Nick Sharp
@nmwsharp
3D geometry researcher: graphics, vision, 3D ML, etc | Senior Research Scientist @NVIDIA | running, hockey, baking, & cheesy sci fi | opinions my own | he/him
Giant new v1.2 release of Polyscope! Adds support for tet & hex meshes, transparency, ground shadows, slice planes, variable-size points, setting camera views, and more. Try Polyscope for easy 3D visualization in C++ & Python: polyscope.run Thread of new features! 1/n
While making some figures for SGI* this year, I made some "behind the scenes" footage of how they get made: youtube.com/playlist?list=… Basically a video extension of cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/faq.h… ("figures?") *SGI is a great program run by @JustinMSolomon & deserves more funding
Also: this paper was recognized with a best paper award at SGP! Huge thanks to the organizers & congrats to the other awardees. I was super lucky to work with @yousufmsoliman on this one, he's truly the mastermind behind it all!
Logarithmic maps are incredibly useful for algorithms on surfaces--they're local 2D coordinates centered at a given source. @yousufmsoliman and I found a better way to compute log maps w/ fast short-time heat flow in "The Affine Heat Method" presented @ SGP2025 today! 🧵
Sampling points on an implicit surface is surprisingly tricky, but we know how to cast rays against implicit surfaces! There's a classic relationship between line-intersections and surface-sampling, which turns out to be quite useful for geometry processing.
Our #SGP25 work studies a simple and effective way to uniformly sample implicit surfaces by casting rays. (1/9) “Uniform Sampling of Surfaces by Casting Rays” w/ @_abhishekmadan @nmwsharp @_AlecJacobson
Curious about 3D Gaussians, simulation, rendering and the latest from #NVIDIA? Come to the NVIDIA Kaolin Library live-coding session at #CVPR2025, powered by a cloud GPU reserved especially for you. Wed, Jun 11, 8-noon. Bring your laptop! tinyurl.com/nv-kaolin-cvpr…
In geometry, half our algorithms are "just" Laplacians/smoothness/heat flow under the hood. In ML, half our techniques are "just" adding noise in the right place. Unsurprisingly, these two tools work great together. Check out Selena's research on 3D neural fields to see how!
Our #Siggraph25 work found a simple, nearly one-line change that greatly eases neural field optimization for a wide variety of existing representations. “Stochastic Preconditioning for Neural Field Optimization” w/ @merlin_ND @_AlecJacobson @nmwsharp
FlexiCubes is now under Apache 2.0! 🎉 We've been excited to see FlexiCubes extracting high-quality meshes across the community in projects like TRELLIS and TripoSF --- now it's available with a more permissive license. Let's keep building. 💙 👉 Flexicubes is in NVIDIA…
🚀Excited to release PartField—a feedforward model that learns part-based feature fields for 3D shapes! It enables lightning-fast⚡️, robust, open-world hierarchical 3D part seg and unlocks cross-shape applications like co-seg and correspondence! 🔗shorturl.at/HnUmc 1/n
Announcing SGI 2025! Undergrads and MS students: Apply for 6 weeks of paid summer geometry processing research. No experience needed: 1 week tutorials + 5 weeks of projects. Mentors are top researchers in this emerging branch of graphics/computing/math. sgi.mit.edu
🎉@thekhronosgroup launched the Slang Initiative, featuring an #opensource compiler provided by NVIDIA. ➡️ khronos.org/news/press/khr… This initiative aims to enhance GPU shader development by offering advanced language features that improve productivity and portability. Open…
New link! This one is specific to my team. If you applied at the original link, no need to re-apply. nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/NVIDIAEx… (note: the location listed in the posting is Toronto, but applicants are encouraged from anywhere)
My team at nvidia is recruiting PhD research interns for next year. Do you like ML + graphics/vision/geometry/simulation? Apply to work with us! nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/NVIDIAEx…
Interested in generating meshes using generative models? Our latest paper, SpaceMesh, tackles this challenge by focusing on directly creating manifold meshes. Super thrilled to be part of this amazing team! Check out the details below ⬇️
Generating nice meshes in AI pipelines is hard. Our #SIGGRAPHAsia2024 paper proposes a new representation which guarantees manifold connectivity, and even supports polygonal meshes -- a big step for downstream editing and simulation. (1/N) SpaceMesh: research.nvidia.com/labs/toronto-a……
We found a way to generate manifold, polygonal meshes from feature vectors at points -- even if the vectors are random, you are still guaranteed to get a manifold mesh! How? Halfedge meshes, permutations, spacetimes, and more! Check out the 🧵. This project was a blast!
Generating nice meshes in AI pipelines is hard. Our #SIGGRAPHAsia2024 paper proposes a new representation which guarantees manifold connectivity, and even supports polygonal meshes -- a big step for downstream editing and simulation. (1/N) SpaceMesh: research.nvidia.com/labs/toronto-a……
Our CDTs (Centers for Doctoral Training) are great program-based opportunities for fully-funded PhD positions. Specifically, consider the Machine-Learning CDT: mlsystems.uk If you are interested and specifically want to work with me on ML+geometry, contact me!
My team at nvidia is recruiting PhD research interns for next year. Do you like ML + graphics/vision/geometry/simulation? Apply to work with us! nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/NVIDIAEx…