Boolean Utilities
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Composing boolean meshes is a complex task that requires time and knowledge exceeding the bounds of this camp. Instead of implementing the boolean operations yourself, you will use a library […]
Range-mapping
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. When you go to the doctor’s office, you may see a chart on the wall suggesting different ways of measuring the severity of your pain. Consider this chart, for example, […]
Extrude
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. You’ve now made two flat shapes. Suppose you took one of the shapes and stretched it into the third dimension to produce a solid rod or dowel. That stretching is […]
Plus
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. The next shape that you will add to your library of shapes is a plus sign. Like the star, you will start off making this a flat shape. Later on […]
Star
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Let’s regress back to two dimensions momentarily. Your next several shapes will start off flat. Later we will extend or extrude these flat shapes into the third dimension. Your first […]
Spiral
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. To make a torus, you took a circle and rotated it around the y-axis. What would happen if on each step of the rotation you also tugged the rotated circle […]
Torus
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Rings are a big deal. We coat them in sugar and eat them for a snack. We commit to a partner with one. We drive on two or four or […]
Capsule
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Suppose you grabbed the North Pole, somehow, and I grabbed the South Pole. And then we pulled on the poles. What shape would we get? Earth would look like a […]
Sphere
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Consider the sphere. How are spheres made in nature? There are several ways. The sphere we live on was formed by gravity pulling masses together into a ball. Rocks smooth […]
Ripples
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. When you drop a rock in a lake, a ripple emanates from the point where the rock breaks the water’s surface. That ripple is up there on the list of […]