CMU prof uses LLMs to write 27KB of GLSL defining an implicit-surface 3D dragon
keenanisalive · x · 2026-10-10
Geometer Keenan Crane (CMU) tried a different take on LLM-assisted 3D: instead of LLM + Blender/Three.js, he had an LLM generate 27KB of GLSL code defining a closed-form implicit surface — a dragon dubbed "Inigo the Dragon" that is neither mesh, NeRF, 3DGS, nor video.
Key details:
- Not automatic: 25 hours of model/tool calls and 27 rounds of human feedback; he doubts it was possible without the latest LLMs.
- Reconstructing 3D from two 2D projections is ill-posed, so he imposed a geometric prior: objects blend basic primitives (boxes, ellipsoids), echoing "blobby modeling" back to Maxwell's 1873 equipotential drawings.
- Rendering the implicit surface is extremely expensive: a custom Metal renderer took 45 minutes for one clip; he ended up meshing it just to inspect.
- He stresses it's an experiment: for real image-to-3D, diffusion mesh generators like Meshy/Tripo are far faster, cheaper and better — 3 minutes at 50¢ each.
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