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Gijs Richard Kaerts

@belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com
1.3K followers 410 following 70 posts

Graphics nerd - RHI Rendering Lead on Unreal Engine @ Epic. Previously Rendering @ Roblox, Deviation Games, Halo, and more! Also on Mastodon: @gkaerts@mastodon.gamedev.place 🇧🇪🇨🇦

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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 28/09/2026
It's technically possible, but it's not cheap as it stands right now. All of this leans very heavily on HWRT, and the denoising and temporal accumulation passes are quite bandwidth heavy. I really haven't done any dedicated performance work, so I'm sure the cost can come down significantly still.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 28/09/2026
More stochastic all the things! First attempt at an implementation of ORCA as presented by @jontology2.bsky.social at Advances in RTR at Siggraph this year. Two direct lighting samples per pixel + a separate diffuse and specular radiance cache sample. Still needs a lot of work.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 24/09/2026
Also needless to say, but every light is shadow casting!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 24/09/2026
This started off as a ReSTIR implementation, but quickly moved away from that. More details soon!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 24/09/2026
Finally doing a proper attempt at stochastic light evaluation in the hobby renderer. 60-ish lights in the scene, 2 light samples evaluated per pixel. All lights are area lights, currently either spheres or tubes.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 17/09/2026
I've literally been in this exact same spot regarding flatbuffers and made the exact same choice you did. No regrets.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 26/06/2026
Hi Guerilla!
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Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
The Cost of AI alextardif.com/AI.html
alextardif.com
Alex Tardif: Graphics Programmer
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 24/03/2026
Absolutely horrible day at Epic today. So many exceptionally skilled and talented people across all disciplines lost their jobs. If anyone out there is hiring, please consider reaching out to them to see if they'd be a fit. I'm always happy to facilitate or connect people if needed!
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Morten Vassvik @vassvik.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
A colleague sent me this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jVo... No further comments needed, it's **very** good. I've seen some of his videos in the past, but I missed this one. Glad I saw it.
youtube.com
Pushing Simulation to the Limit to Find Order in Chaos
YouTube video by Drew's Campfire
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mmalex @mmalex.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
a fantastic video on the relatively recently described emergent property 'branched flow'. the connection to caustic patterns on a swimming pool was a great connection to something i was familiar with. youtu.be/6aZ45RNHa6U?...
youtu.be
We Just Discovered Why Light Does This
YouTube video by The Action Lab
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 03/12/2025
First time I get to share some cool Unreal Engine stuff since I joined Epic! Ever wondered about how rendering work travels through to your GPU? Curious about our latest GPU profiling tools? Give this video a watch: youtu.be/vnbARZHccpQ?...
youtu.be
New GPU Profiler and RHI Submission Pipeline | Unreal Fest Stockholm 2025
YouTube video by Unreal Engine
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 14/06/2025
I've been pretty quiet on here recently, but I thought I'd share some life updates! Today was my last day at Roblox. It's been amazing few years, and I'll really miss the team I'm leaving behind! Next week I start a new adventure at Epic Games as a Lead Rendering Programmer on Unreal Engine!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 14/05/2025
Thanks for sharing! I was there in the audience at the time, but haven't rewatched it since. I'd really love to see more of these talks on how a solution was achieved in addition to how the solution works.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 05/05/2025
I ran the Vancouver Marathon yesterday, which was my first ever full Marathon! Ended with a time of 3h38min, which I'm super happy with! Was supposed to run it last year, but got injured just weeks before the race. Feels incredibly gratifying to finally be able to run it and finish it!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 29/04/2025
First time voting in a federal Canadian election since I became a citizen. And what an election too! Keep those elbows up Canada!
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 25/04/2025
PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 24/04/2025
Always fun to debug these types of issues where your prepass for example uses an FMA somewhere for determining vertex positions while your main shading pass somehow doesn't!
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Shinies & Shadows @shiniesandshadows.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
RDV au prochain stream avec @beammyup.bsky.social et @yoriculaire.bsky.social le mercredi 16 avril à 17h Montréal / 23h Barcelone! Sur twitch.tv/shiniesandshadows évidemment!
media.tenor.com
a white dog says i 'm a pro
Alt: a white cat putting sun glasses on. Overlay text states "i 'm a pro"
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Shinies & Shadows @shiniesandshadows.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Salut! @yoriculaire.bsky.social et @beammyup.bsky.social vont continuer leur exploration de l'utilisation du USD dans le moteur de Remedy games ce vendredi à 17h EST/ 23h CET! On a hâte de vous y voir 🤩✨
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 25/03/2025
I think you might've convinced me to give this a proper shot. I was never against the idea of using LLMs to assist in writing code, but for some reason it never seemed to register as something I'd inherently want to use. It is appealing to be able to get to the interesting hard problems more quickly
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 17/03/2025
I'll be at GDC this week! Probably won't be around the conference center much throughout the day, but would be happy to meet up after hours is others are around!
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Justin McElroy 🇨🇦 @jmcelroy.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
the best place in the city, on the seawall past the lions gate bridge, when the full ocean opens up and the pavement bends out of view a world of possibilities, just waiting to be explored
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 28/02/2025
On Bluesky chat! Basically just messaged that we're around at that time!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 28/02/2025
DM'd you!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 28/02/2025
