Rendering Worlds with Two Triangles

Forget Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, Unity, Unreal Engine and Valve Hammer Editor. In this talk we'll go back to the basics: raw OpenGL. Even more basic than that: two triangles in the scene only, just enough to fill the screens of our rectangular monitors.

I'll show how it's possible to model a 3D world solely in the fragment shader using the techniques of raymarching and distance fields. I'll illustrate this with GLSL code and geometrical diagrams.

I'll demo a handful of beautiful two-triangle creations people have made with these and more than these techniques, some of which even include audio (also "rendered" in the shader) and some interactiveness.

I wish I could live code one... I'll see what I can do.

I'll share my own thoughts on unique advantages and disadvantages of two-triangle creations when compared to "normal" rendering engines, and why they are cool.

In this talk I will present my own work, but mostly follow the work of Inigo Quilez, and creations on ShaderToy.