Gizmosmith

Pebbles and antlers

I have a bunch of ideas for little applications.

One is a game-like interactive entertainment where you contemplate a pebble. You can turn it around, zoom into its surface, etc. That’s it, just examining a pebble. The trick is, this is actually technically somewhat complex. Pebbles have structure ranging from overall shape to near-microscopic scratches and dents. To faithfully render the pebble, all of that has to show up as you look around. To save processor time and storage space, I plan to generate all of that on the fly. I’ve been advised that I should either use the Unity game engine, or write my own engine to do this.

Pebble is a proof of concept, really. The original idea was to write a game where you examine a tree. You can fly all around it, zoom into the cracks in the bark until they tower over you like canyons, zoom out until the tree is a green spot below you. There is no way to sit down and hand-make all of that data, so it pretty much has to be generated. Pebble seems like something I can do to determine that the concept is possible.

(I’m not sure if my interest in generative content is an indication that I’m into elegant, intelligent solutions, or just that I’m profoundly lazy.)

Another application is a piece of software that generates antlers. You run it, and it spits out an STL file that you can use to get the antlers 3D printed. You can modify things like how the antlers branch and curve, to get things like ibex horns or deer antlers.

(Oddly, thinking about these programs, I realize that I don’t know what trees, pebbles, or antlers look like. I mean, I can identify them, and even sort of describe them, but not with anything like the sort of description required to produce them. This is, I think, the difference between looking at things like an artist and looking at them like someone who just doesn’t want to bump into stuff.)