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A comment on Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer.

Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by raphlinus on Friday December 16, 2022 @11:44AM (#34016707)
I'm very happy to see this work! The era of rendering vector graphics in GPU compute shaders is upon us, and I have no doubt it we'll start seeing these in production soon, as there's just such a performance advantage over CPU rendering, and I believe trying to run vector 2D graphics through the GPU rasterization pipeline doesn't quite work.

This code is simpler than Vello (the new name for piet-gpu), focused on vector path rendering. It's also a strong demo of the power of WebGPU, while also having a performant software-only pipeline. I definitely encourage people to take a closer look.

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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by dragostis on Friday December 16, 2022 @11:52AM (#34016848)
Thank you for the endorsement. Looking forward to collaborating more with you on 2D graphics.
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by nerpderp82 on Friday December 16, 2022 @03:30PM (#34019889)
How does this compare to https://github.com/RazrFalcon/resvg ?
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by mkl on Friday December 16, 2022 @05:15PM (#34021264)
That's a different kind of thing, I think. It renders using tiny-skia, so probably comparing to tiny-skia would be more appropriate? It also sounds like resvg's renderer can be swapped out, so it may be possible to have it render with Forma.
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by nerpderp82 on Friday December 16, 2022 @05:37PM (#34021578)
That sounds neat.
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by CryZe on Saturday December 17, 2022 @04:22PM (#34032378)
I just tried it in my own renderer (that uses tiny-skia) to compare performance, but unfortunately forma is still lacking some features to do a proper comparison (strokes, the ability to scale shapes up instead of only down (?????), rendering without clearing).
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by tsuru on Friday December 16, 2022 @01:58PM (#34018545)
I saw google, I saw Rust, and I was betting it was you. I lost my bet but still happy to see it!
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by gct on Friday December 16, 2022 @03:09PM (#34019617)
Haven't Skia et al been GPU accelerated for ages?
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by fathyb on Friday December 16, 2022 @03:28PM (#34019869)
Yes, maybe even before it got acquired by Google?

This library seems far better optimized for vector rendering, it's capable to only render updated tiles by itself. Skia requires application developers to do that; a significant API/architecture change would be needed to have it built-in.

I could see someone using both: draw vectors using this library, composite layers using Skia.

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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by jahewson on Friday December 16, 2022 @04:16PM (#34020516)
Yes, Skia uses the traditional method of tessellating path geometry on the CPU and then having the GPU handle transforming and shading it as if it were 3D geometry. Compare that with what we see here, which using compute shaders for the whole process.
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Re:Show HN: forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer by pcwalton on Friday December 16, 2022 @07:13PM (#34022516)
> I believe trying to run vector 2D graphics through the GPU rasterization pipeline doesn't quite work.

I mean, it does work, it's just slower than using compute in most cases. I mean, people have emulated Linux in the GPU rasterization pipeline [1], so the raster pipeline is clearly Turing complete :)

[1]: https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/

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