I am a Senior Researcher at Weta FX, specializing in computational elastic solid mechanics and high-fidelity multi-physics simulation technologies for VFX productions like Avatar: The Way of Water. As a Simulation R&D Tech Lead, I actively work on projects involving the simulation of cloth, hair, muscles, plants, and their interactions with the environment, as well as user input, and I drive the adaptation of our tool, Loki, into the production pipeline. Before joining Weta, I completed my PhD at Beihang University in December 2019, focusing on physics-based fluid simulation and animation. Feel free to contact me through LinkedIn.

Screen Credits

Better Man, 2024

Avatar: The Way of Water, 2022

The Tomorrow War, 2021

Publication

Avatar: The Way of Hair, Cloth, and Coupled Simulation. Xiao Zhai, Eston Schweickart, Nikolay Ilinov, Joel Wretborn, Alexey Stomakhin, John Homer, Jefri Haryono, and Julian Butler. SIGGRAPH Talks, 2023. Link PDF Supplement Talk

Loki: A Unified Multiphysics Simulation Framework for Production. Steve Lesser, Alexey Stomakhin, Gilles Daviet, Joel Wretborn, John Edholm, Noh-hoon Lee, Eston Schweickart, Xiao Zhai, Sean Flynn, and Andrew Moffat. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 2022. Link PDF Video

Simulating Cloth Using Bilinear Elements. Eston Schweickart and Xiao Zhai. SIGGRAPH Talks, 2021. Link PDF Supplement Talk

Vectorized Painting with Temporal Diffusion Curves. Yingjia Li, Xiao Zhai, Fei Hou, Yawen Liu, Aimin Hao, and Hong Qin. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2019. Link PDF Video

Multi-Task Learning on Monocular Water Images: Surface Reconstruction and Image Synthesis. Xueguang Xie, Xiao Zhai, Fei Hou, Aimin Hao, and Hong Qin. Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 2019. Link Video Code

Fluid Simulation with Adaptive Staggered Power Particles on GPUs. Xiao Zhai, Fei Hou, Hong Qin, and Aimin Hao. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2018. Link PDF Video

Inverse Modelling of Incompressible Gas Flow in Subspace. Xiao Zhai, Fei Hou, Hong Qin, and Aimin Hao. Computer Graphics Forum, 2017. Link PDF Video