I noticed I reached a milestone number of postings today, 512 answers posted to the online Intro to 3D Graphics course. Admittedly, some are replies to questions such as “how is your voice so dull?” However, most of the questions are ones that I can chew into. For example, I enjoyed answering this one today, about how diffuse surfaces work. I then start to ramble on about area light sources and how they work, which I think is a really worthwhile way to think about radiance and what’s happening at a pixel. I also like this recent one, about z-fighting, as I talk about the giant headache (and a common solution) that occurs in ray tracing when two transparent materials touch each other.

So the takeaway is that if you ever want to ask me a question and I’m not replying to email, act like you’re a student, find a relevant lesson, and post a question there. Honestly, I’m thoroughly enjoying answering questions on these forums; I get to help people, and for the most part the questions are ones I can actually answer, which is always a nice feeling. Sometimes others will give even better answers and I get to learn something. So go ahead, find some dumb answer of mine and give a better one.

By the way, I finally annotated the syllabus for the class. Now it’s possible to cherry-pick lessons; in particularly, I mark all lessons that are specifically about three.js syntax and methodology if you already know graphics.