Best of 3D — October 2025

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   Article

   Godot·32w

   Material Maker – Godot Engine

   Material Maker is an open-source procedural PBR material and texture creation tool built with Godot Engine. Created by RodZilla in 2018, it recently released version 1.4 running on Godot 4, featuring nearly 250 nodes and export capabilities to Godot, Unity, and Unreal. The tool generates shaders using a node-based system and has been used in several released games including Crown Gambit and Zefyr: A Thief's Melody. Godot 4 brings compute shaders for improved performance and flexible layouts with undockable panels. Future development focuses on 3D model texturing with a procedural painting workflow.

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   Article

   80 LEVEL·31w

   Stunning Magical 3D Illusion in Flat Card

   Artist Mingwei 'CMZW' Lim created a portal-like 3D illusion on a flat card surface using Blender. The card reveals holographic stars and new depths when moved, similar to holographic display experiments. The artist has previously created various visual effects including Balatro-style cards, custom post-processing VFX collections, distance-based glitch effects, and pixelated Earth renders.

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   Article

   80 LEVEL·34w

   Ex Meta Engineer Develops Tech That Makes Any Screen 3D Using a Camera

   A former Meta engineer developed True3D Labs technology that creates 3D viewing experiences on any screen using only a front-facing camera. The system tracks head position in real-time to reproject scenes with motion parallax, eliminating the need for special glasses or hardware. It uses facial landmark detection and six-degree-of-freedom head pose estimation to treat the screen as a window into a 3D world. The platform supports volumetric video, voxels, and Gaussian splats, with APIs available for web developers to integrate into applications, game captures, and real-time renders from engines like Unity and Blender.

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   Article

   Game Designing·31w

   Procedural Generation Explained (And the Tools That Power It)

   Procedural generation uses algorithms to automatically create game content like terrain, objects, and levels instead of manual design. The technique starts with a seed value and applies rules to generate natural-looking results efficiently. Developers can apply it to animation, dialogue, levels, loot systems, and terrain. Popular tools include Houdini, Blender, Maya, and MapMagic 2. Games like Minecraft and No Man's Sky demonstrate how this approach enables vast, varied worlds while boosting replay value and scalability.

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   Video

   Low Level Game Dev·33w

   The 5 levels of OpenGL

   A progression framework for learning OpenGL, from rendering your first triangle to mastering advanced techniques like compute shaders and ray tracing. The author shares their personal journey from beginner to advanced graphics programmer, breaking down five distinct skill levels: understanding basic rendering, grasping fundamentals, implementing 3D graphics, mastering advanced features like PBR and shadows, and finally achieving expert-level proficiency with compute shaders and complex optimizations. The piece emphasizes that advancement comes from pushing through difficult concepts rather than avoiding them.

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