teaching machines

Terrain

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 riff off the grid you just generated. Instead of keeping the grid flat, with all the z-coordinates at 0, you will randomize them. When the surface is rotated toward […]

Cylinder

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 are on a roll. Literally. Your next shape is a cylinder, and the word cylinder comes from the Greek noun kulindros, which means roller. A cylinder is a bit […]

Cone

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 are on your way to becoming a sculptor of bits. The next stage of your journey is to forge a cone. At one end of a cone is a […]

Dots

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. Soon our shapes will become more complex. There will be many vertices and many triangles. You will find it helpful to visualize the vertices on their own before thinking about […]

Grid

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. Earlier we modeled a square using just two triangles. Now we model a rectangle using a dense grid of triangles. A dense grid does not offer many advantages over a […]

Wrapped Addition

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. What time will it be 5 hours from now? What day is 10 days from now? As you work out the answers to these questions, you may find yourself incrementing […]

Circle

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. Here’s your next exercise. Add a shape generator function for this shape and render it: How would you do it? Perhaps this seems impossible. Earlier I said that all shapes […]

Refactor

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. Reorganizing your code to make it easier to understand and easier to update is called refactoring. Let’s refactor your code by organizing it into two separate files: one to hold […]

Cube

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. In this exercise, you will break into the third dimension and model a cube. We start on paper, progress to a disappointing rendering, and iterate toward a satisfactory rendering with […]

Triangulation

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 made a triangle. The logical next step is to make more complex shapes. You may not believe me, but more complex shapes are just made out of triangles. Any […]

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