I have been working on trying to get more than two spheres to all have a force of attraction between them. My overall project is to allow any number of spheres to all feel a force of gravity towards one another and allow them to combine into larger spheres to try to simulate planets and stars forming from debris.

I am learning how to build scrollable 3D narratives using three.js and GSAP. I read a few demo write-ups from the NYT about tools that can be used like Google Model Viewer and Sketchfab, and then dove into three.js basics and linking it up with GSAP to animate on scroll. Here I have a simple cube rotate on scroll when its div becomes visible.

(Playing with materials for the Kitchen)

(Outer structure of the kitchen)

My goal is to complete the Unity tutorial provided by Linkedin Learning and, in the end, have a walk-through kitchen. These are screenshots of what I have completed so far.

A unity walkaround with procedurally generated terrain of (medieval?) Pittsburgh. A simulator of ancient Pittsburgh, if you will.

An example of heightmap data used as terrain information. This information is available for almost the entirety of the US and many parts of the world at: https://heightmap.skydark.pl/

[Looking at point park from a little bit to the west of (what is now) Grandview Overlook]

For reference:

[Looking at Schendly from CMU]

[Random houses on Mt. Washington (south shore of PGH)]

Since I did not complete the Telematic project, my final project is to complete it! I wanted to learn more about how socket.io works, how things get sent from the server to the client and vise versa, and how storing data works. Using an existing persistent drawing canvas project, I implemented a rooms function which allowed me to understand these three key points better. Here is the link to the blog post.

After watching a bunch of Unity tutorials and poking around in the editor a little bit, I’ve decided to learn the engine.

On the Unity side, I’ll either follow a tutorial or just study a sample project to make a first-person walk-around. (First Person Character Controller, Procedural Mesh.) This likely will not include using any other assets, prefabs, or other functions. Just a character controller object that slides along the terrain.

On the python mesh generation side, I’ll be using the open-elevation API to get the elevation data of a given region. I might also try the sentinelsat library to query the satellite map, which I could use for color or some other purposes. I’ll then use pymesh to make a .obj file to use in Unity.

One of my biggest worries was that I would need to find all the individual piano keys to make my notes, good thing the university of Iowa has all the notes from C0 to C8 (https://theremin.music.uiowa.edu/MISpiano.html). The difficulty now will just be in modifying the notes for them to last different lengths.

I also found a metronome implementation: https://gist.github.com/bzgeb/c298c6189c73b2cf777c.
And after those two minutes of searching this github page showed me another way Unity tracks time using AudioSettings.dspTime which is interesting.

With these two things already done for me I think completing the project will be much easier.

I looked into the custom engine behind the indie game “Noita” called “Falling Everything”. This engine creates a fully simulated world of pixels with solids, powders, rigidbodies, liquids, gases, fire, and various oddly-behaving materials. They discussed how everything in the game works under the same fundamental algorithm that effectively generates the behavior of sand. I also learned that I will have to keep my physics simulation a lot more simple due to the amount of optimizations that they put in place for the engine to run effectively that I will be unable to do in unity.

I also played around with the orbit simulator here: https://academo.org/demos/orbit-simulator/  to get an idea of what the orbit section of what I want to create looks like in a 2 body simulation.

While looking up inspiration for my project, I was trying to see if I could find some art piece that was not only made using the Looking Glass, but also one that was interactive. In my search, I found this virtual reality painting simulator that showcases painting strokes made real-time made by another person using an Oculus. This is more of a drawing game/apparatus than a “finished artwork”, but I still find it inspiring because it is an interactive work made using a Looking Glass.