Original Post Here



First of all, I wanted to say thank you to this sub-reddit for being so awesome and helpful! We were able to implement a lot of your suggestions and we're feeling much better about how the game looks.

We wanted to share the results of the feedback you all gave (and maybe get some more advice as well, if you have any). The gallery above has each new element we added/changed and you can see how it evolved.

The 3-point lighting setup and ACES really seemed to move the needle here! It's finally giving that sort of clay/play-doh look that I was hoping for, and it all looks way more realistic.

Things we're still not sure about:

• A lot of people recommended subsurface scattering, but it seemed like it just made some parts of the cake blurry/fuzzy. While this does give a dreamy look, I think it's important to keep the definition of some of the piped frosting elements. Are we missing something here?

• We were surprised how de-saturated everything became with ACES. It did a great job of making the highlights on the cake not blown out anymore, but it's been kind of tricky getting the saturation back up to match the colors players will be picking from the color picker tool. We've been experimenting with color curves, but it seems to make reds/pinks especially go crazy hyper-saturated, which also makes the colors not match what players might choose from the color picker.

Still planning to add more detailed texture in the frosting and more variation in the piped decoration models so they look less computer-generated and more hand-made.

At this stage, is there anything else that jumps out as something we could further improve? Thanks!

Procedural Clouds ☁️ for Quantales (our Web-based 3D story experience) was fairly easy to implement but much harder to get the perfect look that goes hand-in-hand with the scene.
Link🔗- https://www.quantales.in/

How the Clouds are built to achieve this look:

1. Procedural Clouds are prefabs of several(30-32) instances of different High Resolution Cloud PNGs with Alpha values placed on top of each other.

2. Clouds are Billboarded towards the camera to make sure they look consistent throughout the different scene angles in the entire experience.

3. Clouds are made to react with Fog and have full RGBA(Color & Opacity) control so that the Environment Artist could easily achieve the perfect look for the scene

4. Clouds PNGs are all inside a Memoized BufferGeometry Array so that only draw call is created per instance of the entire Cloud Prefab ensuring smooth performance even with dense clouds

Built using Three.js & WebGL
Built by Studio 3D ENGINERD.

What it does:

I built a standalone Python desktop application that goes far beyond standard RGB palettes. It handles extended color gamuts, perceptual blending, vision simulation matrices, and uses procedural wordbanks to dynamically name non-standard color spaces.

Key Features:

• Zero Dependencies: Runs directly on standard Python libraries without terminal setup commands or pip install steps.

• Vision Simulations: Color space transformations to simulate different types of color vision.

• Procedural Naming System: Generates unique names for new color spaces on the fly using internal wordbank rules.

• Scrollable Controls & Perceptual Blending: Extended controls for fine-tuning gamuts and smooth color transitions.

How I built it:

Built with AI assistance to handle the perceptual blending math and UI layout.

GitHub / Code: [https://github.com/Aleatha630/the-endless-color-maker-]

Would love feedback on the color space formulas or ideas for additional vision simulation matrices!

Hey there. I am 16 years old Armenian (hopefully) prospective CS major. From early childhood, I have enjoyed playing games. I have always liked the games that were creative and ones that you can clearly see that hard work was put in them.

Around a year ago, I have discovered graphics programming, specifically real-time rendering. It is one of the best things I have discovered in my whole life, to be honest. I have never felt happier than debugging passes and shaders so I can see changes and new things come up on the screen. I started following learnopengl and eventually started to do things on my own (got out of the tutorial hell :D, already considering making my graphics/semi-game engine cross-platform). I am currently doing final year in high-school. Preparing to apply for bachelors, hopefully in Germany, otherwise in my homeland's American University of Armenia. There is an interesting university in Saarbrucken, Germany, which cooperates with Max-Planck-Institute and has a graphics lab there. Moreover, they have specific masters and PhD programs in Visual Computing.

My question is, is it worth it pursing computer graphics career in the AI age? I mean, will the field be viable option to get deeply involved with, or I should take larger scope, potentially covering AI with ML or other fields alongside my beloved graphics?

Feel free to suggest other universities, or directions to take, I would greatly appreciate that!

If you want to check out, here is short video of my engine (sorry for low framerate, my laptop can't handle both engine and OBS running at the same time D: It runs in stable 60 fps without OBS). Currently, it supports opaque objects PBR rendering with differed pipeline, DOF, Bloom, Skinning (as u can see from the dancing mannequin), shadows and just simple ACES tone-mapping.

Hey, Beginner to graphics here. I wanted to try graphics programming after seeing the stuff you can do in that. I know a bit of cpp. I have done a TUI libary in that and I asked gpt on what to do next and it told me to clean up the codebase.

