Sebastian Enrique
senrique@cs.columbia.edu
PhD Student
Graduate Research Assistant

Computer Science Department
Columbia University
1214 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 0401
New York, NY 10027
USA

Office: CEPSR 611
Lab: CEPSR 6LE4
[ Blog ][ Curriculum Vitae ] [ Rendering Lab ]
ABOUT MYSELF
I born in the year 1976 in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I made a 6-year high school at EET (PF) Henry Ford, obtaining the title of Técnico Mecánico. Later, I studied computer sciences for six years in the School of Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, where I've got my degree of Licenciado en Ciencias de la Computación, plus the intermediate degree of Analista Universitario de Computación. I was also a TA during more than 4 years in Computer Organization I course, and 1 year in Databases course, working for the Computer Science Department at UBA.

I got the Masters in Computer Science degree here at Columbia in May 2004. Currently, I am TAing during Fall 2004 the courses Computer Graphics and Real-Time High Quality Rendering.

I worked on systems analysis and programming during almost all of my Argentinean university studies. The last IT consulting company that I worked for there was Da-Vinci, specialized in .NET and Visual Fox Pro developments.

In the US, I did a summer 2004 internship in Microsoft DirectX Team.

As any Argentinean does, I like fútbol. More than that, I have a passion for what american people call soccer. My favourite team is Club Atlético Tigre. Information about Argentinean fútbol can be gathered from AFA, the sports newspaper Olé, or even Mundo Ascenso for non-first division tournaments.

My other passion are computer games. I love them. I started playing on a friend's ZX Spectrum, continued with my own Talent MSX, then the PC, and I just acquired an XBox. I play games, but I also like to develop them. I am always working on my own game ideas. I am a founder member of ADVA, the association who groups all the people interested in game development in Argentina.

Visit my blog for periodic information: http://senrique.blogspot.com/.

You can also take a look to my Curriculum Vitae.
RESEARCH
My interest is the computer graphics field Real-Time Rendering, especifically applied on computer games. I am doing research (from Fall 2003) at the Columbia's Rendering Lab under the supervision of Ravi Ramamoorthi.

Spring 2004: Real-Time Rendering Using CUReT BRDF Materials with Zernike Polynomials
This was a small project for Topics on Computational Vision and Graphics course, dictated by Peter Belhumeur.

Real-time rendering of arbitrary meshes using the CUReT BRDF materials database interpolated with Zernike polynomials is described. The scope of this project was intended to allow viewpoint and lighting –using a distant point light source– changes. The original idea was to compute final colors in a pixel shader, but finally a real-time system in a per vertex basis was implemented. How GPU could be used for real-time per pixel rendering is also explained.

[ Report ] Adobe Acrobat PDF File.
[ Presentation ] Microsoft PowerPoint file.
[ Binary ] requires vertex/pixel shader capable graphics hardware.
[ Source Code ] Visual Studio C++ 6.0 project.

Fall 2003: Relighting Framework [ http://www.cs.columbia.edu/cg/relighting/ ]
Relighting Framework is a framework for synthetic and real scenes image-based relighting with a fixed viewpoint but with any point / area lights and environment lighting conditions.

The method consists of a large preprocessing stage, in which sets of images with different lighting conditions are provided, and two passes of PCA (Principal Component Analysis) compress data and generate the final matrices for each color component. Those matrices are then used in realtime to compute the correct image appeareance given the novel lighting conditions.

The Relighting Framework is based on the Lighting Sensitive Display by Shree Nayar, Peter Belhumeur, and Terry Boult, and extends it to use environment maps.

Oct 2002: An Investigation Into the Use of Synthetic Vision for NPC's/Agents in Computer Games
My Licenciatura thesis was made with the advise of Dr. Alan Watt from the University of Sheffield. It's titled An Investigation Into the use of Synthetic Vision for NPC's/Agents in Computer Games. A 2-false-coloring-viewports vision representation for NPC's is proposed to deal with more realistic behavior in games. The vision model was implemented together with a very simple AI module in a FPS-like game, using the Fly3D engine.

The thesis is available in PDF in English and Spanish. The thesis was published by Gamasutra at the following link. It was awarded as the 2nd best final degree thesis in EST'03, part of 32 JAIIO (Jornadas Argentinas de Informática en Investigación Operativa) conference in September 2003.

PUBLICATIONS
Using Synthetic Vision for Autonomous Non-Player Characters in Computer Games [ pdf ]
Enrique, Sebastian; Watt, Alan; Policarpo, Fabio; Maddock, Steve.
In Proceedings of ASAI 2002, JAIIO 31°. September 2002.
Also in Inteligencia Artificial, Revista Iberoamericana de Inteligencia Artificial, No.21 (2003), pp. 19-25, ISSN: 1137-2601. AEPIA (http://aepia.dsic.upv.es/revista/revista.html) [ pdf ]

Sparc Processor Components Implementation Using Discrete Event Simulation [ pdf ]
Authors: Enrique, Sebastian; Glinsky, Ezequiel. Director: Wainer, Gabriel.
(in Spanish). Accepted for posters presentation during conference JAIIO 28°, EST'99. September 1999.

Definition of components for the ALFA-1 simulated processor
De Simoni, L.; Enrique, S.; Glinsky, E.; Petronio, D.; Wassermann, D.; Wainer, G. et al.
Internal report (in Spanish). Departamento de Computación. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. 1998.

Definition of ALU components for the Alfa-1 simulated processor
Barletta, A.; Enrique, S.; Rubinstein, D.
Internal report (in Spanish). Departamento de Computación. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. 1998.

AWARDS
2nd Best Final Degree Thesis
An Investigation Into the Use of Synthetic Vision for NPC's/Agents in Computer Games [ pdf: spanish english summary_spanish ]
Author: Enrique, Sebastian; Director: Watt, Alan; Co-Director: Mejail, Marta.
Licenciatura Thesis, Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires
EST'03, 32 JAIIO (Jornadas Argentinas de Informática e Investigación Operativa), SADIO. September 2003.
Last Update: Oct 16, 2004 - Created by: Sebastian Enrique [senrique@cs.columbia.edu]