Rendering Worlds with Two Triangles on the GPU [pdf]

Ah, the classic presentation that got me started in the demoscene a couple of years back.<p>The Google cache version of the pdf doesn&#x27;t include any images, so I put up a copy over here:<p><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2173295/rwwtt.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.dropboxusercontent.com&#x2F;u&#x2F;2173295&#x2F;rwwtt.pdf</a>

I think the most elegant thing about this method is that it describes a scene in terms of its basic mathematical 3D objects and transformations on them (list here: <a href="http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iquilezles.org&#x2F;www&#x2F;articles&#x2F;distfunctions&#x2F;distfun...</a> ) and then exploits the massive parallelism of the GPU for rendering all the pixels.<p>Here&#x27;s a demo of someone playing around with it, complete with a Slisesix-inspired scene: <a href="http://www.rpenalva.com/blog/?p=254" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rpenalva.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=254</a><p>This set of slides is also related: <a href="http://www.iquilezles.org/www/material/function2009/function2009.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iquilezles.org&#x2F;www&#x2F;material&#x2F;function2009&#x2F;function...</a>

And if you want to try things out yourself, iq has created a playground for you here: <a href="https://www.shadertoy.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shadertoy.com&#x2F;</a>

I love these.<p>People might enjoy noodling around the Geisswerks pages which have many code snippets around ray tracing; graphic demos; and so on.<p><a href="http://www.geisswerks.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geisswerks.com&#x2F;</a>

You can download it from here <a href="http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=51074" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pouet.net&#x2F;prod.php?which=51074</a> It&#x27;s been updated to run more reliably (edit: on Vista) but I can&#x27;t find a version that will run on Win7.<p>Edit: I found a similar one on Shadertoy <a href="https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lsf3zr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shadertoy.com&#x2F;view&#x2F;lsf3zr</a>

I was working with distance fields back in 2008, and the idea of inverting the process blew my mind.<p>I had no idea Iñigo Quilez&#x27;s image was produced this way and I&#x27;m so glad I had the chance to see how it was made.<p>Thanks for posting!!

Is the demoscene a good place to get into graphics programming? The prevalence of older methods leads me to believe one could learn in a similar progression to the graphics gurus of today, moving from simpler old methods with performance and size optimization to modern techniques?

This is a really impressive presentation -- after looking on from afar at the seemingly magical works of the demoscene, this finally helped me understand a little bit of how the magic happens. I&#x27;ve only got a bit of GLSL experience so far but now I want to learn a lot more.

Could someone explain to me what the <i>&quot;two triangles that cover the entire screen area&quot;</i> have to do with anything?