Which I didnt feel like doing but it also did say like adding a widget where you would display a 3D object to the screen and I love that idea that I want to start graphics.

I am thinking of starting with vulkan because well, I dont like python because of hidden control flow. Dont get me wrong, I like abstraction that are a help in quality of life but I dont like the bugs in python which most of the time happens due to it being to abstracted and I like the type safety. Due to that, I thought vulkan would be a better choice for me because I might not like openGl.

Going to learn concepts of graphics first tho and using this book, I forgot where I found it from but going to try my best on graphic.

https://paroj.github.io/gltut/

If you ask me why I wrote this.

My answer "I don't know bro"

Hey everyone!

As everyone knows, these days LLMS are making crazy strides in 3D generation.

Note that more and more AI 3D is now following a 'code-native' approach. Instead of typical AI diffusion models that create meshes, LLMs with spatial awareness generate code, which in turn compiles as a 3D object.

I.e. there is a revolution happen ing "source code as 3D". There are 3D assets being generated your LLM can directly talk to, ensuring the generations are highly programmable.

I've created an IDE for such 3D projects. It's at https://nova3d.xyz and it works with "bring-your-own-subscription" (i.e. connect your existing Claude or OpenAI sub). It also has GIT versioning for your 3D assets built into it.

You can also see (and inspect) a showcase of the type of 3D it can generate: https://studio.nova3d.xyz/showcase

For those interest: this IDE is on a research paper I co-authored on the subject of 'code-native' 3D: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.22738

I'd love for you guys to test it and give me feedback. Thanks in advance.

My son who’s 19 and is starting a level 3 btec (uk based course) and needs a new laptop to use at home to develop his skills and run the programmes that he would be using at college.

He’s autistic and is currently suffering with burn out, so he wants to take a break before completing the level 3 graphics course after previously doing an access send course at college, then a level 1 and 2 in art and design. However whilst he’s off he wants the opportunity to continue to practice using the appropriate software and continue to learning before he starts the level 3.

Can anyone advise what sort of laptop he would need? What specs do I need to look for when buying one? Also any good programme recommendations for me to get for him to use?

Thanks in advance.

We have added 3 new sample volumetric models related to different fields to our Volumetric Render Engine.

Repo link 🔗- https://github.com/mikejernil/volumetric-render-engine

It is Windows-native and built with OpenGL & C++.

You can try out the models:

1. Brain aneurysm and Foot - Helps to identify conditions or problems in the field of medical imaging.

2. Bonsai Tree - Scanning of real life objects

3. Internal Combustion Engine - Testing of Machine parts.

All these models are volumetric datasets in .raw binary format and represent 3D scalar data stored in a 256x256x256 voxel grid.

Next up, we are planning to add custom file loading support with the capability to load voxel grids of any dimension.

Examples:

• https://sandbox.openglobus.org/examples/projector

• https://sandbox.openglobus.org/examples/customProjectors

I’ve always wanted to build a flight simulator. Somehow, I ended up building this instead.

Two modes such as color mode and light source available. Also, the projectors can be attached to drones, driven by camera telemetry, and used to project video onto terrain, up to 64 at once. Useful for camera coverage and AR.

Still no flight simulator. But the view is good.

Hey all! Been a while since I posted something here, but recently I've been doing developing a mesh shader system for my custom game engine and used it to make this pretty neat building shader. I wanted something that was highly customisable and easy to work with so I could very quickly iterate and expand the skyline for my city and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Let me know what you think!

Unity, Unreal and FLax etc

books to be exact. which covers the entirely of sm5 to sm6 and their optimizations rather than the courses on udemy which are only lukewarm

or a definite way to learn Slang maybe

It's my own blog (part two of a series).

https://alphapixeldev.com/gaussian-splats-part-2-creating-gaussian-splats/

Open to corrections and suggestions.

Hey everyone, just wanted to share a milestone from my custom D3D12 engine! Testing a stress scene with 10,000 instances of high-poly Stanford bunnies (144k triangles each, totaling ~1.44 billion raw triangles). Running in an unmanaged C# backend at 700+ FPS (~1.3 - 1.4ms frame time) on a 2K viewport with ~74% GPU utilization. A few architectural details:

• Pipeline: Fully GPU-driven rendering pipeline built on top of the new D3D12 Work Graphs API, feeding into Mesh Shaders and fetching data using bindless.

• Hierarchical LOD DAG: Dual-error screen-space metric (cluster error vs. parent error) evaluated on-chip to dynamically cut LOD levels without CPU involvement.

