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Even though the article is mostly talking about visualizations, but I thought I'd share that I did at one point build a dance choreography software that renders

by iamsal 10mo ago

Even though the article is mostly talking about visualizations, but I thought I'd share that I did at one point build a dance choreography software that renders the UI entirely SVG. I was surprised as to how well that worked. If you're curious, it's called StageKeep, and you can find it here. https://stagekeep.com/ https://stagekeep.com/ The original project used React Three Fiber, but refactored it to SVG for reasons I don't quite remember. I was inspired by signed distance functions, and the fact that one function could have such an outsized visual effect. Although the software doesn't use SDFs, but I like the idea of atomic functions that accepts some input, and outputs SVG.

jfengel 10mo ago
Wow, that is really cool. As a stage director I touch on choreography a bit. It would be really cool to pre-plan blocking with something like that.
- Animats 10mo ago
  That's good for blocking. Then, for movement, what? Probably not Labanotation.
great_tankard 10mo ago
Very cool. Are you a dancer yourself?
- iamsal 10mo ago
  Heh, thanks. I wish I was a dancer. That said, the founder who hired me to work on this is a dancer. He hired me because he liked the fact that during the interview, when asked "what do you know about dance", I responded "I used to crip walk when I was in high school", so I was the top choice just for that, haha. Edit: the Founder is Axel Villamil, and he's super charismatic. Y'all are going to love him. Here's him trying to raise an investment round https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyhL5kitUbD/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyhL5kitUbD/
  - petercooper 10mo ago
    That is the best reason I've ever heard a developer win an interview with.
wongarsu 10mo ago
SVG was once hailed as the Flash-killer. With SVG + CSS + JavaScript you could do anything you could do with Flash, including those fancy Flash websites or complex applications. There just weren't any good authoring tools, while Flash had an amazing one. Then Flash just died without being replaced by anything
- chiefalchemist 10mo ago
  Thank gawd. Flash, gawd bless it, was a low point in internet history. People simply couldn’t resist misusing it and abusing it. I’m not blaming the tool per se. But Flash’s addictiveness caused reasonable people to make gawd-awful UI and UX decisions. Crushing Flash is probably Jobs’ most underrated accomplishment.
  - Jensson 10mo ago
    It ended an era of easy to make web games though.
  - danaris 10mo ago
    Honestly, I blame Adobe most for the death of Flash. If they had been willing to invest the resources needed to make it both performant and, most importantly, secure, there's a much better chance that it would have survived—it might even have been enough for Jobs to be willing to have it work on the iPhone. (Maybe.) Too many people lamenting how the death of Flash ended a thriving ecosystem of games and other art forms forget that Flash was also a huge resource hog, one of the #1 sources of crashes on many systems, and an absolutely massive vector for malware. I'd love to see some statistics on just how many infections were enabled by Flash, and how fast that declined once it stopped being a requirement to browse large chunks of the web. And don't forget, either, that Flash wasn't originally an Adobe product: they took it over when they bought Macromedia, eliminating their biggest competitor and guaranteeing their monopoly. I wasn't really paying that much attention to the space, but it wouldn't surprise me if under Macromedia, it was getting better and more frequent updates.
  - syngrog66 10mo ago
    Flash directly led to South Park, however. one of the funniest animated series ever. Worth it!
aa-jv 10mo ago
This is a brilliant piece of software and I've had a blast learning about it. I would LOVE to see this feature: pass it a video, get a formulated choreography based on that video. For example, take a Project21 or Avantgardey video, do some AI/ML voodoo, import their choreography. Think that'd be possible?
- sunrunner 10mo ago
  If this worked I'd love to see this applied to Bob Fosse's 'The Rich Man's Frug'. That kind of choreography is the kind that makes me wish I'd picked a wildly different career path.
bikelang 10mo ago
Minor nit but I noticed at the bottom the text reads “Start free tiral”. Maybe a dance-themed joke that went over my head? But probably intended to be “trial” :^)

by iamsal 10mo ago

jfengel 10mo ago

Wow, that is really cool. As a stage director I touch on choreography a bit. It would be really cool to pre-plan blocking with something like that.

Animats 10mo ago
That's good for blocking. Then, for movement, what? Probably not Labanotation.

great_tankard 10mo ago

Very cool. Are you a dancer yourself?

iamsal 10mo ago
Heh, thanks. I wish I was a dancer. That said, the founder who hired me to work on this is a dancer. He hired me because he liked the fact that during the interview, when asked "what do you know about dance", I responded "I used to crip walk when I was in high school", so I was the top choice just for that, haha. Edit: the Founder is Axel Villamil, and he's super charismatic. Y'all are going to love him. Here's him trying to raise an investment round https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyhL5kitUbD/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyhL5kitUbD/
- petercooper 10mo ago
  That is the best reason I've ever heard a developer win an interview with.

wongarsu 10mo ago

SVG was once hailed as the Flash-killer. With SVG + CSS + JavaScript you could do anything you could do with Flash, including those fancy Flash websites or complex applications. There just weren't any good authoring tools, while Flash had an amazing one. Then Flash just died without being replaced by anything

chiefalchemist 10mo ago
Thank gawd. Flash, gawd bless it, was a low point in internet history. People simply couldn’t resist misusing it and abusing it. I’m not blaming the tool per se. But Flash’s addictiveness caused reasonable people to make gawd-awful UI and UX decisions. Crushing Flash is probably Jobs’ most underrated accomplishment.
- Jensson 10mo ago
  It ended an era of easy to make web games though.
- danaris 10mo ago
  Honestly, I blame Adobe most for the death of Flash. If they had been willing to invest the resources needed to make it both performant and, most importantly, secure, there's a much better chance that it would have survived—it might even have been enough for Jobs to be willing to have it work on the iPhone. (Maybe.) Too many people lamenting how the death of Flash ended a thriving ecosystem of games and other art forms forget that Flash was also a huge resource hog, one of the #1 sources of crashes on many systems, and an absolutely massive vector for malware. I'd love to see some statistics on just how many infections were enabled by Flash, and how fast that declined once it stopped being a requirement to browse large chunks of the web. And don't forget, either, that Flash wasn't originally an Adobe product: they took it over when they bought Macromedia, eliminating their biggest competitor and guaranteeing their monopoly. I wasn't really paying that much attention to the space, but it wouldn't surprise me if under Macromedia, it was getting better and more frequent updates.
- syngrog66 10mo ago
  Flash directly led to South Park, however. one of the funniest animated series ever. Worth it!

aa-jv 10mo ago

This is a brilliant piece of software and I've had a blast learning about it. I would LOVE to see this feature: pass it a video, get a formulated choreography based on that video. For example, take a Project21 or Avantgardey video, do some AI/ML voodoo, import their choreography. Think that'd be possible?

sunrunner 10mo ago
If this worked I'd love to see this applied to Bob Fosse's 'The Rich Man's Frug'. That kind of choreography is the kind that makes me wish I'd picked a wildly different career path.

bikelang 10mo ago

Minor nit but I noticed at the bottom the text reads “Start free tiral”. Maybe a dance-themed joke that went over my head? But probably intended to be “trial” :^)