Hacker News Reader

JTxton Japanese anime studio Khara moving to Blender

Yes, there's some parametric things you can do in Blender. You can have a beizier curve that you can later change the facet count on... and you can use a spin modifier on a shape, but you're not going to get a perfect tangent line off a perfect circle like you can in a proper CAD tool for example. and you can boolean with another object, are you're not able to add a perfect fillet at that intersection.

In Blender, with care and if you're clever, you can do many of the same things you can with a CAD program... good enough for many cases. But Blender is still more of an artist tool than an engineer tool. For serious uses you're going to run into the limits.

There are free cad parametric modelers. FreeCAD is one.

JTxton Japanese anime studio Khara moving to Blender

You can use Blender for some CAD work... But it's not a solid modeler like solidworks/inventor. It doesn't have many of the precision and parametric tools.

Blender's internal representation of objects is vertices (defined with IEEE single precision floats) connected by lines, and faces --just the shell of the object, and no real curved surfaces (just more and more faceted to approximate curves, and smoothed normals to look curved.) It also does not have guaranteed precise measurements. Blender can do some parametric and Boolean operations and many of the same things, but sometimes it fails and the limitations get in the way.

Some have built CAD tools into Blender, but it's a hack on an artist's tool. For some types of CAD projects, it'll do great, particularly in some very creative directions, but I'd start with the other tools you mentioned.

I export Inventor models to Blender for better rendering and animation.

JTxton Facebook has been granted patent on shadow banning

Doesn't Hacker News shadow ban too? When did that start?

JTxton Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

"Merge doubles" is renamed "Merge vertices" (alt-m) > "by distance"... in the "Vertex" menu. (Though the change makes sense to me, I wish they kept an alias so people can still find it.)

JTxton Blender 2.80 release candidate

It bends over backwards to be discoverable for new users, but it's still a powerful 3d program with many features... an understanding of those concepts are needed to make any 3d tool to work. There's already a ton of 2.8 video tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+2.8+tut...

JTxton Blender 2.80 release candidate

It still has the powerful tiling window system. There's no overlapping windows so you don't close windows, you combine and subdivide windows to make the tool layout you want.

But now there's Tabs for different default window setups: Layout, modeling, Sculpting, UV Editing... So you shouldn't have to change the setups much, they're already designed for the task. You can can still customize/ create your own. That feature was already there as a drop down but now it's more accessible and you can add more default layouts.

JTxton Blender 2.80 release candidate

I'd recommend video tutorials on YouTube. There's many great ones already: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+2.8+tut... And use forums if you get stuck. https://blenderartists.org/ Help others to learn faster.

JTxton Blender 2.80 release candidate

People have been making 2.8 tutorials for months. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+2.8+tut...

JTxton Blender 2.80 release candidate

UV editing has a tab at the top now. There's a few things to keep track of to be successful with this tool and hook up with materials, but I don't think the difficulty is much different then similarly powerful tools. There's youtube tutorials that will walk you though it.

JTxton Blender 2.80 release candidate

Yes, Eevee is a fast pbr renderer and can give very similar results to cycles with no effort, except there's some setup needed to do indirect lighting and reflections... and some tweaking needed for good lamp shadows in some cases, but the payoff is huge. I have a high resolution render that takes 12 minutes in cycles, 30 seconds in eevee with no grain... some features are not there line a shader bevel, but otherwise very similar, and there's workarounds for that.

JTxton Blender 2.80 release candidate

Youtube has several people frantically creating tutorials for 2.8: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+2.8+tut...

'Too hard to learn' was a legitimate concern in the early days... even though the payoff is huge. Perhaps it still is some, but not more than most other 3d suites. The interface is so much discoverable, and has switchable key maps so that it's similar to other 3d apps.

JTxton Ask HN: Is there a OneNote file parser? Or an equivalent opensource note format?

Seems like it. Did you try this?:

https://www.google.com/search?q=onenote+file+parser https://github.com/dropbox/onenote-parser

JTxton Ask HN: Are there good alternatives to ElasticSearch for storing logs?

https://logz.io/blog/influxdb-vs-elasticsearch/

https://portal.influxdata.com/downloads

Perhaps also consider influxdb

JTxton Show HN: BitMidi – Wayback machine for old-school MIDI files

Exactly I wanted to hear doom soundtrack music but "doom" did not work.

https://bitmidi.com/search?q=doom

I had to dig more to remember the level format and search for https://bitmidi.com/search?q=E1m4

Perhaps a crawler can find the identical file (checksum/md5) and collect meta data: alternate filenames, urls, zip archive names... It was next to this file in this list/zip archive... And in this sub folder name, on this page on this wayback machine link... So associations can be built automatically?

Also for each unique checksum with listed alternate file names, Perhaps user content: ratings, similar files, comments... A wiki like page where the automaticly generated meta data can be vetted... Oh and suggested sound font and other settings to play that particular file maybe.

Fun challenge!

BTW https://bitmidi.com/search?q=E1m1 crashes it for me.

It's cool you can drag a file on it to play. Except on mobile, so perhaps the ability to play from url.

