I painted a Landscape with Mathematics
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to it as the best demonstration of procedural graphics from a master, accessible to beginners yet deep enough for advanced viewers.
What it is
Inigo Quilez live-paints a mountain landscape using only math in a shader, building up from a basic polynomial noise surface through fractal terrain, lighting and atmosphere. The code runs in real time on Shadertoy so viewers can edit it as they follow along.
Recommended by 7 HN commenters across 7 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec fasterik · 2023-08 · on “OP drew these corals with mathematical equations”
Indeed, Inigo Quilez is "the guy" for this kind of stuff. He co-created ShaderToy and has worked on effects and modeling for multiple Pixar films. My favorite video of his is Painting a Landscape with Maths. [this video] He deserves to have at least as many subscribers as other math YouTube channels like Verisatium and 3Blue1Brown.
Recommends lifthrasiir · 2022-05 · on “Making graphics in 4 kilobytes (2008) [pdf]”
Inigo Quilez, the author of this slide, also has made in-depth videos [1] [2] which might be more accessible to who aren't familiar with shader languages. [1] [LINK] [2] [this video]
Recommends djmips · 2022-06 · on “Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)”
Thankfully for the graphics the very person who did the graphics in this Elevated demo is very generous with their time. Inigo Quilez has many instructional videos on his channel in how to code procedural graphics from the very beginner to the advanced. I link a couple of examples. You can watch the more advanced video even as a beginner but trying yourself is easier at the beginner level. Beginner. [LINK] Advanced. [this video] Website. [LINK]
Recommends antegamisou · 2023-09 · on “Painting with Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching”
Good to see high quality articles gaining traction. If the article looks too verbose, be sure to check out, as the author cites, Inigo Quilez's videos Painting a Landscape with Maths - [this video] Painting a Character with Maths - [LINK] Bonus: Painting with Maths in Google Sheets - [LINK]
Recommends sph · 2023-10 · on “Interactive Intro to Shaders”
Welcome to the Internet, superMayo! If you want to see what the Masters can do with shaders, let me introduce you to Inigo Quilez and his shader art: [this video] EDIT: I did not notice you are the author of this article. It's very well done, and I've been looking for more approachable and interactive tutorials on the arts of shader coding.
Recommends tombh · 2024-08 · on “Programming terrain from scratch using C++ and OpenGL by Shamus Young (2006)”
I just finished watching a live-coding session (from 2 years ago) by Inigo Quilez (ex Pixar), where he constructs an entire ray-marched landscape using only maths (mostly SDFs) in pure GPU shader code. The stream: [this video] The demo: [LINK]
Recommends thewanderer1983 · 2025-01 · on “VoxelSpace: Terrain rendering algorithm in less than 20 lines of code (2020)”
>It looks really good for such a simple algorithm. I love this! If you like that, you should check out Inigo Quilez [this video] Here is the shadertoy link with code [LINK]
Cites vanderZwan · 2023-06 · on “Infinite Photorealistic Worlds Using Procedural Generation”
Could you define "assets", please? What would you consider the assets in these videos by Inigo Quillez, for example? [this video] [LINK]