Alexey Stomakhin

Resume

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Experience

Dec 2023 - present Principal Researcher , Weta FX

Jan 2022 - Dec 2023 Principal Research Engineer , Weta Digital x Unity

Jun 2021 - Dec 2021 Principal Researcher , Weta Digital

Jan 2018 - Jun 2021 Senior Simulation Researcher , Weta Digital

Jul 2013 - Jan 2018 Senior Software Engineer , Walt Disney Animation Studios Devise, plan, execute and lead research and software projects for production needs

Led research, development and deployment of material point method (MPM) simulation tools
Developed and implemented MPM snow simulator with an elasto-plastic constitutive model that allowed better realism than any previous method. Optimized and extended the method to handle granular and viscoelastic materials, phase change, as well as interaction with cloth and volumetric Lagrangian solids. Built as a Houdini plugin. Published multiple SIGGRAPH papers.

Architected and led development of production water system
Developed a new artist friendly deep water wave system, boat buoyancy simulator for layout, a novel distributed fluid simulator, a.k.a. Splash, based on dissipation reducing affine particle-in-cell (APIC) research and fluxed animated boundary (FAB) method for artistic control, as well as implicit surface compositing and rendering system. Partially used for Zootopia (2016) and fully deployed on Moana (2016). Led to "Best of Disney" award and published in SIGGRAPH.

Shot and production work
Used simulators to perform shot work for Disney's Frozen (2013) and Moana (2016).

Feb 2013 - May 2013 Software Engineer / Consultant , Walt Disney Animation Studios Devise, plan, execute and lead research and software projects for production needs

Implemented the original Disney's material point method (MPM) snow solver, a.k.a. Matterhorn. Integrated the solver into the production rig for deep snow effects in Disney's Frozen (2013).

Jun 2012 - Sep 2012 Graduate Research Intern , Walt Disney Animation Studios Provide math and physical simulation expertise, fulfill production needs

Optimized Disney's Maya plugin for physically-based character skinning, a.k.a. PhysGrid, via efficient stencil computation and parallelization/vectorization on a CPU.

Jul 2011 - Sep 2011 Graduate Research Intern , Walt Disney Animation Studios Provide math and physical simulation expertise, fulfill production needs

Implemented and analyzed performance of multigrid solvers for physically-based character skinning.

Jun 2010 - Jun 2013 Research Fellow , University of California, Los Angeles Research, develop and publish new simulation technology

Developed expertise in constitutive modeling for solids simulation in graphics.

Developed the original material point method (MPM) solver for snow simulation.

Researched new simulation technologies and published several computational physics and graphics papers.

Researched and published on inverse problems, statistics and social networks.

Teaching fellow for numerical analysis, ODE/PDE and programming classes.

Apr 2008 - Jul 2009 Undergraduate Intern , Intel Corporation

Developed and implemented an automatic verification and graphical representation systems for a processor performance model.

Education

Aug 2009 - Jun 2013 Ph.D., M.A. Mathematics , University of California, Los Angeles

Area of Specialization: Applied and Computational Mathematics.

Advisors: Joseph Teran and Andrea Bertozzi.

Sep 2005 - Jun 2009 B.S. Applied Mathematics and Physics , Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Graduated with Honors. Minor: Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Publications

Art Directable Underwater Explosion Simulation. S. Flynn, A. Stomakhin, J. Wretborn, D. White. SIGGRAPH 2024 (Talks).

Pahi: A Unified Water Pipeline and Toolset. A. Stomakhin, S. Lesser, J. Wretborn, S. Flynn, J. Nixon, N. Illingworth, A. Rollet, K. Blom, D. McHale. DigiPro 2023.

Fire and Explosions in Avatar: The Way of Water. J. Edholm, A. Stomakhin, R. Deshprabhu, D. Caeiro, F. Hu, C. Pope. SIGGRAPH 2023 (Talks).

Bodyopt - A Character Deformation Pipeline for Avatar: The Way of Water. C. Sprenger, T. Mack, A. Stomakhin, F. Fernandez. SIGGRAPH 2023 (Talks).

Avatar: The Way of Cloth, Hair, and Coupled Simulation. X. Zhai, E. Schweickart, N. Ilinov, J. Wretborn, A. Stomakhin, J. Homer, J. Haryono, J. Butler. SIGGRAPH 2023 (Talks).

Loki: A Unified Multiphysics Simulation Framework for Production. S. Lesser, A. Stomakhin, G. Daviet, J. Wretborn, J. Edholm, N. Lee, E. Schweickart, X. Zhai, S. Flynn, A. Moffat. SIGGRAPH 2022.

Guided Bubbles and Wet Foam for Realistic Whitewater Simulation. J. Wretborn, S. Flynn, A. Stomakhin. SIGGRAPH 2022.

Underwater Bubbles and Coupling. A. Stomakhin, J. Wretborn, K. Blom, G. Daviet. SIGGRAPH 2020 (Talks).

A Practical Guide to Thin Film and Drips Simulation. A. Stomakhin, A. Moffat, G. Boyle. SIGGRAPH 2019 (Talks).

Fluxed Animated Boundary Method. A. Stomakhin, A. Selle. SIGGRAPH 2017.

