Surface Explorer
An interactive 4D surface visualizer
Version 1.3 beta — Qt 6 & OpenGL
The downloads are at version 1.2: macOS, Windows and Linux builds are attached to the latest release, and mirrored on SourceForge; 1.2 is also on the App Store, for both Mac and iOS. The documentation on this site already covers 1.3, which is in beta.
What it does
Surface Explorer renders parametric and implicit surfaces in real time, including geometries that live in four dimensions and are projected down to three. Shapes can be typed in as equations, written as GLSL scripts, or picked from a bundled library of presets — from Clifford tori and Hopf fibrations to Calabi–Yau sections and non-Euclidean geodesic flows.
Parametric & implicit
Equation-driven surfaces, plus implicit shapes rendered by ray marching with procedural displacement.
The fourth dimension
4D rotations and stereographic projection, with the projection angle under direct control.
Scripting
Write surfaces, textures and sounds in GLSL. Constants A–F drive the geometry from sliders.
Motion & video
Camera paths, object and 4D rotations, geodesic flows, and video export of the whole scene.
Documentation
- User Manual — sixteen chapters, from first launch to advanced scripting
- Script Guide — reference for the scripting language
See it in action
- Gallery — images of surfaces rendered with the application
- Videos — camera paths, rotations and animated surfaces
Building from source
The project builds with CMake and Qt 6. Clone the repository and configure it against your Qt installation:
git clone https://github.com/dioscorid-design/SurfaceExplorer.git
Full build notes and third-party credits are in the Acknowledgments chapter.