iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Look back at day one. That afternoon, I spent hours wrestling with Gemini just to get it to generate a sphere that could be reflected and deform across the surface normals. Instead, it kept messing up the spatial transformations and reflection formulas.

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Working with AI -- Vol.35 After rounds of communication and iteration with Gemini, we now have a shockwave shader that features a Wilson cloud deforming upon surface reflection, as well as a dust-kickup effect when it sweeps across object surfaces. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt

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Procedural 3D lightning generation? Or a GPU-driven 2D animation system that doesn't rely on sprite sheets or skeletal rigs?

keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.34 Make it colorful! I'm planning to clean up the shaders and control scripts for this effect and publish the pack on itch before moving on to my next project. What would you guys be more interested in next? #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d

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Today, the final setup includes: • A 2-pass shockwave (Wilson cloud + environment surface dust) • A Raymarching + implicit geometry + vertex animation volumetric mushroom cloud with volume conservation

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.33 Remember where it all started? That was the day I asked Gemini to help me use vertex animation and implicit geometry to write a rolling smoke and fiery explosion effect. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Tech pillars: 🔹Hybrid Performance Conservation (CPU Skeleton/Collision Compensation) 🔹Screen-Space UDF Hierarchical Culling (Empty Space Skipping) 🔹Analytical Geometry for Dynamic Step Estimation 🔹Single-Fetch Triplanar Interpolation via Pre-baked 2D Noise

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.32 Upgraded 3D UDF, added directional light/firelight scattering, triplanar sampling for noise textures, rough volume conservation, and optimized raymarching... Once all this is done, let's run a test on an old GTX 1050 Ti. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The core logic: hot interior emission, cold exterior extinction. It starts as a completely incandescent mass, cooling down from the outside in over time. Once the temperature drops past a certain threshold, it transitions into "cold smoke"—pure extinction with zero emission. #indieDev #realTimeVFX

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.31 Spent some time syncing up with Gemini on a simplified pyro shading formula. It got it working in no time, except it undershot the fire intensity by 2 orders of magnitude. 😅 #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.30 How does this low-overhead, volume-conserving smoke work? Watch this video to find out. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #techArt #realTimeVFX #u3d

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However, while setting up the adaptive stepping, Gemini forgot to factor in the step size as a weight for noise sampling. Luckily, I caught it in the end.

Working with AI -- Vol.29 Used analytical solutions to estimate smoke thickness for space skipping, and also threw in thickness-based adaptive stepping—the results look great. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d

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Jimothy's adventure by keebar

I'm working on a survival game about Jimothy, currently polishing up the gameplay. Check it out here👇 miuwang.itch.io/jimothys-adv...

miuwang.itch.io

Humans shouldn't survive past 15 minutes, because this is a survival game made for raccoons.

keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Survived by begging humans for help when I was on the brink of starvation. Can you survive completely on your own? Check out my #indieGame about #Jimothy! Link in the replies👇

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Did switching to 3D UDF visibly enhance the volume and depth of the explosion smoke? I'd say absolutely, though it came at the cost of a slight overhead increase. Still, I believe there's plenty of room left for optimization.

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.28 Ran into a huge raymarching overhead spike while porting screen-space UDF to local-space 3D UDF for the vol-smoke. Fixed it by letting Gemini use a 2D UDF for space skipping to pre-determine the step size. Massive saving! #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And we've run into an issue: as the smoke shape becomes more irregular, using screen-space UDF to sample 3D noise fails to match the smoke's contours, causing it to lose its volumetric feel. Time for a refactor.

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.27 Brainstormed a rough solution with Gemini to ensure conservation of smoke volume: inversely compensate the length of the skeleton rays blocked and cut off by buildings into the other rays. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Exactly. As a designer/TA, 2D illustration isn't my strength, so AI helped bridge that gap. The heart of the project is in the mechanics anyway. Go give it a spin!

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

An implicit geometry Unity shader. The effect shown below actually uses only a handful of cubes. Plus, it can generate a massive variety of effects—way more than what’s shown in this video. #indieDev #soloDev #gameDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d #vrchat Link in the replies 👇

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Cool game! I'll give it a shot!

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Wondering why #Jimothy calls these black-and-red striped socks "tail long-socks"? #indieGame #indieDev #soloDev #gameDev #survival Find out the answer in my indie game! Link in the replies👇

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Welcome to the rabbit hole!

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Not entirely sure what to call this yet, but I kinda like how it looks! A shader created using implicit geometry. Grab it for FREE on my store . #gameDev #indieDev #techArt Check it out here👇 miuwang.itch.io

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Of course, this was also the result of me spending nearly an hour communicating with Gemini, using recorded gameplay footage paired with sketched diagrams.

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.26 Gemini didn't just fix the last bug today—it also caught a line of "lazy code" in the vertex shader. Turns out this line was forcing the fragment shader to do extra "patchwork math". #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #techArt #realTimeVFX #u3d

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Working with AI -- Vol.25 Moved 3D skeleton generation & screen-space projection from Vertex Shader to CPU to save interpolators. Gemini took over the job and... completely failed the math. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d #AI

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Love this! I honestly got so obsessed with the Jimothy meme that I built a survival game about him 🦝🛹. But it’s not just a meme—I heavily integrated real city raccoon survival instincts and behaviors into the gameplay! Check out 'Jimothy's Adventure' if you want to see him shred!

miuwang.itch.io

Jimothy's adventure by keebar

Humans shouldn't survive past 15 minutes, because this is a survival game made for raccoons.

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Totally agree. For minor adjustments like this, natural language can be so ambiguous. It's often much easier to just trust your hands and change a line or two directly than trying to wrangle the AI.

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The explosion in slow-mo. I manually tweaked the velocity equations for the armature deformation to make the smoke expansion look more natural. It was a minor adjustment, but explaining it clearly to Gemini was a real pain. #gameDev #indieDev #soloDev #realTimeVFX #techArt #u3d #vibeCoding

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keebar @10258678.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Since these rays acting as UDF bones are processed in the vertex shader, doubling their count increases interpolator register usage. I thought it would trip up here, but it anticipated this and used some data compression tricks—ending up with only 4 additional registers.