Imlet

Imlet (Implicit Modeling Lightweight Exploration Toolkit) is a lightweight and flexible engine for creating 3D geometries through implicit modeling, written in Rust. It enables the construction of compound spatial functions that can be evaluated and polygonized to generate geometries.

The project is still in the early phase of development, so expect breaking API changes as the library keeps developing.

Overview

Imlet provides tools for defining and combining distance functions, extracting isosurfaces, and exporting the results. At its core, it offers a high-level interface for implicit modeling, including:

Key Features

• Functional Modeling: Create geometries by combining distance functions (e.g., spheres, toruses) and operations (e.g., intersections, unions).
• Geometric Types: Provides core geometric types, like Vec3, Plane, Mesh, and more.
• Custom Distance Functions: Define distance functions mathematically or derive them from external triangle meshes.
• Model Serialization: Save and load implicit models using the .json format for sharing and reuse.
• Mesh Export/Import: Export results to .obj files or import external .obj files to create custom distance functions.
• Iso-surfacing: Efficient iso-surface extraction from discretized scalar fields.
• CLI Interface: Run saved models and show .obj files directly from the command line.
• Built-in Viewer (optional): Visualize mesh outputs quickly using the viewer feature built on top of wgpu.

For a more in-depth explanation of the library, see the docs

How to use

Build a model

Below is an example of how to use Imlet to create a 3D model by combining a sphere and a gyroid using an intersection operation.

The model is then evaluated over a 3D space and saved as a mesh in an OBJ file.

use imlet::utils::io::write_obj_file;
use imlet::types::geometry::{Vec3, BoundingBox, Sphere};
use imlet::types::computation::{
    functions::Gyroid,
    operations::shape::BooleanIntersection,
};
use imlet::types::computation::model::ImplicitModel;

// Define the model parameters
let size = 10.0;
let cell_size = 0.1;
let model_space = BoundingBox::new(Vec3::origin(), Vec3::new(size, size, size));

// Create an implicit model
let mut model = ImplicitModel::with_bounds(model_space);

// Add a sphere to the model
let sphere = model
    .add_function(
        "Sphere",
        Sphere::new(Vec3::new(0.5 * size, 0.5 * size, 0.5 * size), 0.45 * size),
    )
    .unwrap();

// Add a gyroid function to the model
let gyroid = model
    .add_function("Gyroid", Gyroid::with_equal_spacing(2.5, true))
    .unwrap();

// Combine the sphere and gyroid using a Boolean intersection
let intersection = model
    .add_operation_with_inputs(
        "Intersection",
        BooleanIntersection::new(),
        &[&sphere, &gyroid],
    )
    .unwrap();

// Generate the iso-surface and save it to an OBJ file
let mesh = model.generate_iso_surface(&intersection, cell_size).unwrap();
write_obj_file(&mesh, "output.obj").unwrap();

License

This project is licensed under either of the following:

• MIT License
• Apache License, Version 2.0

Choose the one that best suits your needs.