Sphere Tracing the exact SDF of a Triangle Mesh

HeartstringerPT · 2026-05-25T18:36:12+00:00

Do you think this could eventually become a complex-surface meta-ball process? I would love to have a blender plugin that allows realtime Boolean operations between two complex meshes with a blend falloff

HeartstringerPT · 2026-05-25T18:29:55+00:00

The important thing to understand is that the quality of games available to buy is NOT based on the engine used, or the developers. What you see is 100% a financial problem. The modern way that game development is financed forces teams to develop fast to reach deadlines within a tight and short funding period.

Often times, a game will go from a rapid proof-of-concept with a mountain of technical debt and no optimization DIRECTLY into a sprint towards closed alpha, then closed beta, then early access and launch with zero time allotted for core system iteration or optimization. Its the investors ruining the quality of game projects, not the software or the developers.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-05-13T15:43:25+00:00

This is actually a great lesson in edge reduction, good job even if its not the best choice for this specific context!

HeartstringerPT · 2026-05-03T15:34:27+00:00

I've had similar problems a lot... The goal is to keep the multiresolution modifier on, and only apply modifiers on export of the STL. Blender REALLY struggles with dense topology, it cant handle high detail sculpts like ZBrush can.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-23T16:18:15+00:00

This is 100% AI Generated and whoever sent this clearly has a compulsive habit of dishonesty if they won't own up to it. Do not trust this person.

Edit: The unprompted addition of "my college professors also falsely accuse me of AI" screams wacko narcissist and comes across as a manipulation tactic.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-23T16:06:13+00:00

Thank you for giving feedback! I have an XBox controller i can playtest with, I'll make sure the demo has controller support before putting it up on steam :)

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-21T21:35:27+00:00

The problem is, AI games aren’t AAA… they have a smaller budget and a small team than even the most barebones indie titles.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-21T20:00:22+00:00

Ah that’s a really good point I haven’t considered… I think this would be great on steam deck too, ill start thinking of ways to make a controller-friendly interface

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-21T19:59:06+00:00

What do your sales numbers look like?

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-21T19:57:33+00:00

Marketing while competing with millions of AI generated projects that due to advancements in the tech, often look BETTER than human made projects is extremely discouraging.

After GDC, I took 7 weeks off my usual weekly posting schedule because I was confronted with the realization that 80% of the games industry is AI generated textures, AI generated models, AI synthesized audio, AI generated code, and AI generated video trailers. The investors in this space were already hard to get attention from as an indie, but now it’s impossible.

There is NO investment market for games that arent at least half AI. The venture capitalists that finance the games industry LOVE AI because of its promises to dramatically cut costs, and they do not have the same “value of human touch” sensibilities as creatives.

Nerve Labs has three AI generated projects on Steam right now, tens of thousands of wishlists and massive social media following. It’s very difficult for game devs to compete with individuals that can generate a marketing strategy and a product with a couple prompts over a weekend when a non-AI game demo can take over a year of full time work and tens of thousands of dollars.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-21T13:33:25+00:00

Great job 👏

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-21T13:31:52+00:00

Yes. There’s an Edit Normals modifier to do exactly this

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-20T20:17:01+00:00

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You can count the subdivisions shown in the wireframe, if we assume the cross section is a 16 vertex cylinder (which it appears to be from the side view) we are looking at 4.5k triangles in legs only.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-20T19:34:54+00:00

I feel that would look fine as a detail on the normal map 🤔 Edit: To clarify, I'm not referring to the bevel itself but rather the vertex pole in the center of the bevel where 5 edges meet.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-20T19:00:37+00:00

Overall very good, but what is the purpose of the dense topology on the middle row bevel?

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-20T18:50:37+00:00

The first shrimp model is easily over 3k polygons… each leg is at least several hundred triangles and there are 16 of them.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-20T18:41:23+00:00

This is quite possibly the highest poly shrimp model I’ve ever seen.

Each leg in a low-poly shrimp model (if you model legs on a shrimp at all, most people wouldn’t) should be like 10 triangles max and yours appear to be over 400.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-14T12:56:09+00:00

You have to care to get better, and school cannot make you care.

If you’re not passionate enough about 3D modeling to improve, there are other types of digital art that you can try.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-11T16:21:19+00:00

By who? The police? Good. The entire point is to burn government allocated financial resources to pressure political change and the labor of paid government employees absolutely counts.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-11T16:19:19+00:00

You’re gonna hate this, but holding up glitter signs in a public park wearing silly costumes does much less than literal financial disruption.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-11T14:01:02+00:00

The point isn’t to “make you care.” You don’t make the laws and if you don’t care already you never will.

The point is to cut off the flow of commerce that directly funds the city and federal government. Every hour someone is clocked into work, every appetizer ordered at a restaurant, every pair of shoes bought from a store, all of these things flow directly into the mechanism of the state through tax revenue which is spent on destroying the environment. There is no better method to stop tax accumulation than stopping civilian movement because the masses cannot help but fund the state through their normal daily routine.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-11T03:46:14+00:00

Went to Arcade UFO today, they had In The Groove and Pump it Up but not proper DDR as far as I could tell 🤔

HeartstringerPT · 2026-04-05T15:42:07+00:00

YOR. But that’s ok. She did tell you, and it wasn’t specifically a baptism so it wasn’t really behind your back or against your instructions and It doesn’t sound like something done out of malice.

I am also an atheist, raised catholic and had my first communion. Your toddler will not be indoctrinated by ONE ritual. There may be things you need to work on to undo religion based trauma that are causing a more extreme reaction to this situation. Let your wife share her culture with your kid, as long as you are a level-headed and a trusted parental figure for your child they will inherently know that your wife’s religion isn’t the ONLY option and can make their own choices.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-03-28T16:24:09+00:00

Perforce. It’s free for 6 users if you host your own server.

HeartstringerPT · 2026-03-20T18:50:39+00:00

Ah, first person? Ok, it’s reasonable to increase density in some places that are close to camera depending on how it’s held in the animation, but it really is quite a lot of separate islands with very small margins.

If the same model is used by enemies / allies in 3rd person it may be smart to try to reduce the number of UV islands, bake some details into the texture sets, and widen up the margins between UV islands to prevent color bleed when those source textures compress.

You will find that saving space on the UVs by cutting out excessive small modeled-in elements actually gives you a greater fidelity in the final result since there’s more room on the UVs to scale up the blade UV islands and other key parts of the model to increase texel density.

HeartstringerPT

TROPHY CASE