[Cuis-dev] Let’s change everything

[Phil B]

Juan is pointing you in the right direction.  It mainly depends on your
objectives:  Ray tracing will result in more lifelike lighting and shadows,
at the expense of performance (Luciano's implementation will only run on a
single CPU core).  OpenGL will give you performance (taking advantage of
your GPU), at the expense of realism.  Let's aside the latest gen nVidia
cards with hardware accelerated ray tracing: OpenGL doesn't support it,  it
would limit you to a tiny fraction of the GPU universe currently and
nothing I'm aware of in Cuis or even Squeak/Pharo-land will help you with
it.

For this application, I would think OpenGL is the way to go.  Both from the
standpoint of the simplicity of it (your scene consists of 26 colored
cubes, for a standard Rubik's Cube, which can easily be realized with
vertex shading) and the fact that at some point you'd probably want to
animate it to 'show' the solution.  Since your shading needs are basic, you
can also stick with the fixed-function pipeline (i.e. OpenGL <=3) to keep
your life simple which is what most OpenGL tutorials out there cover.

If I were doing something like this, I'd probably do it via a web app using
WebGL... it would be more than capable of handling a scene of this
complexity.  This may be more than you want to bite off right now, just
making you aware of the possibility.

On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 9:22 PM Juan Vuletich via Cuis-dev <
cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:

> On 8/29/2020 3:35 AM, Casey Ransberger via Cuis-dev wrote:
> > Hey Juan!
> >
> > You were doing some stuff experimentally with the video hardware
> everyone has in their pants now.
>
> Well, I guess you refer to OpenCL. But OpenCL (a C like language for
> doing numerical computation) has no relation to OpenGL (the most common
> API for 3D graphics).
>
> > I *really* want to create a sort of holiday for people who love twisty
> puzzles, starting with the classic Rubik’s Cube. Like, I have a few
> algorithms that I’m focused on memorizing, but other people should be able
> to chase their own algorithms.
> >
> > I’d love to help create a dictionary of speedcubing algorithms and all
> you have to do if you want access to a community-built set of hard-earned
> algorithms, is just read and participate.
> >
> > I want some 3D graphics in Cuis, but we don’t need much: just enough to
> make use the platform that every speedcuber resorts to when everything else
> has gone to hell in a hand basket. Just a way to think about what went
> wrong while you were landing the world record.
> >
> > I know that your focus is vector graphics, but there are some 3d things
> I think we need to at least think about.
> >
> > I’m going to be the fiercest human who ever defended cubing as a legit
> sport.
> >
> > Here comes my name!
> >
> > —Casey
> >
>
> I think 3D is very interesting and I'd love to see more activity on it.
> Your idea sonds neat! But I can't really help you. I never did 3D, and I
> can't really start studying a new field right now.
>
> I suggest taking a good look at https://github.com/pbella/Cuis-OpenGL
> and https://github.com/len/RayTracer . Phil, Luciano, any comment on
> Casey's project?
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Juan Vuletich
> www.cuis-smalltalk.org
> https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
> https://github.com/jvuletich
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
> @JuanVuletich
>
> --
> Cuis-dev mailing list
> Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st
> https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cuis.st/mailman/archives/cuis-dev/attachments/20200830/3b88938d/attachment.htm>