M. C. Escher spiral in WebGL inspired by 3Blue1Brown
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The latest 3Blue1Brown video [1] about the M. C. Escher print gallery effect inspired me to re-implement the effect as WebGL fragment shader on my own.[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxFjLJ3rVY
HN · launched Apr 4, 2026 · 176 upvotes (top 5%) · 0 views
Niche: graphics rendering engines and libraries · 149 launches, 10 in the last 7 days ▼ -23% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 149 launches in graphics rendering engines and libraries →
Could you build this?
Yes It is a self-contained WebGL/GLSL shader and HTML canvas demo implementing a known conformal mapping formula explained in existing math literature and YouTube videos.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, Blender for animation, Three.js
Concerns raised: High resolution requirements for sharp zoom at all scales, Multi-touch controls not fully implemented, WebGL debugging difficulty, Mobile Chrome pinch-to-zoom broken, Need to know position of smaller copy in uploaded image
Feature requests: Proper multi-touch gestures (zoom, pan, rotate), Allow upload of arbitrary images, Swiping controls, Better WebGL debugging tools
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 272 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #19 of 273 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 155 days after the earliest competitor.
- Quasicrystals Animation Playground with WebXR · hn · 2026-08-15 · 40 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- haloflux · github · 2026-10-21 · 39 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Wave · hn · 2026-09-25 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- pro-threads · github · 2026-10-30 · 44 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- spiralist · github · 2026-09-22 · 62 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Trevolyx · ph · 2026-11-12 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- ShaderKit · hn · 2026-05-15 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- A real-time 4D fractal explorer in the browser using WebGPU · hn · 2025-12-11 · 26 upvotes · similarity 0.40
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