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#signeddistancefields#shadertoy#glsl

Painting a Character with Maths

Inigo Quilez

114K subscribers • 6 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 15 people: 13 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 in engineering communities.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2020 to 2025.
  • Presented by Inigo Quilez, co-creator of Shadertoy

Advanced. Deep dive for people who know the field.

457K views5 years ago15 recommendations

Graphics and audioRenderingGPUs, shaders and CUDACreative coding

Inigo Quilez live-codes a cartoon character in a Shadertoy shader using signed distance fields and mathematical formulas.

Today we are painting a cartoon character using #mathematics Support this channel by subscribing or joining my Patreon: patreon.com/inigoquilez This is the link to the real-time rendering code (that you can edit yourself live) for the painting: shadertoy.com/view/WsSBzh Links I mentioned in the video I'd leave here: * Raymarching: iquilezles.org/articles/raymarchingdf * SDF of a Line Segment: youtube.com/watch?v=PMltMdi1Wzg * Smoothstep: youtu.be/bdICU2uvOdU?t=3423 * SDF of a Rounded Box: youtube.com/watch?v=62-pRVZuS5c Donate: paypal.com/paypalme/SMOOTHSTEPLLC Subscribe: youtube.com/c/inigoquilez Support: patreon.com/inigoquilez Twitter: twitter.com/iquilezles Facebook: facebook.com/inigo.quilez Sculpting basic shape Blocking basic lighting Sculpting face Painting face colors Eyes Face animation Hair Makeup Hoodie Background Bridge Trees Finishing Conclusion Music by Bent Stamnes (twitter.com/gloom303)

Why it's here

15 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a mind-blowing demonstration of the power of signed distance fields and creative coding.

pekkavaaon Lobsters • Recommends

Painting a Selfie Girl, with Maths
13View on Lobsters

kn8aon Hacker News • Recommends

On “2020 Mathematical Art Exhibition”

This was a mind blowing example of math and art from last year - perhaps the live coding of the method was even more impressive than the outcome: link to this video
View on Hacker News

sxpon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-Time Rendering with Implicit 3D Surfaces”

If you don't have an understanding of signed distance fields, link to this video is an amazing demo of their power. There are more videos about the fundamentals of SDFs at link The interesting thing about this paper is that they replace the mathematical SDF with a neural net that computes SDF_NN(x,y,z) => -1/1 and use this as a compression system for mesh based inputs. This feels like a graphical version of the link for NN-based text compression.
View on Hacker News

gregsadetskyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Fishdraw: Procedurally Generated Fish Drawings”

Agreed. Check out his incredible videos! Such as this mind-blowing one... link to this video "Painting a Selfie Girl, with Maths"
View on Hacker News

nighthawk454on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Signed distance functions in 46 lines of Python”

Great write up. If anyone wants to explore SDFs more, check out Inigo Quilez - he's a master of this stuff and a great explainer. Painting a Character with Maths: link to this video And plenty more on his website in article form: link Finally, Shadertoy, a graphics shader playground where you can see (and try!) a lot of this kind of stuff: link
View on Hacker News

dgellowon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Simple Pathtracing”

I see a Inigo Quilez link, I upvote! He's one of those incredible artist-engineer out there always pushing boundaries further and sharing his ideas and techniques publicly. If you have some time today, watch a few of his videos on his youtube channel, it's incredible to see his creation process in action: link For example, "Painting a character with maths" is mind-blowing and packed with SO MUCH educative content: link to this video
View on Hacker News

lligalloon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Graphtoy”

Checkout this video by the author. It makes a full 3d complex scene out of a math formula, with step by step explanation link to this video
View on Hacker News

dominicjjon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Condition: A 64KB WebGL Intro”

…ormula will take time as a parameter as well. To play with this concept yourself go to link and see how shader programs are rendered into incredible scenes with astonishingly few lines of code. For a wonderful look at the creation process, see the grandfather of raymarching Inigo Quilez create a selfie of a girl from scratch using formulas here: link to this video…
View on Hacker News

lifthrasiiron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Making graphics in 4 kilobytes (2008) [pdf]”

Inigo Quilez, the author of this slide, also has made in-depth videos 1 2 which might be more accessible to who aren't familiar with shader languages. 1 link to this video 2 link
View on Hacker News

brundolfon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Sliderland – Creative coding with 64 HTML sliders”

It's very similar to writing shaders. Check out this video for some crazy stuff you can do with equations: link to this video
View on Hacker News

pdpion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Procedural 3D mesh generation in a 64kB intro”

And, if we're suggesting Shadertoy, this video by one of its creators is probably worth watching: link to this video
View on Hacker News

antegamisouon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Painting with Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching”

Good to see high quality articles gaining traction. If the article looks too verbose, be sure to check out, as the author cites, Inigo Quilez's videos Painting a Landscape with Maths - link Painting a Character with Maths - link to this video Bonus: Painting with Maths in Google Sheets - link
View on Hacker News

emigreon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Inigo Quilez: computer graphics, mathematics, shaders, fractals, demoscene”

Check out 'Painting a Character with Maths' 1 (2020) by him, it's a very interesting video. 1 link to this video
View on Hacker News

Jareon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Shaders: How to draw high fidelity graphics with just x and y coordinates”

Obligatory "this painting is a mathematical formula, a big function on the x and y coordinates of each pixel" video from Iñigo Quilez. link to this video
View on Hacker News

u/Botondarin r/GraphicsProgramming • Recommends

Painting a Selfie Girl, with Maths - video by Inigo Quilez
1View on Reddit

t8yon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The performative quality of computer-generated art”

I don't think that people only value the output. Take "Selfie Girl"0 by Inigo Quilez people appreciate that it's a shader, even people that are not into programming (though they'd need to see the making of video1). 0 link 1 link to this video
View on Hacker News