Exploring some ideas for how to create and publish graphics demos for Lzon.

My love of Computer Graphics

For as long as I have known how to write code, I have enjoyed an activity that can be called ‘sketching with code’. This involves producing computer graphics using nothing other than program code, with little or no pre-made art assets. This is conceptually very similar to Procedural Generation, and the Demoscene.

One of my fondest memories is of my lunch breaks in high school, in which I would be in the computer lab teaching myself c++ and opengl so as to make little programs that would draw something interesting onto the screen. I was thinking at the time that this would lead to an interest (and ultimately a career) in game development, but in hindsight I can see that it was just the rendering and graphics that interested me most.

Around that time I would also build my own ray tracer program, completely from scratch. I was inspired to do so by the smallpt project. I remember being so excited when I rendered my first image that I showed it to my Mom. She really did try to look impressed…

Just because I like to share, here’s a few renders I made using this program.

The first image I created, what I tried to show to my Mom.

Later I started creating elaborate scenes.

Eventually I figured out how to render polygons, and used Suzanne from Blender as a test.

123

Code sketching for Lzon

This website is where I now share the things that I enjoy, so it feels appropriate to begin publishing some code sketches as well, if I can.

I have been experiementing with several different options for how to publish code sketches to Lzon. I’ve created a new section called Toys where I’ll be publishing my code going forward.