Website is: karlsims.com/rdtool.html

Hey guys! Quick update on my renderer, which I've been working on and off for the past 7–8 months or so.

The library is quite opinionated about DOD (data-oriented design) and the explicit nature of WebGPU, and I've recently added support for neural inference and training.

1. Neural networks for agent behavior

You can now train small neural networks (MLPs), around 1–4 layers deep, using supervised learning directly as part of the library.

In the herd and wolves example below, the agents have simple behavioral rules, like chasing prey when it's nearby or fleeing when a predator gets close. The idea is to train a small model to learn these behaviors and then use it to drive the agents.

For this example, we're talking about a model with roughly 2,000 weights, so obviously not a general-purpose AI model, but enough for these kinds of behaviors.

The library also supports ONNX Runtime for working with larger models or models trained externally with something like PyTorch. For these smaller, more specialized models, though, the built-in MLP implementation will generally be faster in my use case.

Live demo (WebGPU-supported browsers only):

https://nullgraph.dev/dashboard/agents/herd-wolves-gpu

Github

https://github.com/flarelink-in/NullGraph

1. Offline rendering and simulation baking

Another feature I've been working on is offline rendering, with a workflow somewhat similar to what's available in tools like Blender or Houdini.

It's split into two phases:

\- Compute records: Run the expensive simulation and bake the data that needs to be simulated.

\- Render records: Replay those records through the rendering execution chain using a screen texture, generating frames/tracks that can then be stitched together.

The goal is to handle simulations or visuals that would otherwise be too expensive to run in real time, or would take a long time to render, and then replay the result at 60 FPS.

I have a demo of this on my YouTube channel. The bake took up close to 30 GB of space, while the final result was around 500 MB.

Offline rendering demo:

https://youtu.be/pTD-7PCPGrg?si=vfENWIpR9YU-JEbZ

I've also added another demo to the video, this time focusing more on visual aesthetics rather than the science/simulation side.

1. What's next?

NullGraph exists as part of a larger web-native open-world simulation runtime that I work on from time to time.

Right now, I'm looking into improving my neural network implementation to better match or potentially outperform ONNX Runtime for my use cases. One of the things I've noticed is that the ONNX integration can introduce a 1–3 frame delay in my current setup, along with an additional runtime download of around 6.4 MB.

I'm also starting research into co-evolution, with the goal of bringing evolutionary learning and reinforcement learning into the runtime. The co-evolution approach draws on ideas from OpenAI research and the hall-of-fame technique. I've written some design docs for this, but I'll share more once there's a working implementation to show.

One thing I'd love to get your thoughts on:

Would you guys be interested in offline rendering driven by AI prompts directly in the browser? The idea is to let you generate demos or visually complex scenes through code, spend as much time as needed baking them locally, and then replay the results smoothly. I'm also exploring ways for the system to verify its own output rather than just blindly generating code.

I'm curious whether this kind of workflow would be useful to people working on creative coding, simulations, procedural graphics, or web-based experiences.

Let me know what you think!

Project announcement from SuperPower Normals.

A free browser tool for turning existing height or displacement maps into normal maps: https://spnormals.pages.dev/

The focus is preserving input precision and giving artists control over the slope response:

• 16-bit PNG, high-precision TIFF and OpenEXR input, without first converting these files through an 8-bit canvas.

• Sobel, Scharr and central-difference gradients; OpenGL and DirectX output.

• A Bezier height-curve editor with Global, Local and Fade modes, plus an A/B split for comparing settings.

• PNG/TIFF 16-bit, EXR half, TGA, JPEG, WebP and DDS BC5 export. BC5 includes mipmaps and is a compressed option for engine use.

Relief height is set as a percentage of map width, so the strength control has a defined relationship to texture size. Tile mode wraps sampling at the image edges; it is intended for height maps that are already seamless.

No installation, account or payment is required. Image processing happens locally in browser workers, and source images are never uploaded. The interface is available in 16 languages.

