Texture Baking

There is not much to say about this sketch — it's a lighting solution baked onto texture maps. Normally, I'd just post the applet and be done with it, but I can't help but vent this once, as I've just spent several hours mired in texture coordinate generation scripts. Not that the actual 3D math is hard… I'm simply annoyed at the notation.

Somehow, somewhere, someone decided that texture coordinates would be represented using the variables "u" and "v". I don't know if anyone has noticed, but these two characters are remarkably similar, especially when handwritten. Worse yet, when converting from barycentric coordinates to texture space, these wonderful variables often inherit a "t" and become "tu" and "tv". In my handwriting, "t" looks like a plus sign. In the end, all derivations involving textures end up as a scribbled morass. I've been forced to use serifs when I write.

It's very frustrating.

While I am disgruntled at the 3D community for perpetuating this madness, I've always suspected it is a long running joke. In my digital controls classes, professors would often choose "s" and "t" as variables in transfer functions. "s" looks like a five, and I've already expressed my opinion about "t". Honestly, if you're running out of symbols for variables, consider using Wingdings. Or go Cyrillic.

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Fractal Scene created 01 Jun 08

Fractal scene rendering