Yotam Erel's homepage

About Me

I am a research engineer in SONY Corporation, Japan. My role involves enabling production quality video generation. I obtained my PhD from Tel-Aviv University, Israel, supervised by Prof. Amit H. Bermano. Interested in creative technology, augmented reality, generative AI.

Previously I was a visitor research in Osaka University, Japan, collaborating with Prof. Daisuke Iwai, and also a research intern in MPI, Germany (Prof. Christian Theobalt's group).

Here are topics that really excite me:
light transport theory, special effects (VFX, SFX, CGI), light-matter interaction, physically-based rendering, projection-mapping, augmented reality, brain-computer interfaces, personal robotics.

Publications / Preprints

2025

PractiLight: Practical Light Control Using Foundational Diffusion Models

SIGGRAPH Asia, 2025 / Yotam Erel, Rishabh Dabral, Vladislav Golyanik, Amit H. Bermano, Christian Theobalt

Project Page
ArXiv
Code

Attention (as discrete-time Markov) Chains

Neurips, 2025 / Yotam Erel*, Olaf Dünkel*, Rishabh Dabral, Vladislav Golyanik, Christian Theobalt, Amit H. Bermano

*denotes equal contribution

Project Page
ArXiv
Code

2024

Casper DPM: Cascaded Perceptual Dynamic Projection Mapping onto Hands

SIGGRAPH Asia, 2024 / Yotam Erel, Or Kozlovsky-Mordenfeld, Daisuke Iwai, Kosuke Sato and Amit Bermano

Project Page
ArXiv
Code

2023

Neural Projection Mapping Using Reflectance Fields

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2023 / Yotam Erel, Daisuke Iwai and Amit Bermano

Project Page
ArXiv
Code

2022

iCatcher+: Robust and automated annotation of infant gaze from videos collected in the lab and online

Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2023 / Yotam Erel, Katherine Adams Shannon, Junyi Chu, Kim Scott, Melissa Kline Struhl, Peng Cao, Xincheng Tan, Peter Hart, Gal Raz, Sabrina Piccolo, Catherine Mei, Christine Potter, Sagi Jaffe-Dax, Casey Lew-Williams, Joshua Tenenbaum, Katherine Fairchild, Amit Bermano, Shari Liu

Paper
PsyArXiv
Code

2021

iCatcher: A Neural Network Approach for Automated Coding of Young Children’s Eye Movements

Infancy, 2021 / Erel, Y., Potter, C.E., Jaffe-Dax, S., Lew-Williams, C., & Bermano, A.

Paper
PsyArXiv
Code

MeshCNN Fundamentals: Geometric Learning through a Reconstructable Representation

Preprint, 2021 / Amir Barda, Yotam Erel, Amit H. Bermano.

arXiv

STORM-Net: Simple and Timely Optode Registration Method for Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Preprint, 2021 / Yotam Erel, Sagi Jaffe-Dax, Yaara Yeshurun, Amit H. Bermano.

BioRxiv
Code
fnirs 2022 slides

2020

Video-based motion-resilient reconstruction of 3D position for functional near-infrared spectroscopy and electroencephalography head mounted probes

Neurophotonics, 2020 / Sagi Jaffe-Dax, Amit H. Bermano, Yotam Erel, Lauren L. Emberson.

Paper
BioRxiv
Code

Projects

2022

CLEVR-ER

David Nukari & I made an extension of the CLEVR dataset for supporting relationships between objects. It also introduces liquid relationships! which was fun playing with. We submitted this as a final project for the 3d Graphics & printing course given by Dr. Amit Bermano @ TAU.

CLEVR-ER / David Nukari & Yotam Erel

Code
Slides

2020

Automatic, Real-Time Coding of Looking-While-Listening Children Videos Using Neural Networks,

We created this infant eye tracker to be used by cognition labs around the world, it was accepted in the ICIS2020 virtual conference as a poster. Check it out!

ICIS 2020 / Erel, Y., Potter, C.E., Jaffe-Dax, S., Lew-Williams, C., & Bermano, A.

Code
Poster
Poster talk

Corona Inspired rendering in pbrt

I've been reading the fantastic book Physically Based Rendering written by Matt Pharr, Wenzel Jakob and Greg Humphreys. By adjusting the source code a bit to become a sphere tracer. I rendered some interesting scenes, check them out!

2019

Exploration of Deep Mesh Denoising

My colleagues and I submitted a project for the course "Advanced Deep Learning" run by Prof. Amir Globerzon @ TAU. I think we had a great opportunity to discover and research some hot topics in 3D machine learning.

Exploration of Deep Mesh Denoising / Amir Barda, Mattan Serry, Yotam Erel

Workshop paper