Ran Zhang

PhD in Computer Graphics

About me

Halo, I’m Ran Zhang!
I'm currently a Lead Graphics AI Researcher at Tencent Video AI Center in New York, working on AIGC for films, animations and 3D contents.
Previously I was a postdoctoral researcher in Human Computer Interaction Lab at Hasso Plattner Institute, working with Prof. Patrick Baudisch.
I got my PhD from IST Austria in 2020, supervised by Prof. Bernd Bickel, and supported by MSCA-ITN DISTRO project. Previously, I got my Master degree from the University of Science and Technology of China(USTC) in 2014, supervised by Prof. Xuejin Chen and Prof. Ligang Liu; and a Bachelor degree from Tianjin University in 2011.
My current research interests include AI + filmmaking, Neural rendering, Implicit content creation and Generative media, including images, videos and 3D contents.
If you are interested, please check my recent publications.

News

Experience

Lead AI Graphics Researcher

Senior Graphics Researcher

Postdoctoral Researcher

Worked with Patrick Baudisch

Co-founder and Tech Lead

Postdoctoral Researcher

Worked with Bernd Bickel

Research Assistant (PhD student)

Supervised by Bernd Bickel

Research Intern

Mentored by Yang Liu, worked with Yizhong Zhang

Visiting Student

Worked with Niloy Mitra

Visiting Student

Worked with Tim Weyrich

Research Assistant (Master student)

Supervised by Xuejin Chen and Ligang Liu

Research Intern

Mentored by Xin Tong

Projects

Academic blog: GraphiCon

State of the art technologies of Computer graphics. Interesting graphics papers.

GraphiCon

outreach / graphics
Since:
12 Mar 2017
Site link:
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/graphicon

GraphiCon is an UGC media focus on computer graphics, it is founded by several graphics researchers. Currently it is hosted on Zhihu and Wechat official account platform.

GAMES Webinar

Weekly computer graphics webinar

GAMES Webinar

outreach / graphics
Since:
22 Jun 2017
Site link:
www.games-cn.org

GAMES stands for Graphics And Mixed Environment Seminar, aims at spreading computer graphics techniques and assisting young graphics researchers.

Computational design of functionalities

Algorithm assisted design for 3d printable objects with functionalities.

Computational design of functionalities

research / computational design
Date:
Jul 2017
Site link:
http://visualcomputing.ist.ac.at/publications/2017/MechRet/

In our SIGGRAPH 2017 paper: Functionality-aware Retargeting of Mechanisms to 3D Shapes, We present an interactive design system to create functional mechanical objects. Our computational approach allows novice users to retarget an existing mechanical template to a user-specified input shape.

Deployable structures

Structures that can be compressed and deployed into certain shapes.

Deployable structures

research / computational design
Date:
Jan 2016
Site link:
http://staff.ustc.edu.cn/~xjchen99/scissor.html

Scissor structures are used to generate deployable objects for space-saving in a variety of applications, from architecture to aerospace science. While deployment from a small, regular shape to a larger one is easy to design, we focus on a more challenging task: designing a planar scissor structure that deploys from a given source shape into a specific target shape. We propose a two-step constructive method to generate a scissor structure from a high-dimensional parameter space. Topology construction of the scissor structure is first performed to approximate the two given shapes, as well as to guarantee the deployment. Then the geometry of the scissor structure is optimized in order to minimize the connection deflections and maximize the shape approximation. With the optimized parameters, the deployment can be simulated by controlling an anchor scissor unit. Physical deployable objects are fabricated according to the designed scissor structures by using 3D printing or manual assembly.

BrickMe Studio

BrickMe Studio is the world's first AI-assisted system for generating brick assemblies from a single portrait.

BrickMe Studio

product / design
Since:
June 2020
Site link:
https://brickme.deecamp.com

BrickMe Studio is the world's first AI-assisted system for generating brick assemblies from a single portrait.

Ran Zhang

PhD in Computer Graphics