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I thought this was funny > • wrote 3D animation software used in “Jurassic Park” • software R&D lead on “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” movie • senior soft

by john2x 4y ago

I thought this was funny > • wrote 3D animation software used in “Jurassic Park” • software R&D lead on “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” movie • senior software developer on “The Hobbit” films > But I don't consider myself an expert Looks like a cool project though!

kaveh808 4y ago
Ha ha, thanks. I know 3D graphics, but I realize there are folks out there who know a lot more than I do in their respective fields. And I hope to tap into that knowledge. It's going to take a team to do this project.
- john2x 4y ago
  The colors in the demos reminds me of Wings3d, a 3d editor written in Erlang. It had quite a unique user interface to it, with modal bindings not unlike Vim. Are the color choices a coincidence?
  - kaveh808 4y ago
    I based the menu design on the Symbolics menus, and Wings3D is a descendant of S-Geometry in spirit. I wanted a quick way of assigning some colors so I just made a rainbow color ramp. If you mean the red color for selection, then yes that was inspired by watching a Wings3D video.
    - lispm 4y ago
      see also Nendo from Izware: https://archive.org/details/nendo-1-5-setup https://archive.org/details/nendo-1-5-setup which originally was a project for Nintendo..., IIRC
      - kaveh808 4y ago
        If memory serves, Nendo was a standalone version of the S-Geometry modeler written in CL, and Wings3D was a clone of Nendo written in Erlang.
        lispm 4y ago
        I think Nendo was written in C++.
        kaveh808 4y ago
        I stand corrected.
        Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
        Mirai was in Lisp (ahh the repl on every error), but I'm not sure that Nendo was in Lisp. Mirai was a descendant of your work? Nice. It was a great (at the time) software. Too bad Izware has dissapeared!
- EddySchauHai 4y ago
  You missed out "developed some of the earliest 3D CG software for Symbolics Lisp Machines"! That's like 10,000 nerd points right there :)
  - kaveh808 4y ago
    Not sure if it's nerd points or just old age. ;)
    - EddySchauHai 4y ago
      I went to the computer history museum on the weekend and took a pic of a symbolics machine for my workplaces slack that got a lot of love, I think there’s still some nerd points there :P
      - kaveh808 4y ago
        Ha ha. I talk about my Symbolics/MIT days in early episodes of my blog: https://kaveh808.medium.com https://kaveh808.medium.com Wish I still had the code, for sentimental reasons, but it all went up in a house fire.
- gfodor 4y ago
  You should start by building and shipping something even if it is minimal. Starting an open source project with a post calling to form a team and so on is an anti-pattern imo. Good OSS projects always should start with code from one or maybe two people that does something useful, and attract contributors from there. Just my 2c, good luck!
  - kaveh808 4y ago
    Thank you. I am thinking of refactoring my existing proof of concept to make it more portable. Currently it's hardwired for CCL and MacOS. Then I may "ship" a release (maybe purely REPL-based) and gather feedback.
    - gus_massa 4y ago
