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Alex Evans at Umbra Ignite 2015: Learning From Failure

Media Molecule · 68K views · 2015-10-02 · 30:46

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Overview

Media Molecule's Alex Evans recounts the journey, including the failures, of finding the Dreams engine, based on his Siggraph 2015 talk. It covers the signed-distance-field and splat-based rendering approach and the artistic goals behind it.

On Hacker News

HN calls it an inspirational must-see on SDF rendering and a favorite tech talk for graphics programmers.

Recommended by 7 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2017–2026

Topics

Computer graphics & renderingGame programming & engines
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dreamssdfmedia moleculesiggraphgraphicsgame engine

What people said

stephomi · 2020-10 · Strong recommendation

(dev behind sculptgl, but I didn't make the HN story) Nice project! sculptgl is based on polygons (tris/quads only, and using webgl for rendering). As for the other project it was just as a quick and dirty experiments :). [LINK] [LINK] On Unity there is Clayxel and more recently Mudbun, both based on implicit surfaces. And obviously, the Dreams presentation which is an inspirational must see [VIDEO]

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turtledragonfly · 2026-01 · Recommendation

The Dreams team made a nice talk at SIGGRAPH 2015, if you want to check it out: * Slides (good notes): [LINK] * video: [VIDEO]

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jmiskovic · 2021-01 · Recommendation

Another way to do blobby geometry are signed distance fields (SDFs). You define different geometry solids by specifying function which returns for any point in space how far that point is from the surface of the solid. [1] If they are defined this way, it is easy to smoothly interpolate between two or more solids. When rendering to screen, similar techniques have to be used to convert to screen geometry in realtime. The latest technical marvel that uses this tech is Media Molecules Dreams. With SDFs they made rich modelling tools (constructive solid geometry) that produce geometry for physics and painting-style renderer, all running on PS4. The Learning From Failure talk [2] was quite inspiring on lengths they went to achieve their artistic goals. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Media Molecule, played through YouTube.

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