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Spline Distance Fields
mber 31th, 2024 Earlier this year I decided to put my main project Tangerine on hold indefinitely and began prototyping a new renderer in an unfamiliar language using a totally new graphics API with the goal of overcoming all of Tangerine's technical shortcomings. The new renderer is an eccentric CPU ray tracer called Star Machine that boasts the ability to effortlessly push 4k frames at 120hz or better irrespective of scene complexity, a custom coordinate system that limits the play space to roughly 940.7 astronomical units with a constant world resolution of 15 micrometers, and a truly unique visual style.
The new renderer is an eccentric CPU ray tracer called Star Machine that boasts the ability to effortlessly push 4k frames at 120hz or better irrespective of scene complexity, a custom coordinate system that limits the play space to roughly 940.7 astronomical units with a constant world resolution of 15 micrometers, and a truly unique visual style. My experimentation in Blender (and lots of great feedback from internet people experienced on the subject) quickly revealed that reasoning about landscapes and roads in isolation from one another "adds skill" a bit more than I would like, and so I see this as a good opportunity to develop structured workflows and supporting tools to take me to the places I want to go. This caused quite a stir for the game production she's part of, as they ended up completely throwing out the Godot terrain tool they were using in favor of switching to a new workflow built around the prototype I gave her.
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