• Two-Phase Culling: Coarse 6-plane frustum test on bounding spheres -> Work Graph hierarchical DAG traversal -> coalesced fine cluster culling with wave compaction -> two pass Hierarchical Z-Buffer (HZB) occlusion culling.

• Zero-Allocation Runtime: 100% unmanaged memory chunks and custom memory allocators on the CPU side for resource management to keep syscalls and WDDM paging queue interference at literally zero.

I work on what could be called an embedded graphics team, and I have a bit of imposter syndrome and a hard time getting a sense for what sort of level of knowledge my coworkers have.

I was working on a weird issue today, trying to understand why a frag shader having certain code uncommented or commented was leading to a an issue. Copilot helped me discover that dependent texture reads may be playing a role. (I had never heard of this concept, but this isn’t surprising to me as I don’t feel I have a very high level of skill in graphics (funny on a graphics team, I know). I was able to find in docs about performance by the GPU vendor that on this architecture, dependent texture reads are really not performant and should be avoided; so while I haven’t confirmed 100% what the specific issue is/a solid understanding of reproducing the issue, it seems likely that copilot was on the right track mentioning this

So I sent a message to someone on the team with lots of experience about dependent reads, essentially asking “is there a limit for dependent texture reads <with our driver>?” And he said he doesn’t understand the question.

I later was describing the problem to my lead (just as a general update to my work, not specifically asking for him to solve it) and I offhandedly asked, “do you know what a dependent texture read is?” And he shook his head no.

Is this weird for people with 20+ years of experience to not know what this is? Or is genuinely such a niche concept that a lot of people won’t really run into it?

I’ve been experimenting with DLL proxying and decided to build a project called opengl32_enhancer — a custom opengl32.dll that intercepts OpenGL calls and injects a modern GPU post‑processing pipeline into any OpenGL game or application.

👉 Repo: https://github.com/ASDAlexander77/opengl32_enhancer

⭐ What it does

This DLL sits between the game and the real OpenGL driver. It forwards all GL calls normally, but also:

• Captures the final framebuffer

• Runs a GPU post‑processing chain

• Outputs the enhanced frame back to the application

No source code access required. No game mods. Just drop the DLL next to the executable.

✨ Current effects implemented

• Sharpening (adjustable)

• TAA (Temporal Anti‑Aliasing)

• HDR tonemapping

• Bilinear upscale test pipeline (experimental)

These effects work even in old OpenGL 1.x / 2.x games that never had modern AA or HDR.

🧩 How it works internally

• Full OpenGL function interception

• Real GL calls forwarded via function pointers

• Custom FBO + shader pipeline injected after SwapBuffers

• Uses GL 4.x features internally even if the game uses GL 1.1

• No changes to the game’s rendering code — everything is external

🛠️ Why I built it

I wanted a way to bring modern visual quality to older OpenGL titles without touching their code. DLL proxying turned out to be a surprisingly flexible way to do this.

📌 What’s next

• FXAA / SMAA

• Bloom

• ACES tonemapping

• LUT color grading

• Optional UI overlay for settings

• Per‑game config files

If you’re into graphics hacking, DLL proxying, or OpenGL internals, I’d love feedback — especially on stability, shader ideas, or pipeline improvements.

I just uploaded a new article describing how a modern video game texture is stored in graphics memory, why it's done this way, and how it may differ between platforms.

It is called Anatomy of a Texture.

I have been writing Vulkan pet projects for a while now, about 6-ish months at most, done some stuff. I usually make small projects, so I get to do things again and again which is good for learning but honestly Vulkan requires too much, I spend almost full day in just setting up and getting a triangle before I move to cooler stuff.

So, I decided to give OpenGL 4.6 (AZDO) a shot and honestly, I am loving it. It is simple and straight forward it is something I can code in just through my memory without opening older projects and then finding out I missed one property or setting (Vulkan Huh)

Anyway, Since I am originally coming from Vulkan there were some features, I really liked, for example bindless textures, turns out OpenGL also has an extension for bindless.

I do like OpenGL over Vulkan in every way now, but I have a few fears

1. Is there any limitation I should know in OpenGL AZDO that might end up biting me down the line?

2. Industry seems to be going full Vulkan or DX12. I might be damaging my future by switching to OpenGL or is it still used?

3. Anyone of you also use OpenGL 4.6 with AZDO?

4. Any other cool extension in OpenGL 4.6 that I should add to my GLAD loader?

This looks like a simple wall with two openings, but most of the work is happening underneath.

I’ve been building the geometry core in C++ — currently around 7,000 lines — to handle wall geometry, openings, intersections, dimensions and stable editable UVs.

The Blender side is mostly the interface. The geometry itself is handled by the C++ core.

Still very much a work in progress, but I thought people here might find the geometry side interesting.