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Hardware Heritage

"Glenz" refers to the German word "Glänzend" (shiny/glossy). In the demoscene, it describes 3D vector objects that are transparent, allowing you to see the back faces through the front faces.

Polygon Sorting

Without a Z-buffer, Amiga coders had to sort polygons from back to front (Painter's Algorithm) every frame to ensure transparency looked correct.

Math Flex

Drawing solid filled vectors was hard enough. Drawing transparent ones required complex intersection tests and specific color addition logic.

Visual Style

Typically depicted as diamonds or crystals rotating in space, often with a "flash" on the edges to simulate glass.

Glenz Vectors

Transparent polyhedra without Z-buffers.

Modern GLSL

// Signed Distance Function for Octahedron
float sdOctahedron( vec3 p, float s) {
  p = abs(p);
  return (p.x+p.y+p.z-s)*0.57735027;
}

// Raymarching loop with accumulation
for(int i=0; i<64; i++) {
   float d = map(p);
   if(d < 0.01) {
       col += vec3(0.1, 0.4, 0.2); // Accumulate color
       p += ray * 0.1; // Continue ray
   }
}