Show HN: An ASCII 3D Rendering Engine

#1

Post by apresmoi » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

Show HN: An ASCII 3D Rendering Engine
glyphcss.com

Re: Show HN: An ASCII 3D Rendering Engine

#2

Post by smalltorch » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

This is actually pretty awesome. I enjoyed going through all the models.

I'm also not sure why I love ASCII art so much. Maybe it's because it's such an abstract way to represent something, yet our brains make perfect sense of everything.

The shading is where it all comes to life.

What is the file size of one single model on average?

Re: Show HN: An ASCII 3D Rendering Engine

#3

Post by apresmoi » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 8:40 PM UTC

smalltorch wrote: post #2

This is actually pretty awesome. I enjoyed going through all the models. I'm also not sure why I love ASCII art so much. Maybe it's because it's such an abstract way to represent something, yet our brains make perfect sense of everything. The shading is where it all comes to life. What is the file size of one single model on average?

Thanks! The gallery holds real 3D files (.glb/.obj/.vox), ~300 KB each. The ASCII isn't stored, it's rendered live from the mesh. Its size only depends on the grid resolution, not the model: a full-screen view is ~150×50 characters, so around ~10 KB of text (a cube and a detailed mesh would produce the same byte count)