90s Retro Raytracing of SKY130HD Cells with Bryce

From GDS to STL

I started with the final SKY130HD full adder GDS and pushed it through gdsiistl.
The converter splits the layout per layer and hands me neat STL slices that preserve the actual routing without any manual remodeling.

Blender Exploded Slice

Those STLs went straight into Blender.
Each layer stayed on its own object, which let me randomize the Z offsets and build a gentle exploded stack of the cell.
A few hand-tuned vertex edits kept it from looking too uniform, and per-layer materials lined up the palette before export.

Bryce Render Deck

Blender exported the assembly as OBJ and Bryce 7.1 took over.
I rendered everything in a 4:5 aspect ratio, cycling between chrome, glass, and matte materials while occasionally deforming the mesh to grab different silhouettes of the adder.
Bryce’s random sky generator – with the default preset sprinkled in for contrast – handled the lighting.
A minimal 90s water-and-sky plane landscape reflects straight into the silicon, which is exactly the nostalgia hit I was aiming for.
Letting the Bryce sky engine do the “magic” felt right; the ASIC software already had its turn.

What Is Next

Next up is animating the sky so the reflections slide over the lifted layers – simple camera lock, Bryce sky drifting, and a short loop back into Blender for grading.
Once that is in place I will share the video and bundle the OBJ for anyone who wants to remix the cell further.