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first demo who ever used raymarching?

category: code [glöplog]
topic says it all. when was it made and by whom? was this an allready known technique in the games industry, was it written papers about it before it was used in a demo. im just curious...
added on the 2012-06-13 15:43:25 by rudi rudi
This is widely cited as the first paper, I think, but stand to be corrected...

Sphere tracing: A geometric method for the antialiased ray tracing of implicit surfaces
John C. Hart
The Visual Computer 12 (10), Dec. 1996, pp. 527-545
added on the 2012-06-13 15:47:06 by Fell Fell
that's interesting
added on the 2012-06-13 16:19:11 by rudi rudi
but in realtime and on the demoscene, i can think of.. kinderplomber by Rgba? (easter 2007)
good question really :)
added on the 2012-06-13 16:24:51 by nystep nystep
Sphere tracing (aka raymarching) has also been described also as a technique for relief mapping in GPU Gems 2 (though using a 3d texture is really an overkill for a bump mapping related tech, just my 2 cents).

Chapter 8. Per-Pixel Displacement Mapping with Distance Functions

> Second printing, April 2005
added on the 2012-06-13 16:32:51 by nystep nystep
nystep: polygons, and fallty is older anyway.
However, that's for gpu marching on pc.. then we have Aura for Laura for PS2, and most likely before that some slow and ugly software rendered stuff I can't remember ;)
added on the 2012-06-13 16:37:10 by Psycho Psycho
Quote:
some slow and ugly software rendered stuff
Sounds like my first attempt at 3D metaballs around the time of Gamma :)
added on the 2012-06-13 16:52:08 by p01 p01
gonna check out Fallty.

ive never coded a raymarcher before. it seems to me that raymarching is specifically directed towards implicit surface-rendering, but is there a global overhead-saving on scenes that doesnt necessary have implicit surfaces?
added on the 2012-06-13 17:00:26 by rudi rudi
p01: marching cubes != raymarching
added on the 2012-06-13 17:02:27 by rudi rudi
if you consider most techniques used to accelerate raytracing as raymarching then this was already used long time ago.
added on the 2012-06-13 17:33:20 by Tigrou Tigrou
Yeah, the lines are pretty blurred -- imho if you traverse a regular grid you're marching along a ray.

But I think rudi means specifically sphere tracing..
added on the 2012-06-13 17:42:22 by Fell Fell
rudi: Thank you captain Obvious. I know the difference. My first attempt at 3D metaballs was brute force, fixed step marching of the volume. No marching cube whatsoever.
added on the 2012-06-13 18:40:03 by p01 p01
the first paper i know of using raymarching for distance fields is from 1989, used to render julia sets: Ray Tracing Deterministic 3-D Fractals [John Hart et al, 1989]. Ironically, it's the same guy that years later would mess up with the name of the algorithm and add the unfortunate "sphere" term.

As for the demoscene, I can think of Lattice [2001], which raymarches a sin/cos field (quite like Falty)

--------

So, 1989 offline rendering, 2001 demoscene, as far as i know. Can we beat these numbers?
added on the 2012-06-13 19:40:22 by iq iq
and with proper bbcode:

offline, 1989: Ray Tracing Deterministic 3-D Fractals

for the demoscene, 2001: Lattice
added on the 2012-06-13 19:42:15 by iq iq
Ahh yep ofc, that 89 one was the one I was thinking of, honest ;)
added on the 2012-06-13 20:40:10 by Fell Fell
thanks for the replies!

p01: ok :D misinterpretation of sentences is (sometimes) my middle name. hehe

iq: cool. i couldnt believe it could be done in 256b.

as a matter of fact by that previous intro, i remember this one too, which is raymarching, but from 2009.

so far some kind of listing of demoscene prods that use raym.:
Quote:
lattice by 3sc (2001) 256b (dos)
fallty by loonies (2006) 4k (win)
puls by rrrola (2009) 256b (dos)
kinderplomber by rgba (2007) 4k (win)

added on the 2012-06-13 21:42:21 by rudi rudi
well, this wasnt about making any listing. continue topic :P
added on the 2012-06-13 21:55:00 by rudi rudi
It's been done several times in 256b, and at least twice in 128b.

Quote:
attice by 3sc (2001) 256b (dos)
fallty by loonies (2006) 4k (win)
kinderplomber by rgba (2007) 4k (win)
Spongy by tbc (2009) 128b (dos)
puls by rrrola (2009) 256b (dos)
orboland by fsqrt (2012) 128b (dos)
added on the 2012-06-13 22:01:22 by p01 p01
Yawn, what a boring topic. Let's discuss what prod first used HypnoGlow instead!
added on the 2012-06-14 01:34:55 by kusma kusma
just states that GPU sucks, and raymarchin gis nothing new!
yeah, hypnoglow is like blur!!. raymarching are not like used everywhere to impress people today. its so boring. :D
added on the 2012-06-14 02:36:04 by rudi rudi
I think 2D constant-step raymarching (for heightfields) is pretty oldschool. 1992? 1994?
added on the 2012-06-14 10:16:52 by rrrola rrrola
yeh, if voxel landscape stuff counts, then surely Panic already had it.
added on the 2012-06-14 10:42:10 by Gargaj Gargaj
Some of my first raytracers were actually raymarchers, from 1990 or so (nonrealtime, unpublished, doesn't count, blabla..)
Proper intersections with integer math was just slightly too difficult :)
added on the 2012-06-14 10:51:42 by 216 216
Real men use fixed-point math to do raymarching... ;)
added on the 2012-06-14 13:04:00 by raer raer

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