      I agree with the GP that it's very difficult to get contributors if the project is not usable. Reading the post in reddit, it looks like just a call for help for an empty project. But looking at the repo linked in the post https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 and the demo, it looks like you have something that is already working. Also, what does this mean in the readme? > If you're brave enough, change the pathnames in main.lisp and eval the buffer. I see no pathnames in https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9/blob/main/main.lisp https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9/blob/main/main.lisp I don't use CL, so perhaps I'm missing something, or it's an outdated instruction. Another important thing to get users (and later contributor) is a complete idiot proof method to install the project and run the demo [1]. something like "git clone & make demo" or whatever is the correct syntax for that spell. [1] I recommend to read an old post by Joel Spolsky https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/26/designing-for-people-who-have-better-things-to-do-with-their-lives/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/26/designing-for-peop...
      - kaveh808 4y ago
        I had hoped including a link to the repo would show that it wasn't an empty project, but I could probably have done better. That instruction is indeed outdated. It is from before the system had ASDF. I do need to update the Readme file. I used to follow Joel's blog back in the day.
- abudabi123 4y ago
  If memory is reachable the surviving pictures of old Lisp Machines had inside color line diagrams where the memory is. Should Common Lisp and Khronos Vulkan API control color threads in the kernel space and that memory persists throughout the lifetime of the hardware will that open the door to a different style of "learning machine"?
- phkahler 4y ago
  It's not entirely clear (and I think you even said that) where this is going. Tangentially, there is IMHO a great need for new FLOSS geometric kernel for CAD applications. The only option right now are OCCT: https://www.opencascade.com/open-cascade-technology/ https://www.opencascade.com/open-cascade-technology/ which is really huge Or the geometric code in Solvespace: https://solvespace.com/index.pl https://solvespace.com/index.pl which is currently under 10,000 LoC: https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/master/src/srf https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/master/src/srf This is far from perfect. CAD systems use trimmed NURBS which have a lot of challenges. I wonder how choice of language would help to address some of the complexity. Addressing this is definitely a project unto itself, while having much narrower scope than a new Blender.
  - kaveh808 4y ago
    I remember trimmed NURBS from back in the 80's, when the holy grail for 3D systems vendors was landing car companies as clients. It was not easy. Later, at Square on the "Final Fantasy" movie, we were having trouble modeling our character models using NURBS due to continuity issues when more than four patches met at a corner. I resolved the issue by implementing a subdivision surface plugin for Maya. Overnight the workflow switched to polygons. Would be great to have NURBS and other parametric representations as plugins in the system. One of the most exciting things about this project will be seeing what gets developed on top of the system.
  - awolven 4y ago
    As far as this thread relates to lisp, I have written OpenCascade bindings for CL: https://github.com/awolven/oc https://github.com/awolven/oc A truly new geometric kernel would be great, and it's been a dream of mine, but I have too many other things that need to be finished before I start writing one.
    - kaveh808 4y ago
      What would a new geometric kernel consist of? I'm not a CAD expert.
- zerr 4y ago
  Interesting, how did you get those gigs, worked at film studios?
  - kaveh808 4y ago
    Usually it was by word of mouth, people learning of my work and contacting me for a software position. The landscape has changed a lot since those times.

