Making a heart with Maths
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters call it a great beginner-friendly introduction and enjoy watching Quilez work through graphics.
What it is
Inigo Quilez shows step by step how to build a simple heart shape from mathematics and shaders, with code on Shadertoy. It is an introduction to procedural graphics and signed distance functions.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2017 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends eggy · 2017-09 · on “Articles on fractals, computer graphics, mathematics, demoscene and more”
His YouTube tutorial where he creates the beating heart composited on live video as he explains it is a great introduction for beginners and younger people [1]. I've learned so much from his sharing of his techniques and knowledge. Thanks Inigo! [1] [this video]
Recommends isoprophlex · 2020-02 · on “Wolfram Alpha: {y = Re(sqrt(abs(x)(1-abs(x)))), y = Re(-sqrt(1-sqrt(abs(x))))}”
Highly recommended video by Iquilez, in a similar vein: [this video] Watching the guy hack away at graphics is super enjoyable
Cites userbinator · 2019-02 · on “Plotting hearts with Python and C”
I was expecting it to be the same algorithm in two different languages, but the Python version is a mathematical description whereas the C version is RLE-compressed. Relatedly, there is this video on how to procedurally generate a 3D heart: [this video]