Sunday 28 December 2008

Linear Transformations Ahoy!

Recently I have been attempting to learn the maths required for 3D graphics, and am currently learning matrices. As a way of testing my knowledge, I wrote a quick pygame program which transforms a funky collection of lines with a matrix. It's only two-dimensional at the moment, but the same principles demonstrated here apply in 3D as well. The only difficulty is projecting 3D points onto the camera (which apparently requires a 4*4 matrix, to include translation as well). So, before my incessant ramblings completely vanquish your interest, here's a screenie of the aforementioned program:

The matrix is displayed in the bottom-right corner. Thanks go to James for coding the nifty grid-drawing section (I only had two grey axes to begin with!).

Friday 12 December 2008

Regarding post frequency

You may have noticed a cycle of sorts developing here recently. Like a sunny day in Scotland, or perhaps like the Blue Screen of Death (depends on your point of view), I have once again returned from out of nowhere.

But this time, I'm not going to optimistically promise to increase the frequency of my postings - funky though a stuck record may be, I'd prefer not to sound like one myself and so I'm going to inform you that the posting frequency here will vary inversely with the amount of other shizzle I have to do.

And at the moment, that formula would produce a value so close to zero that any self-respecting calculator would simply round it down and save you the hassle of counting decimal places, so being self-respecting (and possessing a calculator - I suppose that counts) I'm going to admit that I won't be updating here until the New Year. Perhaps then, when compulsory festive activities are finished and I still have some holiday time remaining, updates might come more often. Who knows? But for now, I'll leave you with the compulsory Christmas greeting:

MERRY CHRISTMAS