[HN Gopher] How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]
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How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]
Author : Tomte
Score : 556 points
Date : 2024-10-12 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| whyage wrote:
| I assume that a considerable percentage of CS students or recent
| graduates (myself included, back in the day) dream about creating
| some sort of visualization tool, let alone an awesome one like
| this.
| wdkrnls wrote:
| Sometimes knowing how to do something isn't nearly as important
| as badly wanting to do something
| alickz wrote:
| For some it can be far easier to find knowledge than it is to
| find motivation
| andoando wrote:
| Ive been working on for like 4 years now :[
| patcon wrote:
| Omg I would love to make an explainer on bridging algorithms[1]
| with this tool! I've been a huge fan of their use in
| participatory democracy processes since 2016 (using tools like
| Pol.is), and have wanted to make a contribution to increasing
| literacy around the foundational math involved <3
|
| Had I known about Manim back when his Summer of Math
| Exposition[2] was happening, I def would have dived in!
|
| [1]: https://bridging.systems/
|
| [2]: https://some.3b1b.co/
| ikesau wrote:
| I'd watch if you made it. Big fan of pol.is : )
| wyager wrote:
| This seems like some kind of NGO word salad slop dressing
| itself up with a bit of extraneous math notation; this is
| almost exactly the opposite of the type of stuff 3B1B covers in
| his videos, or that (I must imagine) Manim is optimized for.
| thethirdone wrote:
| What is the actual math involved? From following the link in
| [1] I found almost no math content.
| sestep wrote:
| I had no idea this existed, thanks so much for the link!
| Reading their paper right now, and I'd love to see your
| explainer once you make it :) My website is linked from my
| profile, send me a link on social media if you ever get around
| to making that explainer!
| killthebuddha wrote:
| It's funny how, after years of hearing his voice and not seeing
| his face, seeing his face puts me in smack in the middle of the
| uncanny valley.
| wruza wrote:
| He featured multiple times before with Matt Parker and Brady
| Haran (NF), strange that you missed it. Although I guess even
| in this niche channel preferences vary wildly.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| What's NF? ChatGPT thinks it refers to Numberphile in this
| comment, but wouldn't that be NP? I've never seen Numberphile
| abbreviated as NF.
| wruza wrote:
| My bad, ph is not my first language's foneme.
| OrderlyTiamat wrote:
| I'm assuming Numberphile indeed, as that's the most likely
| for a Brady Haran channel with 3b3b as a guest.
| fragmede wrote:
| Yes, Numberphile, as confirmed by looking up Brady Haran in
| Wikipedia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Haran
| phlakaton wrote:
| His commencement addresses might _really_ freak you out, then!
| See e.g. https://youtu.be/z7GVHB2wiyg
| ozzydave wrote:
| One of the best commencement speeches I've seen.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Especially because when narrating the audio is better than
| someone being filmed casually, that small difference can get
| really weird
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| I feel like quite a few of the content creators I watch are
| starting to "show their face", though the big one that comes to
| mind is the Real Engineering guy. A few of his newest videos
| have had him acting a bit like a host, interviewer and
| narrator.
|
| It's also weird when some of these creators swap with somebody
| else, like veratasium has had his producer do some of the
| videos instead.
|
| The big reveal would be AvE.
| pests wrote:
| I noticed a few of the people I watch revealed their face
| last year before the big collab with Mark Rober.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| I used to like AvE till COVID. Then he became an anti-masker
| conspiratorial nutjob.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I mean, kind of sounds like he never really changed, just
| your opinion of him did.
| zen928 wrote:
| Framed differently, it sounds like the youtuber
| opportunisticially divulged some of their true thoughts
| on topics slowly over time that would have alienated
| members of their audience had they known who and what
| they were initially supporting. Pretty cowardly, but not
| an uncommon tactic amongst his similar peers.
|
| In light of receiving new information that goes against
| your own tenants against poorly researched
| misinformation, changing your opinion isn't really a
| noteworthy response.
| the_gorilla wrote:
| > Framed differently
|
| Framed in an insane way by someone looking to denigrate
| someone they don't like. I have no idea who you're
| targeting but you obviously have a chip on your shoulder.
