[HN Gopher] Monte Carlo Geometry Processing
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       Monte Carlo Geometry Processing
        
       Author : salty_biscuits
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2022-09-10 05:55 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | ReactiveJelly wrote:
       | Finally, a simple and correct way to render multi-colored text
       | with Unicode ligatures. Hope Raph Linus picks this up soon. /s
        
       | itissid wrote:
       | Noob Q could this be used to solve other problems that uses PdE
       | for example fluid dynamics? My naive mind has a made up example
       | like simulating how rocket fuel might behave when subjected to
       | certain pressure/temperature/injection method
        
         | evouga wrote:
         | Currently the method only works for elliptic, linear PDEs like
         | the heat equation. Keenan and his students are trying to extend
         | the method to more general PDEs (they recently had a paper
         | showing how to do elliptic PDEs with non-constant coefficients)
         | but currently the Navier-Stokes equation from fluid dynamics is
         | out of scope.
         | 
         | That's my view of the method in a nutshell: using walk-on-
         | spheres as a practical method to solve PDEs arising in
         | simulations is a departure from what most people have tried in
         | recent years. Whether it's a total game-changer or a curious
         | novelty will depend on whether it generalizes beyond diffusion-
         | like PDEs.
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | I did an algorithm like this for finding the diameter of the
       | largest circle that can fit inside an arbitrary irregular
       | polygon. Concave or convex.
       | 
       | After much futzing it seems to be the only sane way. Fast too.
        
       | credit_guy wrote:
       | From the comments:
       | 
       | > babe wake up, a new keenan crane lecture just dropped.
       | 
       | First time I hear about Keenan Crane, but gosh, from now on, I'll
       | keep an eye for videos produced by him. Like I keep an eye out
       | for 3Blue1Brown, Mathologer and Veritasium. Now Keenan Crane is
       | on that list. Except, he's a bit higher.
        
         | ur-whale wrote:
         | > but gosh, from now on, I'll keep an eye for videos produced
         | by him
         | 
         | You might want to start with this most excellent series from
         | 2021 on discrete differential geometry.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mas-PUA3OvA
         | 
         | This guy really has a gift to explain complex math problems in
         | a very intuitive fashion.
         | 
         | There's also the fact that - unlike much advanced math stuff -
         | most of the things he presents is very new and can _actually_
         | be implemented.
        
       | auggierose wrote:
       | This is accompanying material to this paper:
       | https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/MonteCarloGeometryP...
       | 
       | Maybe this is the standard for the computer graphics community,
       | but I love how the paper is accompanied by this great webpage and
       | videos. Very inspiring, this is how publications should be done
       | in this day and age: Alongside with material making it easier to
       | understand it.
        
         | antegamisou wrote:
         | Since it's highly likely someone is going to ask, here's some
         | information on how Keenan creates the beautiful illustrations
         | in papers:
         | 
         | https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/Other/IllustratingG...
        
           | rpmuller wrote:
           | Does anyone know how he writes his _papers_? His
           | illustrations will forever be beyond my skills, but I'd like
           | to up my paper mojo. Since his references are in bibtex, I
           | assume he's using some flavor of TeX, but this looks more
           | sophisticated than LaTeX. In particular, he has small sub-
           | illustrations next to his section headings that are really
           | hard to get right using LaTeX. Is he using ConTeXt? Which
           | fonts does he use? The ligatures are really nice, also hard
           | to do using standard LaTeX available fonts.
        
             | evouga wrote:
             | The paper is in LaTeX and uses the required ACMTOG template
             | (also used for SIGGRAPH papers); you can get it at
             | https://www.siggraph.org/preparing-your-content/author-
             | instr...
             | 
             | The inset figures are probably placed using the
             | "wrapfigure" LaTeX package. It's janky and frustrating to
             | use, but I agree the results look great!
             | 
             | EDIT: Incidentally the template changed recently and people
             | within the graphics community complained about some aspects
             | of it, e.g. the equation typesetting and how subsections
             | and lists are formatted. It's good to hear that people
             | outside the community like it.
        
             | kloch wrote:
             | You may want to look at Lyx, a WYSIWYG Tex editor
             | 
             | https://www.lyx.org/
        
             | antegamisou wrote:
             | Probably uses the ACM SIGGRAPH TeX template files.
             | 
             | For example, a recent paper of his team "Repulsive
             | Surfaces" is on arXiv, where the source files of the
             | preprint PDF are available for download
             | 
             | https://arxiv.org/format/2107.01664
        
               | rpmuller wrote:
               | Wow, you're correct, he uses ACM TOG for the paper. As a
               | scientist, I mostly just use the REVTeX packages or
               | tufts-latex. Evidently there's a brave new world of other
               | templates out there that I need to learn about. Thanks.
        
         | naillo wrote:
         | I'm not sure this is the standard. I have a feeling Keenan
         | Crane is trying to set a (fantastic) example for others to
         | follow. His presentations are really top notch and something
         | everyone should strive for, a really inspiring smart guy.
        
         | mkl wrote:
         | I don't think it's standard except for some big conferences
         | (e.g. SIGGraph), and Keenan Crane is particularly good at it.
        
       | fatneckbeardz wrote:
       | engineers in college: "i'm not taking any of those waste-of-time,
       | woo-woo, liberal arts bullshit classes"
       | 
       | engineers in life: "OMG how do you draw like that, amazing" (guy
       | draws a ball)
       | 
       | "OMG how do u explain things so well" (uses basic essay
       | structure)
        
       | ur-whale wrote:
       | Applying Monte-Carlo integration to solving almost-generic PDE
       | without using any kind of meshing of the domain.
       | 
       | Like with most stuff Keenan Crane and his lab produces and has
       | produced) ... super high-quality research, easy to understand,
       | almost immediately applicable to engineering problems, and super-
       | well explained.
       | 
       | What a treat!
       | 
       | Well worth the watch.
        
         | [deleted]
        
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