Ziqi (Edward) Shi

(510) 705-2437  /  edward.shi0528@gmail.com  /  Website  /  GitHub  / 

I'm a Master's student in computer science at the University of Southern California. My interest leans heavily into computer graphics, including offline and realtime simulations, real time rendering, character animation, game engines, mixed reality and any other novel technologies that can apply towards building a more vibrant virtual world.

Highlighted Projects

Built spacecraft propulsion system for realistic frictionless flight simulation in Unreal Engine 5. Designed a reaction control scheme for spacecraft attitude control simulation. The control scheme considers the distribution of mass and thruster positions to solve the thruster power allocation required to achieve any desired attitude with any arbitrary engine layout. Incorporated the heat simulation from project Heatseek as an important part of the combat - build gameplay loop.

Trailor: B.L.U.E.

Built a skeleton with forward kinematic system with C++ Eigen library to drive character deformations with skeleton Euler angle changes.
Built an inverse kinematic solver with C++ Adol-C library for the skin deformation system to make certain joints of the skeleton reach for certain user defined positions, simplifying the animation/posing process.

Lead a team of 6 engineers to develop a unity2D based dungeon shooter game. Designed a crossover system that gives each combination of weapon classes and ability classes a unique passive ability, and tested player reception with a data analysis pipeline.

Playable at: GhoStand

Incorporated a heat simulation system in Naughty Dog's prime game engine that simulates the effect of heat transfer both within and between scene objects. Modified the rendering pipeline to compile a shader that can take in the simulated heat physics and create an infrared sensor like view of the scene.

Developed a highly efficient rendering algorithm that accurately simulates light physics, enabling the generation of realistic images from complex 3D scenes. Implemented a series of optimization techniques to significantly enhance the algorithm's performance. Notably, for objects averaging approximately 10,000 triangles, achieved a remarkable acceleration of over 10,000 times compared to the baseline approach. Employed a bounding volume hierarchy construction algorithm, resulting in a substantial 1,000-fold acceleration by optimizing the intersection test to operate in O(log(n)) time. Additionally, incorporated a Russian roulette technique in global illumination rendering, contributing an extra 10-fold acceleration.

Using Autodesk Maya, fully modelled, shaded, animated, and rendered a 1-minute short with a team of 5. As project manager, refined the director's design concepts, planned the work schedule for every group member, and supervised its execution for the duration of the project.
Final Short: Too Close for Comfort

Developed a feature-rich Minecraft shader pack using GLSL within an open-source community project (OptiFine). Implemented realistic shadow rendering, water ripple effects, wind simulations, and more, greatly enhancing the game's visual realism. Optimized the shader pack's performance, achieving a smooth frame rate of around 60 fps on average laptops. This was accomplished by modelling physical simulations with simple equations.
Project website

Individually designed a game that includes random world generation and exploration. Included a user interface system that could easily accommodate using seeds to replay a previous game or load a saved game. Painted textures and character sprites necessary in the game and implemented a win/lose condition that is visible to the player.
Project showcase video

This is a pet project. I hosted a dedicated server of Digital Combat Simulator on AWS for me and my friends to play on. I also set up a port forwarding system from the server to my PC that can help me remotely access game files and manage in-game assets in real time. My friends and I also designed real-life inspired combat missions for us to play in. They can be operated either through automated scripts or well formatted rule sheets. Some of the missions are available here.

This website template is adapted from Dr. Jon Barron.