| zen928 wrote:
| Duly noted.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| From what I've seen about AvE he was mostly against the
| (batshit insane) reaction from the federal government to
| the truckers convoy in Ottawa. That's the only video that
| he made specifically about COVID I think (I don't know if
| he mentioned something else in other videos though). Not
| sure if that makes him a nutjob lol
| Neywiny wrote:
| Early on he made fun of people who wore masks. I'd
| watched almost every video for years before that but as
| one of many impacted by others not taking covid
| seriously, I went cold turkey.
| bogdanstanciu wrote:
| Always felt AvE stayed the same person he always, the same
| kind of commentary he always made. Low gov man with low gov
| sentiments.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| This means you missed
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOCsdhzo6Jg which is hillarious
| teekert wrote:
| Same same, now imagine him singing...
| https://youtu.be/djzKCZHeVjY?si=mw0P14f_hUE_kIlW
|
| I love that people like this exist.
| spankalee wrote:
| Wow. I really wish this were a JavaScript library so we could
| play with this in a browser and publish 3D animations to the
| browser.
| mikeshi42 wrote:
| I've done some porting between Python and JS based on
| Tensorflow in the past - and I suspect the poor ergonomics in
| JS for math/lists would probably ruin the experience a good
| amount.
|
| Perhaps something like Pyodide can bridge the gap and make it
| easier to bring into the browser as well.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| It would probably be easier to add an 'export to js' option
| to Manim than to try to create an ergomic js library.
| dleeftink wrote:
| Check out Motion Canvas[0] by Jacob from aarthificial, prolific
| coder and animator [1].
|
| [0]: https://motioncanvas.io/
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/@aarthificial
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Motion Canvas might be a great fit: https://motioncanvas.io/
| joshdavham wrote:
| Link to Manim: https://github.com/3b1b/manim
| srik wrote:
| and the community fork: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim
| 1-6 wrote:
| I'm amazed at how much production goes into each of his videos.
| His YouTube play button is well deserved.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| It's also what bums me out about YouTube. There is an _insane_
| amount of effort that goes into producing high-quality videos -
| orders of magnitude more than would go into putting together a
| well-illustrated blog post.
|
| As with blogs, a lot of this effort is wasted unless you get
| lucky. But with blogs, at least you have multiple good shots at
| visibility. Maybe you'll make it to the top of HN, maybe on X,
| maybe somewhere else. Even within a single platform, you
| usually have multiple tries. If you don't get noticed right
| away, there's still hope that someone else shares your content
| down the line.
|
| In contrast, on YouTube, an algorithm essentially decides once.
| If you don't already have a zillion subscribers, it shows your
| video to a couple of people, more or less at random. If they
| don't engage, that's the end of the road.
| sbarre wrote:
| A YouTube video has a URL though. So just like a blog post,
| you can share it on all the same sites you mentioned with
| blog posts.
|
| _Plus_ you have the built-in audience of YouTube and the
| algorithm that can help with discovery..
|
| "Build it and they will come" has never been true, for videos
| or blogs...
| doe_eyes wrote:
| There are surprisingly few venues for video content outside
| YT, at least not on a scale that would matter on YT! For
| example, if you want to get to the top of HN, non-video
| content has much better odds. Many tech- or science-centric
| subreddits discourage or ban videos too.
|
| YT is a fairly closed ecosystem that's both insanely
| resource-intensive to participate in, and that doesn't give
| creators too many second chances. My specific claim is that
| it's _more of a crapshoot_ than running a blog. There are
| so many great science visualizations with 50 views.
| NavinF wrote:
| HN is relatively tiny and HN's allergy to video is not
| representative of the internet.
|
| Just create clips from your video and post them on insta,
| tiktok, twitter, FB, etc. That's the internet at large.
| If people are interested, they'll watch the full video.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| HN is small as a discussion community, but it is huge in
| terms of the traffic it generates to top-ranked URLs.
| There are fairly mainstream publications that optimize
| for HN, and I have spoken to marketers and PR people who
| described HN as by far the most significant source of
| traffic to their sites.
|
| It doesn't necessarily translate to sales or lasting
| attention, but if you're after brand recognition or SEO,
| it's great. Spend some time on /newest to see how many
| organizations are desperate to get a piece of this.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's not really that small and I don't know why people
| say that.
