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In preparation for a deep learning course I’m taking over the Summer, I’m taking a short intro course on machine learning to help prepare me for some of the fundamental concepts. I’ve been avoiding AI for a while but given its ongoing application in nearly everything now, I figure it’s more than worth getting my feet wet. ML Overview flowchart LR subgraph Shader Lifecycle direction LR d[("Dataset")] --> m(("Model")) --> o("Predicted Values") ---|compare with| a("Actual Values") -->|calculate| l["Loss"] l -->|training data| m end Loss Functions When we compare our predicted results to the actual results, how do we calculate the loss? ...

While trying to import a plane from Blender to Unity, I ran into the issue of the normals facing the wrong direction once imported into Unity. This was particularly an issue when it came to vertex shaders as any vertex transform performed incorrectly. This crux of the issue is that Blender considers the z-axis to be the vertical axis while unity considers the y-axis to be. So, for a plane in Blender, the normals would face towards the positive z-axis but when imported to Unity, they remain so which to Unity is actually along the horizontal plane. Oddly, the actual model imports in the correct orientation, it’s just the normals that don’t adjust after import (which creates the mismatch problem of normals not facing the right direction. If the whole mesh and normals rotated equally, that’d be fine). ...

From what I’ve read, one of the classic shader introductions people reference is this online module-of-sorts known as TheBookOfShaders. On there, it covers topics of how math can generates different shapes and textures within shaders along with plenty of examples and tip from basic to more advanced creations. Drawing Circles A Circle Using step To start, this is what it looks like using the step() function where for a circle of a radius, if the pixel is outside of this radius, give a value of 1, if not, return a 0. Make pixels within radius away from the center white, otherwise black ...

Shaders are programs used to describe how pixels should be arranged, colored, and transformed on the screen. The simple definition extends to so many applications especially in 3D graphics in movies and games. Every computer generated prop placed in a scene is carefully designed to look a certain way, all with the help of shaders. Shader’s make use of the GPU to constantly run concurrent calculation on every pixel and you can decide what those calculations do through programming with languages such as HLSL and GLSL. You can decide that very pixel should be moved slightly to the left, or that they should be slightly more saturated under certain conditions, or even that they have follow the movement of a sine curve and create waves like an animation. You might start to realize that there is a lot a math involved and there is. Specifically, the way you want to arrange pixels makes heavy use of linear algebra to orient points in space as well as creative calculus to take advantage of functions when wanting to create tailored movements and patterns. ...

When describing rotations of an object, the typical way would be through linear algebra and trigonometry. However, similarly to how complex numbers can be used to describe rotations in 2D, quaternions allow efficient and more pragmatic methods describing rotations in 3D. How It’s Done With Trigonometry Depending on the framework or software using, a lot of the work is already done for you with API available to you to perform rotations on shapes. But for a simple point in space rotating in about an origin, what would that look like? ...

I followed this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXNFxQpp2qk&list=PLwyUzJb_FNeQrIxCEjj5AMPwawsw5beAy&index=3 Adding a 3D Character Animation States Unity has it’s own skeleton rigging system called Mecanim. To add animations to a character, you first need to add an animator component to your character model and then create a character controller object and link it to the component. Double clicking the controller will then open up a panel to handle state transitions between animations. There you can add each of the states you want to transition your model to and from. I set idle to be the default state which is self-explanatory. From there, I connect transition arrows between each of the states and set a condition for each of the transitions to occur. ...

After submitting my last osu fanart, I decided to make my own osu banner. My profile was looking pretty empty without one and I figured after all that work to put together my own rendition of Enchanted Love, might as well put those meshes to more use. I wanted to keep it fairly simple as I know I’m pretty limited in gif size and quality for it to work as a profile banner (otherwise if it’s too large, the auto-compression will convert the image into a static jpeg). ...

Now that I’m starting on Slime Hunter, I figured I should get back to using some project management tools. In particular, Kanban boards as they are simple to manage and don’t come with nearly as much fluff as something like Jira issue tracking systems. The nice thing as well is that there’s so many great project management tools out there. In this case, I’ve decided to use Trello as I’m familiar with Atlassian tools (again Jira) so I feel comfortable continuing to use their products. There also an industry standard in this field and I expect to continue on for many years. There are definitely are tools out there that might fit the simplicity I need much better given there size, I don’t want to worry about the chance that may lack software maintenance or one day just disappear altogether. ...

When using a programming engine or framework, one of the things I get stuck on the most is how to organize all the directories and files for a project. Every technology has its own separate ethos when it comes to the separation of concerns. It’s such an important part in order to not have a growing project becoming a nightmare for other’s to work with, or even yourself after spending some time away from it. ...

Journey into a Beatmap Getting Started After doing my first fanart, I didn’t have any intention of doing another but this one’s theme instantly gave me the idea of incorporating 3D modelling into the art piece. In summary, the theme is to create an Osu fanart with the OC’s inside a beatmap. I immediately had the idea of drawing Enchanted Love as I fell in love with the visuals from the original MV. I also had some inkling that the video itself was done in 3D after examining the characters movements. I thought, “well isn’t this a good excuse to learn some Blender then?” That’s how I got started. ...