alexander_rybak
Expert Technical Artist · Real-Time Rendering · Graphics Engineering

Alexander Rybak

I'm a technical artist. At Firaxis Games I own the UE5 material and rendering pipeline: the shaders, the standards, and the tools that keep the art team moving. On my own time I'm building RetroEngine, a DirectX 12 engine that simulates how CRTs actually drew a picture, after an old late-'90s CRT sent me down the rabbit hole.

Watch the video resume See the work Resume
2017

Building VR/AR applications

2019–22

nDisplay in early production, talking with Epic's engineers

2022

Local LLM + RAG agents, before mainstream assistants

2025

Custom DX12 engine with physical CRT simulation

// Video resume

Down the Stack

Down the Stack video thumbnail

A video resume, set to music.

// Selected work

Engines, shaders, and shipped games

RetroEngine rendering a scene through its CRT simulation
Personal engine · 2025–present

RetroEngine

My own DirectX 12 engine, written from scratch. It simulates the beam, the phosphors, and the glass of a real CRT instead of faking it with a filter. It's grown from a renderer into an engine with an editor, and there's a game being built inside it now.

  • Stable 60 FPS on a Radeon 660M integrated GPU, before instancing or culling
  • ECS, terrain streaming, shared-ownership texture cache
  • ImGui editor with a live GPU memory debug panel
DX12HLSLC++Featured on 80.lv
How the CRT works →retrogameengine.com →
Ships fighting around a black hole in The Quantum Conflict
Shipped · Steam · 2024

The Quantum Conflict

A space dogfighting game made by a two-person team; Josh Chapman and I split the work 50/50. FlashPoint Games published it. On my side: rendering and effects, plus content and Endless Mode.

  • Six custom URP post-process effects in HLSL, unlocked at runtime as in-game "dimensions"
  • Raymarched Mandelbulb boss with soft shadows and fractal coloring
  • Screen-space lensing for black holes and wormholes, time-bubble fields, and a VHS-style rewind effect
UnityURPHLSL
Shader breakdowns →Steam →
A dug tunnel opening onto a night sky in Cozy Holes
Shipped · Steam · 2026

Cozy Holes

A relaxing digging adventure, also made by a two-person team; Josh Chapman and I split the work 50/50, and FlashPoint Games published it. On my side: world building, terrain carving, effects, and lighting.

  • Staged, event-driven terrain carving on voxel terrain, with biome-aware texturing
  • Built most of the island: caverns, tunnels, lava pits, and temples
  • Fixed underground rendering (sky, weather, and water), plus the stylized shading and bloom controls
Unity 6Shader GraphVFX
Steam →
# synthetic data from Unity, -150° to 150° in 2.5° steps
light.rotation = Euler(0, angleY, 0)
# 3-layer CNN, 128×128 input
validation MAE ≈ 8.7
Personal R&D

Tools that learn

Side projects at the overlap of machine learning and real-time content.

  • Local LLM and retrieval-augmented agents since 2022, before mainstream assistants
  • Predicting light direction with a CNN trained on synthetic data from Unity
PythonLocal LLMsRAGKeras
Light-angle case study →

Older work, including UE4 and Houdini effects, environments, and props, is in the archive →

// Experience

Where I've worked

Apr 2026 – present

Expert Technical Artist · Firaxis Games

I own the UE5 material and rendering pipeline, including the parent material systems, the HLSL shader libraries, and the rendering standards for a team of up to 6 technical artists. I built a region variant system that cut map production effort by 62%, and a building kit pipeline that cut authoring time by 95%. Shipped Civilization VII and an unannounced title.

Aug 2022 – Apr 2026

Senior Technical Artist · Firaxis Games

Established the Technical Art department's scope and responsibilities for the project. Shipped Marvel's Midnight Suns.

Jan 2022 – Sep 2022

Senior Technical Artist · Conflict Kinetics

Led UE4/UE5 development of a real-time simulation for military training. Designed and maintained the content pipeline and delivery standards across the art, engineering, and client teams.

Aug 2019 – Feb 2022

Principal Technical Artist · Conflict Kinetics

Built the animation architecture, a modular avatar and clothing system, vehicle physics, dynamic weather, destructibles, and Niagara VFX. Used nDisplay early in production, which included talking with Epic's engineers and helping shape its documentation.

Oct 2017 – Dec 2018

VR/AR Technical Artist · Quantified Design Solutions

Built 3D environments and interfaces for VR/AR training applications, and wrote the asset management pipeline and the documentation standards.

Education and earlier roles are on the full resume →

// Contact

Let's talk rendering.

RetroEngine Substack · Analog Dream Dev X · @AnalogDreamDev YouTube · @AnalogDreamDev