Personal information

Here you can find some information about me. For questions you can contact me.

I was born in 1978 in Preetz near Kiel in the far north of Germany where I also lived during my school time.

After school i moved to Braunschweig where I studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University Braunschweig. After graduating I worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials where I wrote my PhD thesis.

Now I live in Freiburg in the very south of Germany and work here as a freelance graphics designer.

During my free time I enjoy the nature around here – Black Forest, Kaiserstuhl, Vosges. I also like to travel and to explore foreign places during extended hikes with the camera. Apart from that I like reading books and enjoy conversations with amiable people.

science and engineering

I studied mechanical engineering specializing in material sciences, numerical methods and vibrations. I finished my studies with a master degree (Dipl.-Ing.) in 2006 with a master thesis on mesoparticle simulation techniques.

At the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM I worked primarily on the investigation and modeling of the growth of PECVD Coatings. During this work I obtained my PhD in Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with a thesis on the growth of amorphous carbon coatings based on toluene.

computer graphics

My computer graphics activities are the subject of the largest part of this website and started during my school time. Most of this is related to 3D computer graphics and raytracing which mostly evolved around the raytracing program POV-Ray.

POV-Ray, the Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a program for generating photorealistic views of synthetical sceneries. You can find a gallery of examples in the Hall of Fame. I am a member of the Persistence of Vision development team, the group who are developing and maintaining POV-Ray and make it available for free to everyone. To learn more about raytracing in general and POV-Ray in particular you should have a look at the raytracing introduction.

I do both development work on CG techniques and actual image design using those techniques. Details on the former can be found in the programming section, the latter is covered in the raytracing section. Information regarding my geodata processing and map rendering activities is available in the geo-visualization section.

A larger collection of large scale 3d visualizations of the earth surface I created can be found on the Views of the Earth website. Details on my professional graphics design offerings can be found on the Imagcio.de Services and Products.

writing

I wrote several articles for the german computer magazine c't related to POV-Ray:

• issue 17/2002, page 68 about POV-Ray 3.5 and its new features.
• issue 20/2003 about creating landscape images with POV-Ray using the isosurface object.
• issue 05/2005: A book critic on 3D-Welten by Toni Lama.

As part of my POV-Ray related work I also did an evaluation of the POV-Ray code for its suitability for simulating Metamaterials. The results of it have been published in Photorealistic images of objects in effective negative-index materials (Optics Express, Vol. 14, No. 5).

In connection with my earth visualization activities I also wrote a text for the GeoConnexion magazine describing the techniques I use and their advantages.

photography

I have been taking photographs since my childhood developing my skills in this during my spare time with varying intensity and focus for more than 20 years. Some examples of my recent photographic work can be found in the Imagico photo log.