IQ's first SDF-raymarched image, Slisesix (2008), won a 4KB demoscene procedural-graphics competition

Inigo Quilez’s earliest documented SDF-raymarched image is Slisesix (2008), which won first prize in the 4 Kilobytes Procedural Graphics category at Euskal Party in Spain. It already demonstrated smooth blending, domain repetition, ambient occlusion and soft shadows. Organix (2008) won first position at the Function Demoparty in Hungary and ran on the CPU (about 40 seconds at 1280x720), since GPU shader rendering was not yet used. The demoscene 4KB constraint — encoding a full visual scene in 4096 bytes — made primitive-based SDFs ideal: a handful of mathematical functions produce a full 3D scene with almost no stored data.

Examples

Slisesix (4KB, 2008, first SDF image) -> Organix (CPU, 2008) -> Fruxis (first GPU pathtracer, 2012) -> Cell (first Shadertoy SDF exercise, 2013).

Assessment

Describe the demoscene context in which IQ first used SDF raymarching, explain why the 4KB size constraint made primitive SDFs ideal, and name his first SDF image.