Who am I?

Hi! My name’s Albert Rodriguez, a Computer Scientist from the sunny Barcelona. I’ve been in the industry for over a decade in different environments. I currently work as a Software Developer on real time distributed systems at Adaptive Consulting check my LinkedIn profile for more info.

Why computer Graphics NOW?

During my career I’ve always wanted to explore the world of Computer Graphics. I think it’s a fascinating area of Computer Graphics and together with Artificial Inteligence one of the most inter-disciplinary fields, where artists, hardware engineers, mathematicians and phisicists play a key role.

I’m especially interested in areas around Research & Development. Unfortunately, back in the day my personal, as well as the general world situation in my city, didn’t really allow me to look for such a career (we’re talking about 2011-2012).

Academically speaking the options were mostly revolving around Videogames, there was not really any kind of specialization in Computer graphics R&D (at least in Barcelona) and options were really limited to learn on your own especially if you need to work to support your family. Not to mention technologies and frameworks around languages like C++ were widely used but poorly standardized (C++11 started changing that)

Industry-wise not many studios were prolific at the time so even if I studied and learned on my own I would’ve found myself competing with many other people for a very niche market on an industry that was historically not really well paid, (plus being in Spain where [before foreign tech companies started coming] the mentality has always been to pay as less as possible in tech).

Now on this third decade of the century things have really turned around: academic programs in computer graphics have started surfacing in Spain, there’s more research than the past decade. There are companies that do Computer Graphics outside the Videogame industry. And of course the latter got serious: indie studios are really a thing and many videogame companies have landed into the city: Ubisoft, King (now owned by Blizzard) or Bandai Namco just to name a few.

Those were the reasons why, 7 years after I graduated from my BsC, I decided to get out of my comfort zone, and try luck again in the world of Computer Graphics.

Where are you so far?

So after some research I got into an MsC program at U-Tad specifically the program in Computational Graphics and Simulation. This program was created by industry-leading experts in Spain on Computer Graphics and Simulation fields, which in summary means two things:

  1. I get to know how the industry is in the country
  2. I’m entitled to pursue a PhD (if I’m still in the mood to pursue a more academic career)

Knowing that I could not study full-time I got to an agreement with the Masters Director to split the school period and the delivery of the thesis. The idea was to focus on getting good grades and focus on regular assignments on the first year and do a good thesis (which is normally part of the first year) as part of a real project inside a company.

So far I’ve finished the school period with an average grade of 9.51/10, it was a very intense year (which deserves its own post) and the idea now is to get ready for the thesis which I’ll deliver in summer 2021.

To enhance my knowledge and my skills towards a real industry project, on top of the masters program, I’m working with Marco Giordano as my mentor on a program to accelerate my knowledge of real-time APIs with Vulkan.

Why Leap of Faith?

After my MsC school year you can imagine I tackled many areas in Computer Graphics, unfortunately we could not get in-depth on the ones I liked the most this means that to transition to a real job I’ll need to develop my continue learning which is why I’m on a mentorship. The idea of Leap of Faith is to showcase everything I learned from my MsC put into practice on a real-time graphics engine with a modern graphics API.

The name signifies the moment I’m really into right now, where I’m objectively a Senior software engineer but I don’t have real world experience in the field of Computer Graphics which means that I’ll need to work really hard and jump a leap which I don’t really know where it will take…