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Shlomi Steinberg

@ssteinberg.xyz
245 followers 99 following 20 posts

Assistant Professor @UWaterloo CS rendering, light transport & optics PhD @UCSB, MSc @WeizmannScience, formerly @Crytek @NVIDIA. 🇮🇱🇨🇦✡️ ssteinberg.xyz

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Reposted by Shlomi Steinberg
Yining Karl Li @yiningkarlli.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
There's a neat short paper from Eurographics this year that evaluates how well microfacet shading models actually predict measured reflectance. The answer is: not nearly as well as one would hope! (1/3) ssteinberg.xyz/2026_surface...
Screenshot of the first page of a computer graphics research paper titled “On the Accuracy of Surface Scattering Theories,” by Matthew Avolio, Eugene D’Eon, and Shlomi Steinberg from the University of Waterloo and Nvidia. The page uses a standard academic layout with a large centered title, author names below, and a wide comparison figure occupying most of the page.

The main figure compares real photographs of reflective metal surfaces with rendered predictions from two surface scattering models. Five vertical panels, labeled 1 through 5, each show checkerboard reflections on glossy metal viewed at grazing angles. Within each panel are image strips labeled “photo,” “GGX,” and “SSA,” allowing direct comparison between measured appearance and rendered results. The surfaces range from blurry and diffuse on the left to sharper and more mirror-like on the right. Above each panel are colored line graphs representing measured surface profile data, and along the right edge are small blue-green 3D visualizations of microscopic surface geometry.
The figure caption explains that the paper compares photographs to GGX microfacet and smooth-surface generalized Harvey-Shack predictions derived from measured surface geometry using AFM and profilometer scans.

Below the figure is the abstract, which states that the paper evaluates how accurately surface scattering theories predict appearance directly from measured geometry instead of fitting reflectance data. The authors conclude that existing models fail at some viewing angles, especially grazing angles, and suggest that the characteristic “GGX look” may result from wave-optical effects on Gaussian surfaces rather than non-Gaussian geometry.
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 10/05/2026
youtu.be/Xolb8DcrbLc The recorded EUROGRAPHICS 2026 talk for our wave tracing paper. Very honored that this paper received the Günter Enderle Best Paper Honorable Mention award. Collaboration with Matt Pharr (NVIDIA).
youtu.be
Wave Tracing: Generalizing The Path Integral To Wave Optics – EUROGAPHICS 2026 Talk
YouTube video by Shlomi Steinberg
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 30/08/2025
wave_tracer 0.1 released wavetracer.dev wave_tracer combines path tracing and wave optics in a novel way, for practical general-purpose wave simulations across a variety of EM modalities and applications.
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 09/08/2025
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Reposted by Shlomi Steinberg
Amir Vaxman @amirvaxman-dgp.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
I stand (sit) behind this: alecjacobson.com/weblog/siggr... I will also warn Israeli potential attendants (meaning any civilian connection to Israel, like familial relations, loose as it may be) risk *getting kidnapped or worse*. Yes, even if you travel with a foreign passport, you may be targeted,
alecjacobson.com
SIGGRAPH Asia 2026 in Malaysia would be unsafe for LGBTQ+ attendees
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 20/02/2025
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 19/02/2025
UWaterloo
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 07/02/2025
Whistler, CA.
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 23/11/2024
To be presented in SIGGRAPH Asia: A path tracing-compatible formulation for general-purpose wave transport. See how light transport, under rigorous Wigner optics, can be done practically for optical, long-wavelength (RADAR/cellular), and acoustics applications. ssteinberg.xyz/2023/03/27/r...
ssteinberg.xyz
A Generalized Ray Formulation For Wave-Optics Rendering
Under ray-optical light transport, the classical ray serves as a linear and local "point query" of light's behaviour. Linearity and locality are crucial to the formulation of sophisticated path tracin...
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 18/11/2024
Happy to announce that I have joined UWaterloo as assistant professor. If you are interested in doing a PhD in rendering or light transport, check out ssteinberg.xyz/students.
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Shlomi Steinberg @ssteinberg.xyz · 18/11/2024
A Free-Space Diffractions BSDF. This paper addresses the problem of simulating the diffractions ("bending") of light around geometry and obstacles, in an efficient manner with ray tracing. Collaboration with NVIDIA. t.co/FnMiR8XO2g
t.co
https://ssteinberg.xyz/2024/04/05/free_space_diffractions_bsdf/
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