Been relatively offline as of late. On the upside, I've landed a decent contract for the next few months leading the development of a SAAS startup, which means I'm experiencing a bit of stability for the first time in many moons. On the downside, I'm under NDA and can't share any of the stuff I'm working on, and have had no free time to hack on Scheme.
As I'm doing CG work again, I'm considering diving into #SICM. I've loved the first two chapters of LiSP, but as its not really tied to what I'm working on atm, its hard to find time to dedicate to it. I'm a bit scared of SICM, as even a friend who studied physics (and has read SICP) said he found it to properly difficult. But I think if I go in assuming the book will take a year at minimum to complete, and allow myself to take my time without trying to schedule according to abstract expectations, it could be just the right time to brave the beast.
some notes towards a « #blender for hackers » tutorial series [1]
I think I want to follow the #racket/#plt/#htdp method of restricting blender to subsets of gradually growing "tutorial-specific workshops" (using the "blender apps" feature that allows you to export just a subset of the application), except have the whole tutorial be an interactive text adventure within these restricted subsets of blender, in which you are directed in the use of various tools to "fill in the blanks" of simple scenes, almost like a coloring book, that introduce new features when you enter a revealed message, or the correct number of vertices in a well-topoligized shape, essentially basing each tutorial off of procedural use of a restricted set of standard blender key commands.
so imagine Tutorial 0, where you are presented with a very minimal "edit mode" workspace,; just a viewport, the selection tool, the rotation axis (+ "drag" "zoom" etc), a terminal prompt introducing the tutorial, and some illegible text out yonder. from the very beginning, I would introduce keyboard "a" (for select all) and numpad "del" (which "brings you" to any set of selected, useful for navigation), which brings you to the message "del the magnificent". entering the message into the text prompt then explains orthographic vs. perspective view, and camera rotation (the numpad keys), and you're instructed to essentially "select, del" between a path of vertices, shifting perpspective to reveal messages at each, which entering introduces more vertices and and key commands, gradually building up a vocabulary, quickly introducing the ruler tool, and really focusing from the start how all the gridwork magically "snaps together", effectively giving you a simulataneously 2D and 3D editing experience where everything perfectly lines up geometry if you navigate and edit procedurally, trying to convey to the user that Blender is really this sort of magical "fantasy #art studio" experience where you have all the tools you would in a serious sculpture or plastic arts studio, except everything is (comparatively) easy and free.
[1] (written as fast as possible, sry if its a mess)
By restricting Blender to a limited subset, you could quickly get the user to build little voxels and start stacking them together in such a way that they'd be able to build anything they would in #minecraft after a first tutorial. with that demonstrated, it's easy to segue into gradually building up satisfying towers of glistening topologies beyond minecraft's capacity. Building up in this way could get users to think about CGI topology as the "means of of combination and abstraction[1]" from the start and in such a way that it doesn't feel arduous, and show users that its really where the magic and explosive power is so that they don't just get by with automatically generated meshes, which are simply horrible and I think people learn enough to cut things out, extrude them and color them, but then think there is some wizardry beyond their capacities when their PBR'd animation doesn't have that crazy fidelity they see others achieving.
end rant.
[1] #sicp fanfic is good*
[*] is it time to read #sicm?
This #conj23 talk is great, Sam Richie going through his journey diving into Sussman's #SICM and #scmutils, it will be very relatable to anyone who has become possessed for several years with the drive to truly understand some body of knowlege (I'm looking at all of you)