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https://github.com/CedricGuillemet/SDF

Collection of resources (papers, links, discussions, shadertoys,...) related to Signed Distance Field
https://github.com/CedricGuillemet/SDF

demoscene games sdf tools

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Collection of resources (papers, links, discussions, shadertoys,...) related to Signed Distance Field

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README 

          
# Signed Distance Field (SDF)



Resources, links, papers, discussions, ShaderToys on SDF and related algorithm.

Please contibute to this resource by sending your PRs!



## Tutorials / introductions



Jamie Wong, Ray Marching and Signed Distance Functions

http://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/



Alex Benton, Ray Marching and Signed Distance Fields

http://bentonian.com/Lectures/FGraphics1819/1.%20Ray%20Marching%20and%20Signed%20Distance%20Fields.pdf



Sungiant, Sphere tracing signed distance functions (Scala)

https://github.com/sungiant/sdf



Rendering Worlds with Two Triangles / with raytracing on the GPU in 4096 bytes

https://www.iquilezles.org/www/material/nvscene2008/rwwtt.pdf



Raymarching Beginners' Thread

https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=7920&page=1



Potatro, RayMarching and DistanceFields : a story of SphereTracing

https://xoofx.com/blog/2009/10/12/potatro-and-raymarching-story-of/



Ray Marching for Dummies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGtv-dBi2wE



Electric Square, Raymarching Workshop

https://github.com/electricsquare/raymarching-workshop



2D Distance fields with Unity and Unreal

https://joyrok.com/SDFs-Part-Two



SDF Decomposition

http://zone.dog/braindump/sdf_clustering/



The smallest WebGL SDF raymarcher (135 bytes), with detailed source code and useful links

https://xem.github.io/articles/webgl_quest_2.html



SDF Generator using Compute Shaders in Unity

https://mateigiurgiu.com/unity-sdf-generator-part-1/

https://mateigiurgiu.com/unity-sdf-generator-part-2/



An Introduction to Raymarching

https://typhomnt.github.io/teaching/ray_tracing/raymarching_intro/



Ray Marching Soft Shadows in 2D

https://www.rykap.com/2020/09/23/distance-fields/



Ray Marching

https://michaelwalczyk.com/blog-ray-marching.html



Shape Lens Blur Effect with SDFs and WebGL

https://tympanus.net/codrops/2024/06/12/shape-lens-blur-effect-with-sdfs-and-webgl/



## Games and tools



### Dreams



Alex Evans at Umbra Ignite 2015: Learning From Failure

Dreams tech from early prototypes to cloud point rendering



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KNtnCZDMI



PDF: https://www.mediamolecule.com/blog/article/siggraph_2015



Dreams: Under the Hood with Alex Evans! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gce4l5orts



Alex Evans (NVIDIA), Optimising for Artist Happiness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGfX1iWzkh0&t=1273s



### MagicaCSG



Distance field editor with the same UI as MagicaVoxel by Epthtracy

https://ephtracy.github.io/index.html?page=magicacsg



### https://slimery.art/



SDF editor on the web 

https://slimery.art/

GIF here : https://twitter.com/DaniGatunes/status/1413388975713173506



### Distance Field Modeler for Unreal Engine



https://twitter.com/SDFmodelerUE4



### Antimony

CSG (CAD) tool

https://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/

https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony



### Clayxels



Clayxels is the volumetric toolkit for Unity

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/clayxels-165312



### unbound.io

Collaborative SDF editing

https://www.unbound.io/

https://twitter.com/unbound_io

https://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/presentation/s7777-florian-hoenig-a-road-to-3d-for-everyone.pdf



### Claybook

"Claybook is a unique world made entirely of clay. Shape your character and the world around you to overcome challenging obstacles."

https://store.steampowered.com/app/661920/Claybook/



### Signed

Signed is a Lua based 3D modeling and construction language and will be a unique way to create 3D content, objects as well as whole scenes, in high detail.

https://github.com/markusmoenig/Signed



### SDF pathtracer on CPU

Pathtracer written on CPU which is capable of rendering both SDF as functions and as a volume grids. The application is written on top of Yocto/GL library. 