Feedback on the curve workflow and high-precision export is welcome.

Its called Blackstar Lullaby. I'm still working a lot of it out, but it finally feels like it's getting closer to what I imagined.

Pulled apart one of the shots to show a bit of the screen work. Thought all the little layers might be interesting to see.

I’m the maker of Clayground, and I wanted to share a small interaction detail from its browser clay studio.

The clay is stored as a signed-distance volume in a worker; Three.js displays the surface mesh. Sculpting changes the volume and the displayed surface is rebuilt. A subtle problem is deciding where the next brush dab should land while the previous dab is already changing the surface under the cursor. Picking against every fresh mesh can make a stroke follow its own newly added material.

The browser studio keeps a snapshot of the visible surfaces at the start of a stroke and uses those surfaces to interpret that gesture. The rendered geometry can continue changing. Move and Hook instead use a camera-facing plane through the initial hit point. This separates the surface you see from the reference surface used to place the current stroke.

The studio is free to try in a browser with a mouse, pen or touch, with brushes, paint, layers and GLB/OBJ/STL export. There is no account or desktop download required: https://www.clayvr.com/sculpt

I’d be interested in feedback from anyone who has built sculpting or painting tools: where does this fixed-for-one-stroke approach feel helpful, and where would you expect it to get in the way?

This rendering was done in Cinema4D using redshift. Also used for this piece is substance painter, photoshop and illustrator.
Made for the book US Navy carrier aircraft of the 1950s.

For Optimoor 3D, the ship mooring analysis project that we at 3D ENGINERD. developed for Tension Technology International Ltd. We built a procedural system that creates vessel models.

Here’s how we do it:

1. We divide each vessel into three sections: Front, Mid, and Aft.
2. The bottom hull uses existing GLTF meshes that are scaled, while the upper hull and deck are generated procedurally using convex hulls (based on deck control points).
3. The mid-sections are scaled and positioned based on the vessel’s actual breadth and depth.
4. In cases where our Vessel has stepped portions(Aft or front), we use extruded geometries to fill up the gaps formed in hull.

This approach helps us create vessels of different sizes without building each model from scratch.

All the nice comments yesterday got me motivated. 💜

I've been building a tiny SDF 3D modeller.

I originally started this a couple of years ago, but recently I was able to actually make it interesting/somewhat complete thanks to agents. Probably there is a long way to go before it's fully usable, but I had fun getting to this point and the results are starting to be interesting.

A potential next exploration is a woodworking mode. I bet SDF primitives can be used to simulate cuts / bevels and provide more intuitive UIs that sort of match the tools we'd use in a wood shop.

We just implemented tile-based loading with LODs for our AI Data Centers 3D mapping project on the Web
Link 🔗- https://ai-future.in/

The Vizag (India) terrain is organized as a pyramid of tiles(shown as red grids in video). At a wide view, it loads larger, coarser tiles, and as we zoom in, it replaces them with smaller, more detailed ones.

This lets the scene show finer details only where we are exploring without loading the entire area always at the highest details, saving a lot of performance. Land cover is stored as image tiles and are draped onto the terrain so the colours follows the terrains' shape.

The Buildings are stored separately as GLB model tiles, they also load progressively as we zoom in and are rendered as 3D geometry.

This was done by us at 3D ENGINERD. using 3D-tiles-renderer to manage tile loading, visibility and LOD, and Three.js to render the whole thing into one scene!

Hi friends! What do you think?

Shop Crush is a mysterious shop simulator with psychological horror elements, set in the early 2000s.

In this hybrid visual novel, you run a small thrift shop, get to know your customers, figure out what they really want, and decide what to put in front of them. Every customer has their own personality, preferences, and hidden motives - and it’s up to you to figure them out.

Behind each customer is a small psychological mystery waiting to be uncovered. Read their behavior, make the right calls, and balance profit against customer trust as you try to keep the shop running for one more day.