[themodelplumber]

That's really cool, in part because it's comforting to hear. :-) Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about how much variety can be had from abusing a single distance function + various texture maps, camera angles and focal settings, environment colors, etc.

[semi-extrinsic]

The signed distance function also finds application in real physics simulations of fluids, where it goes under the name of "level set method". Ron Fedkiw, who's worked a lot on it, is one of very computational physicists who also holds an Academy Award. His homepage is very interesting:

http://physbam.stanford.edu/~fedkiw/