Awesome work, thanks! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

JTxton Robots to start killing crown-of-thorns starfish on Great Barrier Reef

killing robots -> harvesting robots

JTxton Need More Self-Control? Try a Simple Ritual

Rituals can come before scientific knowledge, like cleaning.

JTxton Ask HN: How do you immerse yourself in learning project?

Why Python? (Why code?)

-What do you want to make with it? Who will that effect? How?

Why browse?

-How many LOC have you written in the past week on something you want to make? (...or that would get you close to something you want to make?)

Why force yourself?

Why just learn?

...

What do you do instead?

If you continued, what would your life be like in 5 years?

Would the people previously mentioned be missing out?

Would that be a bad thing?

JTxton Ask HN: Best way to introduce programming to a 5 year old?

I'm voting up all the https://scratch.mit.edu suggestions. I was active in that community and with the developers early on. I wish I had it when I was little.

You can browse projects with the 5 year old then view the source and figure out how they work. Show that they can change things.

It's awesome that you want to promote creation over just consuming content like most of their peers.

Scratch your own itch with it too. Make a 3d renderer or CRUD app, fractal explorer, or game... they might like to see what can be made and what excites you.

They may get into the story and animation projects made by other kids first, that's good too.

JTxton LogMeIn now too expensive, better options for MomSupport?

I used team viewer, but not sure if you can login without exchanging numbers in the free version. There's many others. Try this list: https://alternativeto.net/software/logmein/

JTxton The NES Homebrew Scene

Right, I remember advanced 3d software fitting on a floppy. But now a simple Android app can be over 50mb.

No you don't need a video on your login screen.

JTxton Optical Mouse Cam (2010)

TIL: the optical mouse works by taking a picture of the desk surface and does Optical Flow with the previous capture to get relative position.

The result reminded me of the old Logitech Scanman handheld scanner. except that had a 1d light sensor (like a flatbed scanner) and a radial encoder attached a to a roller to advance the scan lines down and the user pulled it down. (kind of like a 1d mechanical mouse.) I had a ton of fun with that growing up.

JTxton The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

Nice. For dates we'd go to a library or book store, take random books and dramatically read the first, middle, and last lines. And speculate on the rest and/or make fun of it.

JTxton Game of Life in Scratch

Here's many other implementations of Game of Life in Scratch.

https://scratch.mit.edu/search/projects?q=Conway%27s+Game+of...

(Warning, some have music.)

(I made one before scratch had arrays, in 2008 but it no longer works.)

Also, here' the article's project in Phosphorus a javascript scratch player, for those without flash.

https://phosphorus.github.io/#164407978

JTxton Show HN: 3DC.io – A dead simple cross-platform 3D design tool

Impressive! I think a "Lathe" tool could be made from your "Draw" shape tool fairly easily.

Interesting problems you have... Balancing flexibility/power/precision and simplicity/low learning curve/finger input.

I'd be tempted to go more the flexibility route... but what is essential? for who? Where's the line drawn for "dead simple"?

Would precision for the "drafters" slow down/confuse the "doodlers"?... Could build flexibility underneath and carefully build an advanced UX that people can graduate to, but at what costs?... At what point is the focus lost?

JTxton Show HN: We Freelance, a community where freelancers share stories and resources

All I see is "WF" in a box.

JTxton Show HN: Bitesnap – Deep Learning Meets Food Logging

I took a picture of my finished Styrofoam hot chocolate cup and straw. Hot chocolate was the first guess. It gave an option for "from mix water added", done. Very cool. Edit: just logged my coworker's lunch in about a minute: Cucumber, grill cheese sandwich in one picture, it let me add them from a list. Ramen soup took another try at a lower angle.

JTxton Google Has Started Penalizing Mobile Websites with Intrusive Pop-Up Ads

Yes, or at least also point to what it believes is the source. "Original copy. Corrections?" or something.

Sometimes the original may not be able to handle the traffic.

JTxton Blender for Hackers – 3D modeling is just like using VIM

Discoverability? It's much better than VIM's at least. (That used to not be the case.)

Most features can be found in Menus. Every clickable UI element has a tool tip if you hover.

With your mouse over the 3d port, hit the spacebar and fuzzy search for commands.

Most times there's a menu option there's a hotkey listed to the right... or you can right click a menu item and "Assign hot key."

You can also right click things and click "Online Documentation" for documentation on it.

Granted, I don't see an easy way to discover that "TAB" is for switching between edit and world mode when an object is selected... though you can switch modes in the "Object Mode" drop down 3d port menu. there's not a tool tip for it. ...and probably other things. It would be helpful if a better getting started guide/beginner walk through (like this introduction.) could be found in the splash screen and help menu easier.

JTxton Ask HN: What's a good developer's resume look like?

I suggest looking at "Who wants to be hired?" posts for ideas. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

JTxton Show HN: Music Video Dispenser

It looks like a start to a remake of the visualization plugin for Winamp, Milkdrop2. Apparently opensource now.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/milkdrop2/

There's many many presets/scripts made for it.

http://ghostco.de/milkdrop_pack/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdL_JSsY6qo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoshHRG1Qbk

I see someone started to port it to the web: https://github.com/gattis/milkshake (though it did not work for me in chrome.)

Edit: here's one that works, you can edit the presets:

https://butterchurnviz.com/