Sebastjan Rijavec
Technical Lead · Real-Time Systems · Simulation · Applied AI
Engineering Without Borders
I've spent over 25 years building things, solving problems, and occasionally questioning why things were built that way in the first place.
My career has taken me across countries, cultures, and industries — from high-end visual effects and computer graphics to augmented reality, industrial simulation, and artificial intelligence.
Along the way, I've developed complex production systems, led multidisciplinary teams, and worked with people from remarkably different backgrounds. Those experiences have taught me that good engineering requires more than technical knowledge. It takes curiosity, adaptability, an open mind, and occasionally the willingness to throw away a perfectly good plan.
Today, I continue exploring the intersection of real-time technologies, simulation, AI, and robotics.
Different countries. Different industries. Different problems. The same curiosity.
Articles
BBTab: Writing the Blues Down
Building BBTab — a small, native GTK4 tab editor for Linux where you click a fret and the note drops onto the staff. Open source, plain-JSON files, and blues-first.
The Blues and Nothing but the Blues
Turning a guitar, an iRig and a Linux workstation into a virtual B.B. King rig — and rediscovering that tone still lives in the fingers.
Trio From Rio Episode 001
The first episode of Trio From Rio.
The Math Behind the Magic: Markov Decision Processes in Isaac Lab
Defining a task in Isaac Lab means specifying a Markov Decision Process - states, actions, transitions, rewards, and a discount factor. Seeing the MDP turns reward design from guesswork into deliberate craft.
What Is a Policy, Really? The Thing Isaac Lab Actually Produces
A policy is the small neural network Isaac Lab trains - a function from observation to action, shipped as a checkpoint and then as portable TorchScript and ONNX files.
Isaac Sim vs. Isaac Lab: How NVIDIA's Robot-Training Stack Fits Together
How NVIDIA's Omniverse, Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, and Isaac ROS layer together into a single sim-to-real stack.
A Love Letter to Dutch Weather
From Someone Who Has Stopped Trying
Dear Amsterdam
A word about one of the most likable cities in the world.
Chasing Thunderstorms
I've been filming thunderstorms from terraces and balconies for years. The same obsession that sends me out with a phone also ends up inside Unreal Engine.
Dolphins off La Alcaidesa
On a May afternoon on the Costa del Sol, a pod of dolphins passed through the Strait of Gibraltar just off the La Alcaidesa golf course. This is what it looked like.
Experimenting with AR
In 2019, before AR toolkits were mature, pointing a phone at your desk and watching something appear in the world felt genuinely strange. It still does.
Record the Solution
A short screen recording does more for your colleagues than any written tutorial. Here's why it's worth making a habit of.
Augmented Reality
How our RYOT group brought augmented and virtual reality into retail — and genuinely changed how people shop.
Weeds Grow on Nothing. Strawberries Want Everything.
A short observation on why the plants you want are hard and the plants you don't are not.
A Procedural Sun
A pixel-art sun rendered entirely from a Houdini network — no painting, no hand-placed pixels.
PATS — Pika and the Seagulls
A completely unnecessary game born from one seagull, one dog, and one very unfortunate afternoon.
Planet of Lana and the Art of Caring Too Much
A small team made one of the most visually striking games in years. It shows in every single frame.
The Internet Knows Too Much About Hedgehog Poo
My wife summoned me to the garden. What followed was an unexpected deep-dive into the surprisingly well-documented world of hedgehog droppings.
Hello, World
First post — a test of the blog setup and a quick hello.