Show HN: Speck, a WebGL molecule renderer
github.com
github.com
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what does this mean: "Speck renders atoms and bonds not with polygons, but with imposters. This means you can zoom in as close as you like and surfaces remain smooth, not faceted."
I've only ever heard of imposters as bitmaps or simpler models, replacing the original 3d models at a distance. But I guess this is something entirely different... Could you point me in the right direction on this topic?
In my implementation, I render a cube and discard any pixels that aren't along a ray intersecting the sphere, while the rest are colored according to user settings and atom colors. The same approach is taken with the cylindrical bonds, except of course it's a ray-cylinder intersection instead.
Really thank you very much :)
Line #16628: Uncaught Extension EXT_frag_depth not available.
Not sure what the use-case for this would be..perhaps have a library of models for use in education, or show chemical reactions and how a compound is formed.
My primary purpose for writing it was for the production of journal article figures.