https://github.com/edu-rinaldi/Volumetric-Path-Tracer



## Demos



Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) implementation for SDFs to reduce per ray distance measurements

https://youtu.be/2T2FqvtXqLw



SDF / Ray Marching Prototypes. A collection of SDF related examples using fungi to handle the rendering.

https://sketchpunk.bitbucket.io/



## Algorithms / Papers



Iq distance functions

https://iquilezles.untergrund.net/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm



Jon Baker, The Distance Estimator Compendium (many distance distance functions with awesome Fractal primitives)

https://jbaker.graphics/writings/DEC.html



Max Norm ellipsoid (sphere with transforms)

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Mt2XWG



Efficient Max-Norm Distance Computation and Reliable Voxelization PDF

http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/RECONS/maxnorm.pdf



Distance to Quadratic Bezier

https://twitter.com/jbaker_graphics/status/1415767199382396940

3D: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/7dfGD2



GPU-Driven Rendering Pipelines / Cluster rendering

https://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2015/aaltonenhaar_siggraph2015_combined_final_footer_220dpi.pdf



Making Signed Distance Field Textures With Jump Flooding Algorithm (2D)

https://blog.demofox.org/2016/02/29/fast-voronoi-diagrams-and-distance-dield-textures-on-the-gpu-with-the-jump-flooding-algorithm/

https://blog.demofox.org/2016/03/02/actually-making-signed-distance-field-textures-with-jfa/



Enhanced Sphere Tracing

https://erleuchtet.org/~cupe/permanent/enhanced_sphere_tracing.pdf



Collection of smooth minimums, maximums, ramps, and absolutes.

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ltf3W2



Segment Tracing Using Local Lipschitz Bounds (improve the marching step computation and accelerate the overall process.)

https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.1111/cgf13951



Improved Alpha-Tested Magnification for Vector Textures and Special Effects (Valve 2007)

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2007/SIGGRAPH2007_AlphaTestedMagnification.pdf



Massively Parallel Rendering of Complex Closed-Form Implicit Surfaces

https://www.mattkeeter.com/research/mpr/



Tom Duff, Interval Arithmetic and Recursive Subdivision for Implicit Functions and Constructive Solid Geometry

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/S62.12/docs/Duff_interval_CSG.pdf



Raph Levien’s research on 2D blurred shapes

https://raphlinus.github.io/graphics/2020/04/21/blurred-rounded-rects.html



Interval Raymarching

https://dercuano.github.io/notes/interval-raymarching.html



GigaVoxels:A Voxel-Based Rendering Pipeline For Efficient Exploration Of Large And Detailed Scenes

http://maverick.inria.fr/Membres/Cyril.Crassin/thesis/CCrassinThesis_EN_Web.pdf



Adaptively Sampled Distance Fields: A General Representation of Shape for Computer Graphics

_ *Frisken, Perry, Rockwood, and Jones - 2000*

https://www.merl.com/publications/docs/TR2000-15.pdf



Kizamu: A System for Sculpting Digital Characters - *Frisken and Perry - 2001*

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/383259.383264



Hierarchical hp-Adaptive Signed Distance Fields - *Koschier, Deul, and Bender - 2016*

http://interactive-graphics.de/index.php/research/98-hierarchical-hp-adaptive-signed-distance-fields



GPU-Accelerated Adaptively Sampled Distance Fields - *Bastos and Celes - 2008*

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Waldemar-Celes/publication/4344580_GPU-accelerated_Adaptively_Sampled_Distance_Fields/links/00b7d522f51ab59cc9000000/GPU-accelerated-Adaptively-Sampled-Distance-Fields.pdf



Signed Distance Computation using the Angle Weighted Pseudo-normal - *Bærentzen and Aanæs - 2005*

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.107.9173&rep=rep1&type=pdf



Fast Winding Numbers for Soups and Clouds - *Barill, Dickson, Schmidt, Levin, and Jacobson - 2018*

https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/projects/fast-winding-numbers/



