Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering Explained on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2025–2026.
explainer · intermediate · evergreen
Rune Skovbo Johansen explains Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering, a technique he invented and released as open source. It makes dithering stick to 3D surfaces and covers the experiments and shortcomings along the way, inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn.
HN recommends it as the original explainer for a clever dithering technique and the go-to video in dithering threads.
“a 4-days old video related to dithering which is really worth watching.”
8 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
If you find this interesting, you might also be interested in this video of someone diving even deeper into how to make the dither surface stable: ▶ this video
in “Return of the Obra Dinn: spherical mapped dithering for a 1bpp first-person game” · View on HN
And here's a couple videos about a technique that was inspired by the Obra Dinn's dither, but making it surface stable: ▶ this video (explanation) [link] (demo)
in “Dithering – Part 1” · View on HN
Somewhat related and worth watching: Surface-stable fractal dithering explained ▶ this video There's a follow-up video to that one.
in “Writing my own dithering algorithm in Racket” · View on HN
To create a dithering effect for 3D scenes. Doing a straight 2D dither on each frame will result in noisy artifacts and won't be "stable". Doing an "ordered" dithering produces a "porch screen" artifact effect, where there's a stable pattern in screen space that can be seen. Trying to naively map dithering patterns as textures on 3D objects again results in unstable patterns as the dithering is dependent on the distance of the screen to the object and produces noise. This is a proposed solution that maps a dithering pattern as a texture that doesn't have the "porch screen" effect and is stable. The video linked [0] to in the repo talks about experiments and shortcomings from the above I just listed. This work is in response to some challenges the developer of the "Return of the Obra Dinn" game experienced when trying to create a dithering effect in game [1] [2]. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link] [2] [link]
in “Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering” · View on HN
On a similar note, yesterday I stumbled across a 4-days old video related to dithering which is really worth watching. " Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering " [0] by "Rune Skovbo Johansen, indie game developer and procedural generation enthusiast" [0] ▶ this video
in “Bilinear down/upsampling, aligning pixel grids, and that infamous GPU half pixel (2021)” · View on HN
I think implementing a dithering algorithm is one of the most satisfying projects, because it is fun, small(ish) and you know when you are done. Of course, unless you are trying to implement something completely insane like Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering ▶ this video
in “Writing my own dithering algorithm in Racket” · View on HN
Ah, thats from runevision. I recently whatched his youtube video on this ( ▶ this video ) and "Return of the Obra Dinn" was also the first thing I thought of.
in “The Art of Dithering and Retro Shading for the Web (2024)” · View on HN
I'd like to expand with some more details and developments since the post I saw here a few weeks ago about my Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering technique. (That post (not by me) was here: [link] ) I've since made it work also in color (RGB dithering and CMYK halftone) and demonstrated what it looks like in true 1-bit (or 3-bit for color) at low resolutions as well. See the linked demonstration video for a variety of styles/aesthetics it can be used for: [link] The original explainer video is here: ▶ this video And the repository is here: [link] Lots of people both here and elsewhere has speculated about various alterations or different use cases, etc. I'd like to point to this FAQ that have a lot of common topics covered. If you have questions, suggestions or similar, it would be a good idea to check that out first (after the explainer video): [link] Furthermore, lots of people have been inspired to make their own implementations, or related effects inspired by Surface Stable Fractal Dithering. I keeping a list of the ones I know about here: [link] For example, Aras Pranckevičius got a simplified version of the effect to work on Playdate. Since the Playdate does not have a GPU, the effect (along with 3D rasterization in general) is implemented fully CPU-based here. [link] Ryan / InfernalWAVE is working on an implementation for Godot: [link] arColm made shaders for MineCraft: [link] I've been surprised and happy that the effect has gotten as much interest as it has, and I'm hoping w
in “” · View on HN