system for vegetation (trees, etc.)
  • Rendering system for ships (also destruction visualization, rope rendering, etc.)
  • Rendering system for static objects (e.g., buildings) in Battle and Campaign
  • Rendering system for sprites in UI (animated, rotated, 3D, etc)
  • Land & Naval UI (formations, radar, etc.)
 Technologies: C++, DirectX, SpeedTree, Lua Note: All pictures are the property and copyright of their respective owners. The images shown here have been downloaded from gamesradar.com and ign.com.
Empire Empire

Selected Personal and Freelance Projects

2010

TMS (Tailor-made Medical Software)

Position: Software Engineer - Contractor Development of iTMS, a client-server medical support application of TMS IASIS (a medical information software platform) designed to present experts with quick and informative data of their patients on a mobile platform. Technologies: Objective-C
iTMS
2009 - 2011

Ingame FMScout/FM Assistant

This personal project was a real-time scouting and editing utility for Sports Interactive's Football Manager 2009, 2010 and 2011. It allowed users to query the current game database by accessing ingame data to display and edit certain information about different game entities such as players, staff and teams. Github Technologies: C#
FMAssistant

Research

Publications

2025
DreamAnywhere: Object-Centric Panoramic 3D Scene Generation E. A. Dominici, J. Hladky, F. Verhoeven, L.Radl, T. Deixelberger, S. Ainetter, P. Drescher, S. Hauswiesner, A. Coomans, G. Nazzaro, K. Vardis, M. Steinberger Arxiv (2025) TBD TBD
DA360
2023
A Neural Builder for Spatial Subdivision Hierarchies I.Evangelou, G. Papaioannou, K. Vardis, A. Gkaravelis The Visual Computer (Proceedings of Computer Graphics International 2023) Bibtex Open Access Github
NKDTREE
2021
Sampling Clear Sky Models using Truncated Gaussian Mixtures N. Vitsas, K. Vardis, G. Papaioannou Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) 2021 Bibtex Paper (author version)
TGMM
2021
Illumination-driven Light Probe Placement (Best Poster Award) K. Vardis, A. A. Vasilakis, G. Papaioannou Eurographics 2021 - Posters Bibtex Paper (author version) Video Presentation Github
IDLP
2021
Fast Radius Search Exploiting Ray Tracing Frameworks I.Evangelou, G. Papaioannou, K. Vardis, A. A. Vasilakis Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT) Bibtex Github
FRSRT
2020
Rasterization-based Progressive Photon Mapping I.Evangelou, G. Papaioannou, K. Vardis, A. A. Vasilakis The Visual Computer (Proceedings of Computer Graphics International 2020) Bibtex Paper (author version)
RPPM
2020
A Survey of Multifragment Rendering A. A. Vasilakis⚴, K. Vardis⚴, G. Papaioannou Computer Graphics Forum - presented at Eurographics 2020 (⚴These authors contributed equally to this work). Bibtex Paper (author version) Presentation Github
MFR
2020
Rayground: An Online Educational Tool for Ray Tracing N. Vitsas, A. Gkaravelis, A. A. Vasilakis, K. Vardis, G. Papaioannou Proceedings of Eurographics 2020 - Educational Papers. Bibtex Paper (author version) Presentation-TBD Website
RG
2017
Variable k-Buffer using Importance Maps A. A. Vasilakis⚴, K. Vardis⚴, G. Papaioannou⚴, K. Moustakas Proceedings of Eurographics 2017 (short paper) (⚴These authors contributed equally to this work). Bibtex Paper (author version) Presentation (45MB) Shader Source Code Github
VRKB
2017
From Reassembly to Object Completion: A Complete Systems Pipeline G. Papaioannou, T. Schreck, A. Andreadis, P. Mavridis, R. Gregor, I. Sipiran, K. Vardis ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH). Bibtex Paper (author version)
FROC
2016
DIRT: Deferred Image-based Ray Tracing K. Vardis, A. A. Vasilakis, G. Papaioannou Eurographics/ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on High Performance Graphics (HPG 2016). Bibtex Paper (author version) Presentation (25MB) Shader Source Code Demo with Shader Source (140MB) Github
MMRT
2016
A Multiview and Multilayer Approach for Interactive Ray Tracing K. Vardis, A. A. Vasilakis, G. Papaioannou Proc. of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (i3D 2016). Bibtex Paper (author version) Presentation (100MB) Youtube Video Video (better quality) Shader Source Code Demo with Shader Source (193MB) Github
MMRT
2014
Real-time Radiance Caching using Chrominance Compression K. Vardis, G. Papaioannou, A. Gkaravelis Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT) - presented at i3D 2015. Bibtex Presentation (22MB) Youtube Video Demo and Shader Source (original) Demo and Shader Source (updated - 193MB) Github
CRC
2013
Multi-view Ambient Occlusion with Importance Sampling K. Vardis, G. Papaioannou, A. Gaitatzes Proc. of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (i3D 2013). Bibtex Paper (author version) Supplemental material (author version) Presentation (12MB) Youtube Video Shader Source Code Github
MVAO