Non-linear Sphere Tracing for Rendering Deformed Signed Distance Fields - *Seyb, Jacobson, Nowrouzezahrai, and Jarosz - 2019*

https://cs.dartmouth.edu/~wjarosz/publications/seyb19nonlinear.html



Concurrent Binary Trees (with application to longest edge bisection)

https://onrendering.com/data/papers/cbt/ConcurrentBinaryTrees.pdf



Bounding Interval Hierarchies (BIH) - 2006

(for improved per Ray distance calculations)

https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~dhouse/courses/405/papers/bounding-interval-WK06.pdf



GPU accelerated BIH Construction - 2014

https://www.uni-weimar.de/fileadmin/user/fak/medien/professuren/Virtual_Reality/documents/publications/2014.bih_construction_using_dynamic_parallelism.pdf



Synchronized-tracing of implicit surfaces - 2023

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.09673.pdf



## Talks



Dynamic Bounding Volume Hierarchies

(BVH methods applicable to BIH)

https://box2d.org/files/ErinCatto_DynamicBVH_GDC2019.pdf



Advanced-Procedural-Rendering-with-DirectX

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015726/Advanced-Procedural-Rendering-with-DirectX



Advanced Graphics Techniques Tutorial: GPU-Based Clay Simulation and Ray-Tracing Tech in 'Claybook'

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025030/Advanced-Graphics-Techniques-Tutorial-GPU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpf7Ua3UqOA



Rendering mandelbox fractals faster with cone marching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q5sgNCN2Jw&t=530s

http://www.fulcrum-demo.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Cone_Marching_Mandelbox_by_Seven_Fulcrum_LongVersion.pdf

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59072



Conemarching in VR / Developing a Fractal experience at 90 FPS / Johannes Saam / Mariano Merchante / FRAMESTORE

https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/gdc2018/presentations/Saam_Johannes_Merchante_Mariano_Conemarching%20in%20VR.pdf

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025454/Cone-Marching-in-VR-Developing



Fluid and Particle Physics in PixelJunk Shooter. 2D fluids collision detection with SDF

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012447/Go-With-the-Flow-Fluid



Realtime sparse Distance Fields for game

https://gpuopen.com/gdc-presentations/2023/GDC-2023-Sparse-Distance-Fields-For-Games.pdf



## Twitter/Reddit discussions



BVH with blending

https://twitter.com/TheKristofLovas/status/1415000116629495808



fBM style displacement Inigo quilez @iquilezles

https://twitter.com/iquilezles/status/1414738043118899200

https://iquilezles.org/www/articles/fbmsdf/fbmsdf.htm



How is SDF stored in a octree?

https://www.reddit.com/r/VoxelGameDev/comments/ontjdf/how_is_sdf_stored_in_a_octree/h5vrbea/



Using @SebAaltonen's eikonal solver (https://shadertoy.com/view/ltGGRw) to fix interior/exterior of SDF after add/cut.

https://twitter.com/Calneon/status/1422316033071882243



Casey Muratori's helpful notes for Implicit Surfaces and Interval Arithmetic

https://hastebin.com/raw/orenawiwum



"my best idea right now is to start in the middle of the ray/bounds intersection, and add new samples at the half way point of every unknown segment of the ray until you find a hit with no unknown space preceding it"

https://twitter.com/ladyaeva/status/1201770482766364672



"the idea here is that you start at the graph leaves and work your way down to the graph root.  leaves emit geometry for basic shapes.  operators modify the mesh data, and so on."

https://twitter.com/ladyaeva/status/1410120245621239808



## Code



hg_sdf A glsl library for building signed distance functions by Mercury

https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/



Rust & Vulkan test projects. "The first test project renders 1 million cubes, each containing a 950 MB (uncompressed) distance field volume.

The second test project is going to be using sparse octree storing a hierarchy of distance field volume bricks."

https://github.com/sebbbi/rust_test



libfive is a software library and set of tools for solid modeling, especially suited for parametric and procedural design.

https://libfive.com/



## Conversion to Polygonal Mesh



isosurface: A project testing and comparing various algorithms for creating isosurfaces

https://github.com/Lin20/isosurface



Manifold Dual Contouring - *Schaefer, Ju, and Warren - 2007*

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.75.9707&rep=rep1&type=pdf



Dual Contouring Tutorial

https://www.boristhebrave.com/2018/04/15/dual-contouring-tutorial/