My name is Ruben Caliandro (a.k.a. Chosko), and I am a Graphics Programmer based in Torino, Italy.
I like computers since I was a child, because my father used to spend some of his free time playing videogames and reading IT journals. I just watched and learned everything he did.
My passion for computer graphics started when I was 15 years old. At that time Stefano Nada, a friend of mine, sent me a picture of the Utah teapot with an amazing mix of lights, reflections and HDR. That's when I decided what I wanted to do in my life: from that day I started studying computer graphics, using C#, DirectX and HLSL.
Stefano and I started working on some personal projects. The most important was a graphics framework based on DirectX, which I also used for my thesis ("Mathematics applied to 3D Computer Graphics Programming") at the end of the High School. During the final test I showed to the exam commission a simulation of the solar system, entirely made with our framework.
This is a screenshot of the simulation presented for my thesis at the High School
When I started University, in order to pay the fees I also had to start working as Full-Stack Developer. Although it started as a need, Web Development quickly became a secondary passion and I kept doing it during the whole University. In those years I worked both in Italy and California and I gained experience with many languages and frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, Angular and Node.js/Express.
I got a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in 2012 and a Master's degree in Virtual Reality in 2017, the latter with the thesis "Visual effects for real-time stereoscopic rendering". Both the degrees were accomplished with the maximum score of 110/100 with honors.
In 2016 I also managed to move from Web Development to Game Programming, as I started working as Graphics Programmer at Tiny Bull Studios, an Indie Game Developer that makes VR games. There I mostly implement visual effects for virtual reality, writing shaders and setting up particle systems.
Trailer of the VR game "Blind" by Tiny Bull Studios. Available on Steam, Oculus and PlayStation Store