N44: rust-gpu-sdf

Author: ProfLander

content/news/044/index.md

@@ -76,6 +76,47 @@ If needed, a section can be split into subsections with a "------" delimiter.
 
 ## Library Updates
 
+### [rust-gpu-sdf]
+
+![3d-distance-field](rust-gpu-sdf.gif)
+_An implicit surface defined compositionally, raymarched, and shaded entirely in Rust_
+
+Announcing [rust-gpu-sdf], by [@Shfty]; a `no-std` signed distance field library designed for use across both CPU and GPU.
+
+At time of writing, this library is the primary consumer of [bevy-rust-gpu], and is in a heavy-development pre-release state.
+Its main goal is to enumerate the distance field domain to the fullest extent allowed by Rust's type system;
+this covers a great many applications, such as collision detection, rendering, mesh generation,
+and volume modeling. And, contrary to its working title, is [rust-gpu]-agnostic, so can be used anywhere Rust can!
+
+But what is a distance field? In short, it's a function that defines a shape in terms of its distance from a point.
+This can be used as an alternative to traditional meshing approaches in order to achieve perfectly smooth surfaces,
+the dynamic morphing depicted above, and many other effects that would traditionally require a powerful modeling package.
+
+On paper, this also makes SDFs a great fit for accelerated rendering via GPU;
+a given distance function can be encoded directly in a shading language,
+and rendered by evaluating it on a per-fragment basis.
+In practice however, this presents a pipeline problem;
+distance fields (such as the ones found in [Inigo Quilez' excellent reference](inigo-quilez))
+are generally defined in mathematical form, i.e. as a single monolithic function.
+
+Thus, in order to effectively leverage SDFs for CGI, an artist must also be both a competent mathematician
+and shader programmer. Even then, organization via abstraction eventually becomes necessary,
+which is often limited in shading languages. This is often solved by introducing a preprocessor,
+but forks away from the base language, introducing more machinery, specification,
+and points of failure to the process.
+
+[rust-gpu] allows us to sidestep this problem, using Rust's language features
+to model powerful abstractions that can be compiled directly into SPIR-V.
+This is ideal for SDFs, since the algorithms involved can often be decomposed into reusable,
+generalizable operators that lend themselves well to functional composition.
+[rust-gpu-sdf] aims to do this, and provide a go-to library able to compose complex SDFs for any use-case. Watch this space!
+
+[@Shfty]: https://github.com/Shfty
+[rust-gpu-sdf]: https://github.com/bevy-rust-gpu/rust-gpu-sdf
+[bevy-rust-gpu]: https://github.com/bevy-rust-gpu
+[rust-gpu]: https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/rust-gpu
+[inigo-quilez]: https://iquilezles.org/articles/distfunctions/
+
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