by john2x 4y ago

kaveh808 4y ago

Ha ha, thanks. I know 3D graphics, but I realize there are folks out there who know a lot more than I do in their respective fields. And I hope to tap into that knowledge. It's going to take a team to do this project.

john2x 4y ago
The colors in the demos reminds me of Wings3d, a 3d editor written in Erlang. It had quite a unique user interface to it, with modal bindings not unlike Vim. Are the color choices a coincidence?
- kaveh808 4y ago
  I based the menu design on the Symbolics menus, and Wings3D is a descendant of S-Geometry in spirit. I wanted a quick way of assigning some colors so I just made a rainbow color ramp. If you mean the red color for selection, then yes that was inspired by watching a Wings3D video.
  - lispm 4y ago
    see also Nendo from Izware: https://archive.org/details/nendo-1-5-setup https://archive.org/details/nendo-1-5-setup which originally was a project for Nintendo..., IIRC
    - kaveh808 4y ago
      If memory serves, Nendo was a standalone version of the S-Geometry modeler written in CL, and Wings3D was a clone of Nendo written in Erlang.
      - lispm 4y ago
        I think Nendo was written in C++.
        kaveh808 4y ago
        I stand corrected.
      - Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
        Mirai was in Lisp (ahh the repl on every error), but I'm not sure that Nendo was in Lisp. Mirai was a descendant of your work? Nice. It was a great (at the time) software. Too bad Izware has dissapeared!
EddySchauHai 4y ago
You missed out "developed some of the earliest 3D CG software for Symbolics Lisp Machines"! That's like 10,000 nerd points right there :)
- kaveh808 4y ago
  Not sure if it's nerd points or just old age. ;)
  - EddySchauHai 4y ago
    I went to the computer history museum on the weekend and took a pic of a symbolics machine for my workplaces slack that got a lot of love, I think there’s still some nerd points there :P
    - kaveh808 4y ago
      Ha ha. I talk about my Symbolics/MIT days in early episodes of my blog: https://kaveh808.medium.com https://kaveh808.medium.com Wish I still had the code, for sentimental reasons, but it all went up in a house fire.
gfodor 4y ago
You should start by building and shipping something even if it is minimal. Starting an open source project with a post calling to form a team and so on is an anti-pattern imo. Good OSS projects always should start with code from one or maybe two people that does something useful, and attract contributors from there. Just my 2c, good luck!
- kaveh808 4y ago
  Thank you. I am thinking of refactoring my existing proof of concept to make it more portable. Currently it's hardwired for CCL and MacOS. Then I may "ship" a release (maybe purely REPL-based) and gather feedback.
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    I agree with the GP that it's very difficult to get contributors if the project is not usable. Reading the post in reddit, it looks like just a call for help for an empty project. But looking at the repo linked in the post https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 and the demo, it looks like you have something that is already working. Also, what does this mean in the readme? > If you're brave enough, change the pathnames in main.lisp and eval the buffer. I see no pathnames in https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9/blob/main/main.lisp https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9/blob/main/main.lisp I don't use CL, so perhaps I'm missing something, or it's an outdated instruction. Another important thing to get users (and later contributor) is a complete idiot proof method to install the project and run the demo [1]. something like "git clone & make demo" or whatever is the correct syntax for that spell. [1] I recommend to read an old post by Joel Spolsky https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/26/designing-for-people-who-have-better-things-to-do-with-their-lives/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/26/designing-for-peop...
    - kaveh808 4y ago
      I had hoped including a link to the repo would show that it wasn't an empty project, but I could probably have done better. That instruction is indeed outdated. It is from before the system had ASDF. I do need to update the Readme file. I used to follow Joel's blog back in the day.
abudabi123 4y ago
If memory is reachable the surviving pictures of old Lisp Machines had inside color line diagrams where the memory is. Should Common Lisp and Khronos Vulkan API control color threads in the kernel space and that memory persists throughout the lifetime of the hardware will that open the door to a different style of "learning machine"?
phkahler 4y ago
It's not entirely clear (and I think you even said that) where this is going. Tangentially, there is IMHO a great need for new FLOSS geometric kernel for CAD applications. The only option right now are OCCT: https://www.opencascade.com/open-cascade-technology/ https://www.opencascade.com/open-cascade-technology/ which is really huge Or the geometric code in Solvespace: https://solvespace.com/index.pl https://solvespace.com/index.pl which is currently under 10,000 LoC: https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/master/src/srf https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/master/src/srf This is far from perfect. CAD systems use trimmed NURBS which have a lot of challenges. I wonder how choice of language would help to address some of the complexity. Addressing this is definitely a project unto itself, while having much narrower scope than a new Blender.
- kaveh808 4y ago
  I remember trimmed NURBS from back in the 80's, when the holy grail for 3D systems vendors was landing car companies as clients. It was not easy. Later, at Square on the "Final Fantasy" movie, we were having trouble modeling our character models using NURBS due to continuity issues when more than four patches met at a corner. I resolved the issue by implementing a subdivision surface plugin for Maya. Overnight the workflow switched to polygons. Would be great to have NURBS and other parametric representations as plugins in the system. One of the most exciting things about this project will be seeing what gets developed on top of the system.
- awolven 4y ago
  As far as this thread relates to lisp, I have written OpenCascade bindings for CL: https://github.com/awolven/oc https://github.com/awolven/oc A truly new geometric kernel would be great, and it's been a dream of mine, but I have too many other things that need to be finished before I start writing one.
  - kaveh808 4y ago
    What would a new geometric kernel consist of? I'm not a CAD expert.
zerr 4y ago
Interesting, how did you get those gigs, worked at film studios?
- kaveh808 4y ago
  Usually it was by word of mouth, people learning of my work and contacting me for a software position. The landscape has changed a lot since those times.