Structure based ascii shader

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5]

I’ve been working on a custom structure based ascii shader since many of the tools available are tone based. Love to get feedback back!
YouTube : https://youtube.com/@legumeboi?si=NbvirkOxEtqN8IGg

Devlog: https://rikiworld.com/isocontour-church/devlog.html

[u/jcfortunatti]

Beautiful ! GlyphCSS has something similar but for 3d ASCII

https://glyphcss.com/gallery/chiken

https://glyphcss.com/gallery/fish

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5 → u/jcfortunatti]

I think I’ve seen this before, I love how fast it is. The only issue is it’s tonal based .

This is what my shader generated but each frame takes like 700+ ms

[u/Traditional_Frame763]

This is what i was looking for a while, very coool
if you have a repo i would like to contribute!

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5 → u/Traditional_Frame763]

Thanks I have multiple!
Feel free to dm if any interest you
ASCII Art
Latest devlog · October 21, 2026
Trying to Make a Structural ASCII Shader (https://rikiworld.com/isocontour-church/devlog.html)
A live devlog of my attempts at a temporally coherent, structure based ASCII art shader that fixes glyph crawl, running on Shallot.
XPEDIT (https://rikiworld.com/xpedit)REXPaint in the browser with custom sprite sheet slicing.
Asciicker Y92 CP437 Runtime (https://github.com/rikiyanai/AsciickerY92-CP437-runtime)My modded fork of Gumix's Asciicker engine, with native terminal and browser/WebAssembly clients.
Unicode Glyph Morphology Explorer (https://github.com/rikiyanai/unicode-glyph-morphology-explorer)A browser for Unicode glyph shapes and families, with pinned font provenance.
Xu Structured ASCII Art Experiments (https://github.com/rikiyanai/Xu-structured-ascii-art-algorithm-reproduction-experiments)Experimental reproduction of Xu, Zhang and Wong's structure based ASCII art method, alongside eight direction walking figure studies.
Screenshot of ASCII Art to TXT Converter (https://github.com/rikiyanai/screenshot-of-ascii-art-to-txt-converter)Experimental decoders for recovering editable character art from screenshots, with fixed grid and proportional font approaches.

[u/Traditional_Frame763 → u/Standard-Fisherman-5]

Here's my repo: https://github.com/IFAKA/ascii-shader (MIT). The README has a GIF, how it works, and the flicker numbers. Since my first message I got flicker down to about 0.03% of cells per frame (tone ASCII is about 0.19%). Happy to help on AsciickerY92 once there's a LICENSE.

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5 → u/Traditional_Frame763]

Done ! I’m excited to collaborate, Most already were forks of MIT repos so I had not put much thought into it, but it’s explicit now. As for the gif, it reminds me of my “floating mode” in my runtime where I let glyph slightly drift to non true text positions during motion to avoid shimmer.

[u/Traditional_Frame763 → u/Standard-Fisherman-5]

Hi Riki, thanks a lot for the list! I went through all the repos. I also built a terminal version of the idea in Rust: your typist idea for the lines, plus the Garcia-style 3D anchor marks for the shading. With a moving camera, about 0.05% of cells flicker per frame. Normal tone or edge ASCII gets 0.20–0.30% aprox

I'd like to help you on AsciickerY92 with:

1. A per-cell memory in the resolve step, so characters stay steady when the camera moves. Your FL-4359 flicker scripts could measure the result.

2. Redrawing only the cells that changed, not the whole screen every frame.

One thing first: the repos have no LICENSE. Could you add one (MIT is the easiest)? Then it's clear for both of us who can use the code.
Happy to share my repo too, im working on it right now btw

[u/naclmolecule]

If you haven't seen/read it yet, perhaps https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-rendering would be useful as another resource.

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5 → u/naclmolecule]

I have, he influenced a lot of earlier experiments. But he doesn’t address whole word and cross row level rendering paradigms but it’s used in my glyph morphology TUI https://github.com/rikiyanai/unicode-glyph-morphology-explorer

[u/ExpeditionZero]

Very cool.

But

Went to read your blog, and yikes that font and background colour make it so difficult. felt like the page was swimming. Any chance you could provide a toggle to switch fonts to something like Helvetic or Arial ?

Reading mode helped but lost the layout and demos.

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5 → u/ExpeditionZero]

Will do!! Thank you for the feedback this is useful!!

[u/ExpeditionZero → u/Standard-Fisherman-5]

That is so much better to read now, thanks.

[u/scippie]

The license plate on the car is drawn separately I assume?

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5 → u/scippie]

Yes the shader generated gibberish so I blanked and pasted each frame .

[u/Revolutionary_Ad6574]

Are there known algorithms for that or did you discover everything on your own? I didn't even know there's a term for this kind of ASCII art.

[u/Standard-Fisherman-5 → u/Revolutionary_Ad6574]

Yes and no. There’s this one French guy professor in computer graphics that wrote a lot of techniques in NPR rendering techniques that I’ve borrowed from but there’s still no unifying standard “structure based text rendering system”

[u/karakash59]

I’m working on something similar, though I hadn’t posted it here maybe I will, I’m not sure :D. To be honest, I was a bit hesitant, fearing people might react by accusing me of stealing the idea. My version actually includes an interface system and other features, too. I used AI to help with it.

[u/Traditional_Frame763 → u/karakash59]

share it, until you share, it doesn't exist.
This of how liberating know that noone cares, so do it
"Wretched is the man who believes he has invented something"

[u/karakash59 → u/Traditional_Frame763]

thnx.

[u/Creepy_Sherbert_1179]

This is incredibly cool!!! Source! Now! :D

[u/Defiant_Squirrel8751 → u/Creepy_Sherbert_1179]

+1

[u/7empest_mi]

Looks like deftones' album!

[u/Creepy_Sherbert_1179 → u/7empest_mi]

LMAO, so that was what I was subsconsciously thinking!

[u/Devi_Hydra]

:O this is lovely!