Technical Reports

2014
STAR on Interactive Global Illumination Techniques and Inverse Lighting Problems A. Gkaravelis, C. Kalampokis, G. Papaioannou, K. Vardis, A. A. Vasilakis (authors listed in alphabetical order) GLIDE - Goal-driven Lighting for Dynamic 3D Environments (ARISTEIA II programme),
Deliverable 1.1, 08-2014. Bibtex
STAR

Reviewer

I am/have been a reviewer for high- and top-tier conferences and journals, such as:

Teaching Experience

Department of Informatics, Athens University Of Economics and Business
Teaching Assistant
  • Computer Graphics BSc Course, 2012 - 2015
  • Databases BSc Course, 2012 - 2015
  • Preparing course and exam materials for the labs, teaching, and examining over 300 BSc students each year
AUEB CG

Resources

VRMW - Virtual Reassembly System v1.1 The Virtual Repair and Measurement System (VRMW) is a multi-purpose platform for virtual operations on digitized cultural heritage objects. The base system (Virtual Reassembly System) is concentrated on object reassembly tasks and measurements in a fully three-dimensional environment and supports collection management facilities and manual manipulation functionality. However, the system is modular and supports various extensions. VRMW is free to download and use for personal, academic or generally, non-profit purposes. You can download the VRMW - Virtual Reassembly System software at the provided links below. The software includes the documentation and supporting tools. However, example data is provided separately due to its large size. Both files should be extracted to the same folder. Before downloading the VRMW suite, make sure to read the End User's License Agreement. System requirements: 64-bit Windows Operating System (tested on Windows 7 and 10), OpenGL 3.3 compliant graphics processing unit (GPU), Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 C++ x64 Redistributable files (included). As I was the core developer for this platform, please contact me for any bugs you may find. Official Page VRMW - Virtual Reassembly System (~49MB) Example Data (~1.5GB) Online documentation Changelog
VRMW
XEngine v1.0 XEngine is a scene graph-based deferred rendering API that was initially implemented as standalone engine and a research platform for testing various real-time algorithms for shading and illumination effects using OpenGL. The engine is provided as a DLL (32/64bit, Debug and Release versions) with an ANSI C API for higher compatibility with different compilers. The engine is provided "as is", without its source code, and remains a property of the AUEB Graphics Group, under MIT license. System requirements: 32 and 64-bit Windows Operating System (tested on Windows 7 and 10), OpenGL 3.3 compliant graphics processing unit (GPU), Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 C++ x86 and x64 Redistributable files (included). The software has been tested on systems with an NVIDIA graphics card. As I was the core developer for this platform, please contact me for any bugs you may find. Official Page Engine Distributable (~50MB) Online documentation
XEngine XEngine