Sony Santa Monica Hires Former Ubisoft Montréal and CD Projekt Graphics Wizard Bartłomiej Wroński
Sony Santa Monica has been on the prowl for new talent lately, and recently managed to nab the definitely talented Graphics and Engine Programmer Bartłomiej Wroński.
Wroński is well known in the industry for his technical talks on next-gen graphics and volumetric fog effects at GDC and Siggraph, and has previously been working at Ubisoft Montréal and CD Projekt RED.
His Linkedin Profile (which still doesn’t indicate his new role) is quite enlightening on his many proficiencies:
- Lighting techniques – indirect and global illumination, physically based shading and pipelines.
- Physically based atmospheric effects – sky, fog and scattering-related phenomena.
- Post-processing and screen space effects.
- Complete rendering framework design and maintenance.
- CPU, memory and GPU platform-specific optimizations and bugfixing.
- Tools design aiming to help ensure technical quality of assets.
- Direct work with artists and designers and coordinating optimization process.
The profile also lists his specific role in every game he worked on, and there’s quite a lot to take in:
Far Cry 4
- Redesigning whole HDR post-effects pipeline to fully utilize the power of next-get consoles: motion blur, depth of field, tonemapping and bloom, various image based effects and techniques.
- Major work on GPU optimizations on Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4.
- Low level optimizations of all parts of graphics pipeline targeting the GCN next-gen console architecture.
- Various work on lighting and materials – improving quality and performance.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity
- Physically based rain drops and compute shader simulated rain ripples.
- Wet materials, wetness world progression and wet surfaces.
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
- R&D activities – lighting, post effects and atmospheric effects.
- Seveloping and shipping novel next-gen volumetric fog algorithm and screen-space raymarched reflections technique.
- Taking part in designing and developing cross-generation Global Illumination technique – Deferred Normalized Irradiance Probes; optimizing next-gen compute and geometry shader based rain and atmospheric effects
- Analysing next-gen console GPU architecture and creating guidelines for algorithm and technique development and optimizations.
- Helping porting and optimizing renderer for new next gen platforms – Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4.
- Optimizations and bugfixing on all game platforms – X360, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3.
Cyberpunk 2077/The Witcher 3
- Graphics and gameplay prototypes.
- Direct X 11 programming – written whole hybrid tiled deferred/forward renderer.
- Physically based shaders and lighting.
The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition
- Managing whole rendering pipeline.
- Refactor of most of core and engine systems (streaming system, save system, etc.).
- Refactor and redesign of whole post-process pipeline for Xbox 360.
- Performance and memory optimizations.
The Witcher 2
- Memory management
- Resource management
- Creating tools for profiling and optimization
- Post-processing programming
- Lighting programming
- General rendering programming
- Direct work with artists
Given the nature of his contribution and the fact that basically every game he worked on looked (or looks) absolutely awesome, there are few doubts on the reasons why the house of God of War wanted Wroński to be part of the team.
Hopefully we’ll hear more details on the PS4 game (or games) the studio has been secretly working on after God of War: Ascension, but considering Wroński’s expertise and the well known talent of the whole studio, I’m quite excited to see how it’ll look too.
