Raymarching Distance Fields (2008-2020 compilation)

For anyone interested in computer graphics, I find Inigo Quilez's site (https://iquilezles.org/www/index.htm) more helpful than most of the textbooks on my shelf.

Great piece on iq's work on Pixar's brave that gives a sense of how unusual his approach was: https://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-...

Inigo Quilez is such an inspiration when it comes to math, the demoscene and graphics programming in general. Hope he lives to be 120 and keeps it up.

Inigo Quilez's procedural raymarching masterpiece, "Surfer Boy":

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ldd3DX

    // Created by inigo quilez - iq/2018
    // License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

    // A surfer boy in the beach, disney/pixar style. I had to be very careful
    // with the complexity, otherwise the browser would crash during shader
    // compilation. I also had to split the boy in two layers because of that,
    // see below (the single pass version is smaller of course but takes 3 extra
    // seconds to compile, and renders a bit more slowly)
    //
    // This is totally painted to camera, it won't work from others perspectives.
    //
    // Common   - contains some basic stuff
    // Buffer A - renders the brackground - not super polished really
    // Buffer B - blurs the background
    // Buffer C - paints the boy, except the hand and the board
    // Image    - paints the hand and the board, and does some minimal postpro
    //
    // If you have a slow PC, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya3FRzuozQ0

And Happy Jumping:

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/3lsSzf

    // Created by inigo quilez - iq/2019
    // License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
    //
    //
    // An animation test - a happy and blobby creature jumping and
    // looking around. It gets off-model very often, but it looks
    // good enough I think.
    //
    // Making-of and related math/shader/art explanations (6 hours
    // long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfe5UQ-1L9Q
    //
    // Video capture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_UOFo2IULQ

    //
    // You can buy a metal print of this shader here:

https://www.redbubble.com/i/metal-print/Happy-Jumping-by-Ini...

I think it’s interesting to explore how different data representations in computer graphics are taking advantage of ever improving GPUs to enable new applications/workflows. The two I know of most are SDFs and Image-based rendering techniques like light fields, primarily as Neural Radiance Fields. Are there any other interesting ones emerging?

Raymarching stuff looks incredible in VR but most of the available examples are web-based and the overhead of WebGL for a technique that relies on raw GPU throughput often kills it.

Someone really needs to update this to work with current headsets and controllers: https://github.com/jimbo00000/RiftRay

(it works on the Rift last time I checked but uses the original 3DOF remove for interactions)