Snake Skin Rendering (CEIG 2023) - Juan Raul Padron Griffe

About me
I am a researcher in computer graphics at the Graphics and Imaging Lab at the Universidad de Zaragoza, working at the intersection of physically-based rendering, material modeling, and geometry processing. My research centers on multi-scale materials, from biological tissues such as human skin, scales, and feathers, to intricate human-made structures like cosmetics and granular media. Recently, I have also explored particle dynamics for sampling in computer graphics, including our recent paper accepted to EGSR 2026. My work has been published at different computer graphics venues including the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR), Pacific Graphics (PG), and SIGGRAPH. I am currently collaborating with Zahra Montazeri's group on the representation and rendering of textiles, with a submission under review and a second project underway.

I completed my PhD as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow of the EU Project PRIME, supervised by Prof. Adolfo Muñoz and Prof. Adrian Jarabo. Earlier, during my Master of Science in Informatics at the Technical University of Munich, I conducted research on 3D scanning and neural rendering for object and face relighting, advised by Prof. Justus Thies; this followed a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, where my thesis explored procedural terrain generation and visualization.

Looking for Opportunities
I recently defended my Ph.D. dissertation, Modeling and Rendering of Multiscale Materials. I am currently seeking postdoctoral and faculty positions, as well as research scientist roles, where I can continue developing my research agenda in computer graphics and computer vision for the digital acquisition, representation, and simulation of virtual worlds. If you are building a research group, have a postdoctoral or faculty opening, or simply want to discuss a potential collaboration, please feel free to reach out!

This project started as a bachelor thesis of a talented student (Diego Bielsa) that I supervised together with Adolfo Muñoz at the Graphics and Imaging Lab and later it was presented at the Spanish Computer Graphics Conference (CEIG 2023, Palma de Mallorca) under the title “A Biologically-Inspired Appearance Model for Snake Skin”. The implementation consists of a multi-layered material implemented inside the physically-based renderer Mitsuba 0.6 using the Position-Free Monte Carlo formulation. The top layer is a thin layer responsible for the specular iridescent reflection using a practical iridescent microfacet model, while the bottom layer is a diffuse highly-absorbing layer designed to reproduce the dark diffuse appearance that highlight the iridescent colors of the snake skin. If you would like to know more about this project, then please visit the official project website Snake Appearance Model. Below you can see a beautiful rendering of a snake 3D model using our practical snake skin reflectance model roughly matching the general appearance of a Xenopeltis Unicolor!

Rendering Xenopeltis Unicolor

Team Members: Juan Raul Padron Griffe, Diego Bielsa

Github repository

If you are interested in reptiles and their beautiful skin colours (pigmentary and structural) and skin colour patterns, then I would strongly encourage you to visit the official website of the Laboratory of Artificial & Natural Evolution at the University of Geneva!