Vertices, vertices, vertices.
Before this project, I had only used Signed Distance Functions (SDFs) to define shapes, not anymore! Recently, I had started messing with vertices to define the planet in my app.
I started with thinking about adding craters. I was thinking something along the lines of “Oh, I’ll just get the subtract a sphere from planet to remove some area and make a crater!” I soon found out, however, that is the case with SDFs, but not with an object defined with vertices.
Eventually, I found out about vertex displacement. The idea is pretty neat: I move each vertex toward the center of the sphere depending on if it’s in the aria where a crater should be. No need to add extra vertices, just use the ones already there! But the really cool part is that this can be done on the CPU or on the GPU with a vertex shader!
But that’s about all for now, currently I’m just doing vertex displacement on the CPU but that could change in the future.
See you all later, bye!