|
| Last time I saw stats, it was five million monthly
| visitors. It's small as a platform. It's smaller than
| Reddit or Facebook, but those aren't discussion
| communities.
|
| There aren't huge numbers of subreddits larger than five
| million people and last I looked the largest tended to be
| about trivial BS.
|
| Last I checked, HN is the largest serious tech discussion
| board on the planet.
| sbarre wrote:
| I've discovered so much content on YouTube that I would
| never have found if it was on someone's blog.
|
| And on top of that I _also_ find YT content through
| social media, blogs, forums, etc..
|
| So I hear you, but I guess based on my own experience, I
| disagree! But that's cool, we can do that. :-)
| quux wrote:
| From what YouTube creators are saying lately subscriber
| counts don't matter anymore. So even if you have a zillion
| subscribers you're still almost completely at the mercy of
| the algorithm.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > If they don't engage, that's the end of the road.
|
| As some counterexample anecdata, the YouTube algorithm is
| being quite generous to me lately, often giving me relatively
| low-view videos from years ago, some of which have been quite
| good. Maybe I'm just in a small a/b test, but it seems that
| videos do get multiple chances.
| vindex10 wrote:
| It was impressive how he spotted a bug in his rendering engine
| and found a workaround for it in realtime!
|
| https://youtu.be/rbu7Zu5X1zI?feature=shared&t=693
| arjonagelhout wrote:
| To me it appeared more like he was aware of a limitation in the
| new rendering logic he was working on in the backend, and that
| he knew a simple (high level) workaround.
|
| Still impressive work :)
| leetrout wrote:
| In larger companies this is how arsonist-firefighter engineers
| look impressive... fixing a bug they are responsible for while
| in a highly visible position
| skygazer wrote:
| I was the young "tech guy" inside the business development
| department at Earthlink in the mid 90s. The bizdev folks
| would propose ideas and I would think them through and
| realize there were technical issues, and when I shared my
| concerns, they would all be disheartened. But, sometime
| later, I would figure out a way around the "problem". They
| were perpetually grateful, but after a number of these
| iterations, I got the sense that I was mainly solving
| problems that I had invented. I actually even shared my
| concern about that with my boss, and he dismissed it - I
| think they enjoyed the rollercoaster ride.
| vindex10 wrote:
| He knew about the bug, but developing this software is not his
| main job, producing videos is.
|
| The fact that he knew the place, the reason, and came up with a
| workaround live demonstrates that he invests time into
| improving his toolkit. And not occasionally, but actively.
|
| I still believe it is cool.
| qwertox wrote:
| Lately I often think about 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium and Kahn
| Academy, how much good they are doing to this world.
|
| Imagine having close to an unlimited amount of money at your
| disposal and a media platform which is capable of reaching close
| to every person on this planet. To give people a voice in a
| community, if they dare to or if they feel the need to.
|
| The only thing you then lack is a platform for organizing
| communities instead of sowing the seeds of hatred, to use the
| tools provided by people like Grant Sanderson, Derek Muller,
| Grady Hillhouse and others, in order to help communities to
| improve their communities, towns, cities, and so on. To help them
| solve their problems, make them understand how problematic
| corruption, greed and abuse of power is.
|
| While I was born in Germany, I lived for around 20 years in Peru,
| since I was a child. People are poor, but very kind hearted,
| politicians and the wealthy are corrupt.
|
| This is what makes me feel so sad about Elon Musk, specially
| knowing that he grew up in South Africa.
| poszlem wrote:
| I don't understand the Musk comment at the end. Can you please
| explain what you mean by that and what is the significance of
| him growing up in South Africa?
| chris12321 wrote:
| Now think about how our society is set up to allocate resources
| to people like Musk rather than people like Sanderson.
| the_gorilla wrote:
| I'm going to find out a way to automatically hide comments
| referencing "musk". You can't even read about a 3Blue1Brown
| video without people somehow making it about him. Every
| thread, every day, it's just people talking about Elon Musk.
| rumblefrog wrote:
| I had the chance to use Manim during my college undergraduate
| project, it was very scrappy, but the library was very intuitive
| to use. And now this makes me wonder if there are other similar
| libraries like Manim for these more videographic oriented
| production.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| I absolutely love his voice. Its so calm and soothing that I can
| have his video running on the side while I am doing my chores and
| can still learn stuff.
