[HN Gopher] Scratchapixel 4.0, Learn Computer Graphics Programming
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Scratchapixel 4.0, Learn Computer Graphics Programming
Author : magnio
Score : 219 points
Date : 2024-06-09 05:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scratchapixel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scratchapixel.com)
| bun_terminator wrote:
| I know it probably doesn't relate to the content; but my bs/ai
| detector sounded the alarm after seeing the abundance of probably
| midjourney-generated chapter images.
| jsheard wrote:
| Scratchapixel is the real deal but yeah, I know what you're
| saying. The "house styles" of services like Midjourney are so
| widely seen in scams and spam that they have become an
| automatic red flag. Doubly so when the material is supposed to
| be about non-AI means of creating images - why aren't you
| showing the actual product of following the course?
| Retr0id wrote:
| I was also confused by that, it's a weird choice considering
| the articles themselves are full of original diagrams and
| illustrations that could easily have been used instead. The AI
| generated images are just visual noise.
| auggierose wrote:
| I'd say your bullshit detector needs some readjustment. You can
| make nice images with AI, especially as chapter images.
| SapThePixelFox wrote:
| AI-thumbnails will be removed soon.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I would say generating chapter thumbnail images for a non
| artistic publication is probably the best use case for AI.
| meindnoch wrote:
| It isn't, because people associate these kinds of pictures
| with low-effort auto-generated clickbait and scams.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| "people" as in "some people on HN"? Because I think as
| broader audience wouldn't necessarily mind or associate
| those images with scams.
| bun_terminator wrote:
| At face value yes, maybe. But low-quality content is
| increasingly associated with them, so the effective impact
| can easily get negative. I'd like to compare this to typical
| startup landing pages or doxygen documentations. Both can be
| spotted from a mile a way and are strongly correlated with
| padded and low quality content.
| susam wrote:
| An interesting excerpt from the section "3D Computer Graphics
| Primer":
|
| _> The understanding of light and how we perceive it has evolved
| significantly over time. Ancient Greek philosophers posited that
| vision occurred through beams of light emitted from the eyes,
| interacting with the environment. Contrary to this, the Arab
| scholar Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965-1039) introduced a groundbreaking
| theory, explaining that vision results from light rays
| originating from luminous bodies like the sun, reflecting off
| objects and into our eyes, thereby forming visual images. This
| model marked a pivotal shift in the comprehension of light and
| vision, laying the groundwork for the modern scientific approach
| to studying light behavior._
|
| Indeed! If you are interested in reading more about this, I
| recommend the article "Light Through the Ages: Ancient Greece to
| Maxwell"[1]. It is a very fascinating article written by J J
| O'Connor and E F Robertson in 2002 that takes us through a
| journey of how our understanding of light has evolved over the
| last few millennia.
|
| [1] https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Light_1/
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > "...vision occurred through beams of light emitted from the
| eyes, interacting with the environment"
|
| How did they explain lanterns and torches in this theory?
| penteract wrote:
| Until you can observe that light doesn't travel
| instantaneously, it would be consistent to believe that a
| beam leaves your eyes, bounces off a surface, and informs you
| (as though it were a limb, perhaps) when it hits a light
| source.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| The more I think about it the weirder it gets.
|
| It's day time, the sun is up, it's a cloudless day. Ambient
| light is bouncing all over, including into a south facing
| window (i.e. no direct sunlight.) How does the Eye Light
| Emitter do its job in this case?
|
| Now, I don't mean "this concept is impossible" because
| that's clear. I'm genuinely curious how this would have
| been explained by someone at the time.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Vision rays emanate from your retina, get refracted by
| the lens, exit the pupil, go outside the window, get
| scattered in the air, and - some of them - end up hitting
| the sun.
| meindnoch wrote:
| What do you mean lanterns and torches?
|
| On the macroscopic scale, light rays can be replaced with
| vision rays, and everything works out the same. That's how
| ray tracing works. People thought eyes were doing ray
| tracing.
| Keyframe wrote:
| That's how we still do (simulation of) ray tracing
| (Whitted).
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| What do you think he means? It's a good question.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I remember a guy who had a novel theory (mostly as a joke, I
| think) that light bulbs don't emit light, they simply suck
| away the darkness. He literally called lightbulbs
| "darksuckers."
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| A far as I know, in raytracing, you bounce your ray from the
| surface's normal and if it hits a "light source" then it's
| brighter (by the inverse square distance to the source).
| Maybe they explained the same way, except they used a
| different name?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I think this is plausible. I guess they thought unlimited
| ray bounces were a thing.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| I can't recommend that maths history site enough, I've read
| through basically all of it multiple times and sent in many
| corrections over the years :)
| atan2 wrote:
| I would personally try to have some non-AI thumbnails. But that's
| just me.
| SapThePixelFox wrote:
| )) The AI-thumbnails will be removed in a few weeks. Totally
| agree with you.
| auggierose wrote:
| What are you replacing it with?
| otteromkram wrote:
| ML thumbnails.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Just remove the images now, until you have real ones.
|
| I've seen several blogs/sites of decent quality and technical
| depth start throwing random semi-related generated images
| into their articles, and it just makes me immediately wary of
| BS. No images is better than AI-generated ones if you want
| your site to look like it was made with care and has good
| information on it.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| The thumbnails are fine imo.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Yuck, AI thumbnails.
| nuz wrote:
| Looks great! I really have to supress my "AI thumbnails means low
| quality AI slop" sensors though because I've heard of this site
| before and know it's high quality.
| barrenko wrote:
| Very similar to drawabox.com in the "feel".
| blondin wrote:
| Scratchapixel and Rougier's Python OpenGL
| (https://github.com/rougier/python-opengl) are two books that i
| want to see completed one day...
| GaggiX wrote:
| I just noticed that all the thumbnails are AI generated, I think
| most of them look quite good, only a few need to be replaced in
| my opinion: "What Do I Need to Get Started?", 8, 25, 26 look
| pretty bad; I would have chosen the same style as "1." and "2."
| and used it for all images as they do not have the typical AI
| look.
| wpwpwpw wrote:
| amazing
| beemoe wrote:
| From the getting started section:
|
| > Terminals are part of the MacOS since it is Linux-based.
|
| This is not true. MacOS is based on Unix.
| al_borland wrote:
| I noticed that too, then it mentioned that compilation should
| work on macOS and Linux, even though they use Windows. But then
| they compile to a .exe in the test example to make sure
| everything is working. This kind of makes it a non-starter for
| someone who doesn't already have some idea what they're doing.
| meindnoch wrote:
| >MacOS is based on Unix.
|
| It't not "based on". MacOS is _a_ Unix.
| karpour wrote:
| Quality writing and sloppy ML-genrated thumbnails really don't
| fit together, but I saw you already announced that you will
| replace them with proper images, so this will be a nice resource
| overall!
| globalnode wrote:
| have been waiting for the texturing chapter to be done for what
| feels like years now... i actually think it has been years.
| torginus wrote:
| Honestly - mixed feelings. This looks more like a way to build up
| academic/collegiate level knowledge on computer graphics than a
| way of familiarizing yourself with shaders/rendering techniques.
|
| It is also woefully incomplete.
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