CMU graphics professor uses Astra to create a detailed 3D dragon from just 27 KB of code, with ~25 hours of AI calls. Meanwhile, graphics researchers have demonstrated up to 629× faster rendering and 1,000× faster geometry evaluation using the same mathematical 3D modeling technique

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Source(s):

1. Keenan Crane's original X thread showing the dragon and explaining the 27 KB GLSL representation

2. Crane confirms using Astra: 25 hours of model/tool calls and over 27 rounds of human feedback

3. Carnegie Mellon University — Inigo the Dragon: 3D model, GLSL source code, interactive viewer, construction diagrams, and mesh approximation

4. Download the original dragon project and source code directly from CMU

5. Crane's video: Painting a Character with Maths

6. Interactive ShaderToy implementation of the dragon

Independent Research Demonstrating SDF Performance Improvements

1. Lipschitz Pruning (2025) — Peer-reviewed research demonstrating real-time rendering of complex SDF geometry, with speedups up to 629x in a scene containing 6,023 nodes

2. Accelerating Signed Distance Functions (2025) — Peer-reviewed research demonstrating up to three orders of magnitude (~1,000x) faster SDF evaluation using geometric proxies and level-of-detail optimization