We didn't! Just passed by! Open to an invite though, haha!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 28/02/2025
When in Amsterdam we of course have to pass by Guerilla! With @beammyup.bsky.social
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Montreal ACM SIGGRAPH @montreal-siggraph.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Join us next March 5th, 6:30pm, at the beautiful offices of Rodeo FX for our next RGBA Mixer! It is a special edition we organized in partnership with WIA Montreal and Rodeo FX❤️ Don't miss out!😉 🎟️Register here: rgbamixer.eventbrite.ca
rgbamixer.eventbrite.ca
RGBA Mixer
Join us at RGBA Mixer, a welcoming and casual networking event for all professionals of the Montreal's Computer Graphics industry!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 21/02/2025
Oh boy does it feel good to be Canadian tonight!!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 23/01/2025
Neat!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 21/01/2025
You were major part of making this all happen! It's good to be able to celebrate all that hard work.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 21/01/2025
I don't discuss Roblox much on here, but today is special! My team has been working on a lighting scalability system (a project we dubbed "Unified Lighting") for quite some time now, and today we're finally letting developers play around with it in Roblox Studio! devforum.roblox.com/t/let-there-...
devforum.roblox.com
Let There Be (Unified) Light! Unified Lighting Enters Studio Beta
Hello Creators, Roblox is committed to providing an exceptional user experience for everyone, no matter what experience they jump into or what device they’re using. This is why we prioritize building...
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Shinies & Shadows @shiniesandshadows.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Bonjour Hi et Bonne année 2025! 🎊🥳 Ce lundi, @yoriculaire.bsky.social et @beammyup.bsky.social lancent le premier stream de 2025 avec la lecture de developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpug..., l'une de vos suggestions! :) Nous avons très hâte de vous retrouver ce lundi 11h EST, 17h CET sur Twitch! ✨
developer.nvidia.com
Chapter 18. Relaxed Cone Stepping for Relief Mapping
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 18/12/2024
Congratulations Trung!!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 12/12/2024
Do you end up storing UVs in your gbuffer at all in that case?
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 12/12/2024
I think I remember you mentioning in one of your talks that you have a lean gbuffer by not writing color to it and instead sampling colors based on material ID. Does VT allow you to support textures this way as well by guaranteeing you'll only ever have one texture atlas for all materials?
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 12/12/2024
Watching the sun rise over the water and north shore mountains on early morning seawall runs. The breathtaking view on the first clear sky day after the mountains got a dump of snow. The abundance of amazing and interesting food options across the city. And so much more too!
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Trung 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸 @trungle.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
One of the things that I've learned over the last year being the sole graphics engineer on a large Unreal project is how important it was to collaborate with tech arts and QA more so than ever. Daily talk. Being good friends. It makes up for all the job fulfillment of game development.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 05/12/2024
Do you explicitly control the size of the lights on your end, or could users somehow make huge lights which breaks this assumption?
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 05/12/2024
OpenUSD update! All of my "core" asset types can now bake into runtime formats from USD + I have a good workflow set up to add additional USD schemas and get those into engine runtime formats easily! Time to actually port over some rendering code!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 05/12/2024
That's what I love about the community! Throw something out there that works and get some cool people to pitch in on refining the idea. I love as well that you shared shader code for others to noodle on. Haven't had a chance to look yet myself, but I'm eager to make some time to do so!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 05/12/2024
Thinking out loud here: What's the point of tools like Intellisense when even on a small- to medium-sized codebase it takes longer to resolve type/function information than it does for me to just look up the information I need? Feels like it just adds another barrier instead of removing one!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 05/12/2024
Wonderful talk, thank you! I very much appreciated the slide on not getting why the combined linear + point sample method for contact shadow ray marching worked.
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Shinies & Shadows @shiniesandshadows.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
Nous sommes à la recherche de notre prochain sujet! S'il y a un article/blog/présentation ou autre format que vous aimeriez disséquer avec @yoriculaire.bsky.social, @beammyup.bsky.social et notre communauté, envoyez-nous vos suggestions! Ici 👇 ou en DM ✨
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 01/12/2024
And the first few USD asset types pass the runtime asset integration tests! Neat!
A list of build steps showing the output of USD assets being builtAsset import test suite showing successful loading of assets generated from USD
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 01/12/2024
I don't have support for skeletal animations yet, so no UsdSkel right now. Shading and materials will be entirely custom (for now?), but I'll use UsdShade prims to allow other tools to get material previews.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 01/12/2024
UsdLux and others will come in once I work on my actual scene representation. I'm just covering assets right now which need some form of "baked" runtime representation.
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 01/12/2024
I'll write a custom schema plugin for anything USD can't natively represent, which in my case is pretty much anything outside of geometry. We can just use good old UsdGeomMesh for that!
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Gijs Richard Kaerts @belgianrenderer.gijskaerts.com · 01/12/2024
OpenUSD wrangling time! Goal for today: Build a proof of concept for representing all of my renderer's asset types (e.g. geometry, textures, material shaders, materials, etc.) in native USD where possible. Bonus points if we can get the asset pipeline to spit out runtime assets!
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Myriam Beauvais @beammyup.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
We're streaming tomorrow 11am EST/ 5pm CET to talk about the performance implications and optimization options of this painterly shading approach! Joignez-nous sur Twitch! :D
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