2 HN users recommended this tutorial2 months2020–2022score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters point to it as a patient, full-length walkthrough of how a raymarched shader is built from scratch.
Inigo Quilez live-codes the "Happy Jumping" animated scene in a Shadertoy GLSL shader over about six hours. He builds the raymarched character step by step, explaining the math and procedural techniques, with checkpoints linked for each stage.
“is fantastic, yes it's five hours but worth it.” (HN, 2022)
Indeed his videos are amazing . My recommendation though would be to start with the "beginner" video -- which is completely 2D but at least gets some ideas across. Then watch [link] which isn't his but introduces how you get 3D out of fragment shaders. Finally just drink from the firehose -- [this video] is fantastic, yes it's five hours but worth it. (Definitely come into that familiar with the idea of raymarching though... the first few minutes start off super basic but it goes to eleven real quick.)
If you have 6 hours to kill, check this shadertoy that uses ray marching: [link] And the video that goes through its creation step by step: [this video]
Six-hour step-by-step creation of a raymarched shader
Inigo Quilez's procedural raymarching masterpiece, "Surfer Boy": [link] // 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: [link] And Happy Jumping: [link] // 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): [this video] // // Video capture: [link] // // You can buy a metal print of this shader here: [link]
Making-of and math explanations for Happy Jumping shader
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