Jan Novák ![](/sites/default/files/person/Jan.Novak_.jpg) Jan is a senior research scientist working on topics at the cross-section of rendering and machine learning. He joined NVIDIA Research in 2018 after five years at Disney Resarch where he led the Rendering Group and worked on various techniques for efficient rendering and physically based simulation of light transport. He initiated and led several projects employing deep learning for image denoising, radiance estimation, and importance sampling. He also developed a number of techniques for rendering scenes with participating media. Some of his ideas have been integrated into Renderman and Hyperion renderers and are used in production at Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and ILM. Prior to Disney Research, he worked at the Walt Disney Animation Studios contributing to the Hyperion renderer. Jan holds a Ph.D. degree (2014) from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and B.Sc. (2007) and M.Sc. (2009) degrees from the Czech Technical University in Prague. If not occupied with work, he's busy with training three remarkably resistant \*real\* neural networks. Research Area(s) [Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning ](/index.php/research-area/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence) [Real-Time Rendering](/index.php/research-area/real-time-rendering) Main Field of Interest [Computer Graphics](/index.php/research-area/computer-graphics) Google Scholar [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u5\_AuisAAAAJ](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u5_AuisAAAAJ) ### Publications ### 2025 [Generative Detail Enhancement for Physically Based Materials](/index.php/publication/2025-07_generative-detail-enhancement-physically-based-materials) Saeed Hadadan, [Benedikt Bitterli](/index.php/person/benedikt-bitterli), [Tizian Zeltner](/index.php/person/tizian-zeltner), [Jan Novák](/index.php/person/jan-novak), [Fabrice Rousselle](/index.php/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Jacob Munkberg](/index.php/person/jacob-munkberg), [Jon Hasselgren](/index.php/person/jon-hasselgren), [Bart Wronski](/index.php/person/bart-wronski), Matthias Zwicker [SIGGRAPH 2025](https://s2025.siggraph.org/) ### 2023 [Inverse Global Illumination using a Neural Radiometric Prior](/publication/2023-05_inverse-global-illumination-using-neural-radiometric-prior) Saeed Hadadan, Geng Lin, [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak), [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), Matthias Zwicker [SIGGRAPH 2023](https://s2023.siggraph.org/) [Real-Time Neural Appearance Models](/index.php/publication/2023-05_real-time-neural-appearance-models) [Tizian Zeltner](/index.php/person/tizian-zeltner), [Fabrice Rousselle](/index.php/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Andrea Weidlich](/index.php/person/andrea-weidlich), [Petrik Clarberg](/index.php/person/petrik-clarberg), [Jan Novák](/index.php/person/jan-novak), [Benedikt Bitterli](/index.php/person/benedikt-bitterli), Alex Evans, [Tomáš Davidovič](/index.php/person/tomas-davidovic), [Simon Kallweit](/index.php/person/simon-kallweit), [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn) [TOG (Presented at SIGGRAPH 2024)](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3659577) [Recursive Control Variates for Inverse Rendering](/publication/2023-05_recursive-control-variates-inverse-rendering) Baptiste Nicolet, [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak), [Alexander Keller](/person/alex-keller), Wenzel Jakob, [Thomas Müller](/person/thomas-muller) [SIGGRAPH 2023](https://s2023.siggraph.org) ### 2021 [NeRF-Tex: Neural Reflectance Field Textures](/publication/2021-06_nerf-tex-neural-reflectance-field-textures) Hendrik Baatz, Jonathan Granskog, Marios Papas, [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak) [Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR)](https://egsr.eu/session/2021/Neural_Rendering/) [Real-time Neural Radiance Caching for Path Tracing](/publication/2021-06_real-time-neural-radiance-caching-path-tracing) [Thomas Müller](/person/thomas-muller), [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak), [Alex Keller](/person/alex-keller) ACM Transactions on Graphics [Neural Scene Graph Rendering](/publication/2021-06_neural-scene-graph-rendering) Jonathan Granskog, Till Schnabel, [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak) ACM Transactions on Graphics [Zero-Variance Transmittance Estimation](/publication/2021-06_zero-variance-transmittance-estimation) [Eugene d'Eon](/person/eugene-d-eon), [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak) Eurographics Symposium on Rendering [An Unbiased Ray-Marching Transmittance Estimator](/publication/2021-06_unbiased-ray-marching-transmittance-estimator) [Markus Kettunen](/person/markus-kettunen), [Eugene d'Eon](/person/eugene-d-eon), Jacopo Pantaleoni, [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak) ACM Transactions on Graphics ### 2020 [Neural Control Variates](/publication/2020-11_neural-control-variates) [Thomas Müller](/person/thomas-muller), [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Alex Keller](/person/alex-keller), [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak) [ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Asia)](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3414685.3417804) [Compositional Neural Scene Representations for Shading Inference](/publication/2020-07_compositional-neural-scene-representations-shading-inference) Jonathan Granskog, [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), Marios Papas, [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak) [ACM Transaction on Graphics (SIGGRAPH)](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3386569.3392475) [MesoGAN: Generative Neural Reflectance Shells](/publication/_mesogan-generative-neural-reflectance-shells) Stavros Diolatzis, [Jan Novák](/person/jan-novak), [Fabrice Rousselle](/person/fabrice-rousselle), Jonathan Granskog, [Miika Aittala](/person/miika-aittala), Ravi Ramamoorthi, George Drettakis [Computer Graphics Forum](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cgf.14846) [Real-Time Neural Appearance Models](/index.php/publication/_real-time-neural-appearance-models) [Tizian Zeltner](/index.php/person/tizian-zeltner), [Fabrice Rousselle](/index.php/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Andrea Weidlich](/index.php/person/andrea-weidlich), [Petrik Clarberg](/index.php/person/petrik-clarberg), [Jan Novák](/index.php/person/jan-novak), [Benedikt Bitterli](/index.php/person/benedikt-bitterli), Alex Evans, [Tomas Davidovic](/index.php/person/tomas-davidovic), [Simon Kallweit](/index.php/person/simon-kallweit), [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn)