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I painted a Landscape with Mathematics

Inigo Quilez · tutorial · Watch on YouTube

Computer graphics & renderingCreative coding & generative artDemoscene & retrocomputing

What it is

Inigo Quilez live-paints a mountain landscape using only math in a shader, building up from a basic polynomial noise surface through fractal terrain, lighting and atmosphere. The code runs in real time on Shadertoy so viewers can edit it as they follow along.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters point to it as the best demonstration of procedural graphics from a master, accessible to beginners yet deep enough for advanced viewers.

  • 7 people recommended it
  • 7 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2022, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “My favorite video of his is Painting a Landscape with Maths.”

    Quilez paints a landscape using only math

    fasterik, 2023-08 · Strong recommendation · in “OP drew these corals with mathematical equations”

  2. “Inigo Quilez, the author of this slide, also has made in-depth videos [1] [2]”

    In-depth videos by Quilez, more accessible than slides

    lifthrasiir, 2022-05 · Recommendation · in “Making graphics in 4 kilobytes (2008) [pdf]”

  3. “Inigo Quilez has many instructional videos on his channel in how to code procedural graphics from the very beginner to the advanced.”

    Advanced instructional video on procedural graphics from the author of Elevated

    djmips, 2022-06 · Recommendation · in “Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)”

  4. “be sure to check out, as the author cites, Inigo Quilez's videos Painting a Landscape with Maths -”

    Companion video on painting a landscape with maths

    antegamisou, 2023-09 · Recommendation · in “Painting with Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching”

  5. “let me introduce you to Inigo Quilez and his shader art”

    Showcase of what masters can do with shaders

    sph, 2023-10 · Recommendation · in “Interactive Intro to Shaders”

  6. “I just finished watching a live-coding session (from 2 years ago) by Inigo Quilez (ex Pixar)”

    Live coding of a ray-marched landscape using only math in a shader

    tombh, 2024-08 · Recommendation · in “Programming terrain from scratch using C++ and OpenGL by Shamus Young (2006)”

  7. “you should check out Inigo Quilez”

    Quilez's landscape rendering with shader code

    thewanderer1983, 2025-01 · Recommendation · in “VoxelSpace: Terrain rendering algorithm in less than 20 lines of code (2020)”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: raymarching, shaders, shadertoy, procedural terrain, demoscene, glsl

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