|
| Content creators like this deserve the recognition
| kzrdude wrote:
| Voices like that must have a big impact on success, right? Both
| on youtube and for podcasts
| namaria wrote:
| This guy is a natural born educator. 'Content creator' doesn't
| begin to describe his value to society.
| kzrdude wrote:
| "Content creator" is like calling a good cook "grub
| producer". I don't understand why youtubers themselves keep
| using it. Content is the emptiest word (and we shouldn't use
| it like that IMO).
| aanet wrote:
| 3B1B is doing god's work. May his tribe increase!!
|
| I personally have benefited enormously from so many of his YT
| videos. I wish this is how Mathematics was taught in high-
| schools, Engg schools.
|
| <3 <3
| skhunted wrote:
| It wouldn't work for the vast majority of students. There's a
| reason we teach things the way we do.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| what's the reason it doesn't work??
| sdeframond wrote:
| > There's a reason we teach things the way we do
|
| Is it that nobody kwen how to make good videos before? Or do
| you mean that teaching cannot be improved?
| mavhc wrote:
| The Gutenberg Method of teaching acknowledges the existence
| of the printing press and suggests one person standing at
| the front telling everyone what to write down may be
| outdated
|
| https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~key/PHY1600/PER%20Papers/E
| f...
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Haha, the way maths is taught at university hasn't changed in
| centuries.
|
| Let's not pretend this has all been figured out and
| perfected. Heck, most maths professors I encountered in my
| studies could trace their scientific lineage straight back to
| C.F.Gauss[1] and that's how they taught. Don't get me wrong,
| some were great teachers, others not so much, but there are
| valid alternatives to the classic lecture.
|
| [1] https://www.mathgenealogy.org/index.php
| ninkendo wrote:
| Mind elaborating on what that reason is? Otherwise this
| comment just comes off as a drive-by dismissal...
| salomonk_mur wrote:
| Strict adherence to old methods due to overly restrictive and
| risk-averse governing bodies in educational institutions?
| AKluge wrote:
| The traditional lecture does have a lot of value, however, we
| are also quite certain that the instructional experience can
| be improved through the addition of visualizations and
| simulations. This is especially true for interactive
| visualizations where the learner can ask, "What if ...",
| experiment, and see the results of their interactions.
|
| The lecture format is very old and would not have persisted
| if it didn't provide a good value. At the same time, it's age
| also implies that there is room for improvement.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| That latest hologram video is one of the best quality YouTube
| videos I've ever seen
| jweir wrote:
| Could having students create their own videos using A Manim
| explaining aspects of maths be a good way to teach maths?
|
| Or would it be more cumbersome and the tools be a distraction or
| impediment to understanding?
| owenpalmer wrote:
| I think 1-1 oral exams are the most accurate way to assess
| understanding.
| eviks wrote:
| The latter, too much effort would be spent on non-math stuff.
| Maybe wouldn't be an impediment, just very inefficient
| chris12321 wrote:
| Manim is incredibly cool, but my biggest takeaway from the video
| is how insane it is that Python apparently lets you reference a
| variable in a function that was defined outside the scope of the
| function.
| Rygian wrote:
| It's a whole subject in language design:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_(computer_science)
| epistasis wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but isn't that standard for
| pretty much every C-style language? Define a variable outside a
| function, parallel to the function, and even though that
| variable is outside the scope of the function it's still
| accessible inside the function. Or did you mean something else?
| rzzzt wrote:
| Python has nested functions which does allow access to the
| nest...er function's variables. The rest does conform to
| expectations, you get to use parameters, locally declared
| variables and globals.
| dkga wrote:
| One of the best math communicators out there!
| rzzzt wrote:
| Does the serif font in manim have any ties to Hershey fonts or
| the BGI vector fonts packaged with 90s Borland products? I guess
| any TTF font can also be rendered line-by-line but the animation
| does remind me of BGI example code running on slow IBM PCs.
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| I'm quite certain the typeface is Computer Modern (the primary
| font being CMU Serif, to be precise). It can be found by
| Googling it. I also distribute the fonts as an NPM library,
| since they are OFL. [1]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/stevenpetryk/computer-modern
| rzzzt wrote:
| Ah, so it has TeX/Metafont origins:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Modern
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