Efficient Elasticity for Character Flesh Simulation on Octrees. A. Milne, M. McLaughlin, H. Liu, A. Stomakhin, R. Tamstorf. Disney Tech Report 2017.

Moana: Crashing Waves. D.J. Byun, A. Stomakhin. SIGGRAPH 2017 (Talks).

Moana: Performing Water. B. Frost, A. Stomakhin, H. Narita. SIGGRAPH 2017 (Talks).

Rigging the Oceans of Disney's "Moana". J. Garcia, S. Palmer, S. Drakeley, D. Hutchins, E. Ramos, R. Habel, A. Stomakhin. SIGGRAPH Asia 2016 (Technical briefs).

The Material Point Method for Simulating Continuum Materials. C. Jiang, C. Schroeder, J. Teran, A. Stomakhin, A. Selle. SIGGRAPH 2016 (Courses).

Flesh, Flab, and Fascia Simulation on Zootopia. A. Milne, M. McLaughlin, R. Tamstorf, A. Stomakhin, N. Burkard, M. Counsell, J. Canal, D. Komorowski, E. Goldberg. SIGGRAPH 2016 (Talks).

The Affine Particle-In-Cell Method. C. Jiang, C. Schroeder, A. Selle, J. Teran, A. Stomakhin. SIGGRAPH 2015.

"Big Hero 6": Into the Portal. D. Hutchins, O. Riley, J. Erickson, A. Stomakhin, R. Habel, M. Kaschalk. SIGGRAPH 2015 (Talks).

Material Point Method for Viscoelastic Fluids, Foams and Sponges. D. Ram, T. Gast, C. Jiang, C. Schroeder, A. Stomakhin, J. Teran, P. Kavehpour. Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) 2015.

Optimization Integrator for Large Time Steps. T. Gast, C. Schroeder, A. Stomakhin, C. Jiang, J. Teran. IEEE TVCG 2015.

Augmented MPM for Phase-Change and Varied Materials. A. Stomakhin, C. Schroeder, C. Jiang, L. Chai, J. Teran, A. Selle. SIGGRAPH 2014.

A Second Order Virtual Node Algorithm for Navier-Stokes Flow Problems with Interfacial Forces and Discontinuous Material Properties. C. Schroeder, A. Stomakhin, R. Howes, J. Teran. Journal of Computational Physics 2014.

A Material Point Method for Snow Simulation. A. Stomakhin, C. Schroeder, L. Chai, J. Teran, A. Selle. SIGGRAPH 2013.

Energetically Consistent Invertible Elasticity. A. Stomakhin, R. Howes, C. Schroeder, J. Teran. Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) 2012.

Reconstruction of Missing Data in Social Networks Based on Temporal Patterns of Interactions. A. Stomakhin, M. Short, A. Bertozzi. Inverse Problems 2011.

Honors and Awards

Feb 2023 Emerging Technology Award , Visual Effects Society

Primary architect of Water Toolset for Avatar: The Way of Water.

Shared with Steve Lesser, Sven Joel Wretborn and Douglas McHale.

Sep 2016 Best of Disney Technology Award , The Walt Disney Company

For developing Splash: Disney's proprietary fluid simulation system.

May 2010 Horn-Moez Prize , University of California, Los Angeles

For excellence in first year graduate studies.

Film Credits

Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014), Zootopia (2016), Moana (2016), Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), Mortal Engines (2018), Alita: Battle Angel (2019), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Nyad (2023).

Publicity

The Creators of Water: Behind the Scenes of Special Effects. Epsiloon, 2024 (PDF).

The water technology behind Avatar: The Way of Water. Unity Technologies Blog, 2023.

Total immersion: Weta Digital's VFX toolset on Avatar: The Way of Water. Fired By Design, 2023.

The water droplets on the kids fighting on the beach in 'Avatar: The Way of Water' took 8 days to simulate. Befores & Afters, 2023.

Meet the STEM Graduate Using His Degree to Work on Hit Disney Films. Top Universities, 2017.

Alum creates software to breathe life into 'Moana', 'Zootopia'. Daily Bruin, 2017.

UCLA mathematicians bring ocean to life for Disney's 'Moana'. UCLA Newsroom, 2017.

UCLA connections contribute to winter wonderland of 'Frozen'. Daily Bruin, 2014.

UCLA mathematicians bring snow to life for Disney's 'Frozen'. UCLA Newsroom, 2014.

Fighting violent gang crime with math. Science Blog, 2011.

Skills

Solid background in applied and computational mathematics, including research and coursework in ODEs and PDEs, numerical analysis, scientific computing, numerical linear algebra, computational solid and fluid mechanics, multigrid methods, optimization, parallel and distributed programming.

Fluent in C/C++ but also experienced with a wide range of other programming languages, packages, and paradigms; including Python, Perl, VEX, Java, Matlab/Octave, Mathematica, Maple.

Libraries: Boost, Maya API, Houdini API, MPI, Pthreads, OpenMP, TBB, OpenVDB, OpenEXR.

Tools: cmake, bash, scons, valgrind, gdb, VTune, emacs, Sublime Text, vi.

Markup/Interchange: HTML, XML, JSON, LaTeX, PostScript.

Environments: Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX, Windows.

Version control: Git, SVN.

References

Available upon request.