3d graphics

A two-minute explainer of 3D Gaussian Splatting, the rendering technique from a 2023 research paper. It outlines why it could change how 3D graphics are made.

Modern Vintage Gamer explains why PlayStation 1 graphics warped and jittered, comparing it with the Nintendo 64. The causes are affine texture mapping and the lack of sub-pixel vertex precision.

Real Engineering explains the materials science behind metal 3D printing, including crystal structure, laser sintering, and why printed parts develop fatigue cracks. It shows how process imperfections limit the strength of printed metal.

A Computerphile video in which Dr Mike Pound and PhD student Lewis Stuart explain 3D Gaussian splatting, a quick technique that turns photos of a scene into a 3D model without much compute. It includes a demo and compares the approach to NeRFs.

A short explainer from Nat and Friends on where Google Earth's 3D imagery comes from, how it is stitched together, and how often it is updated. It describes aircraft carrying camera rigs and photogrammetry that turns the photos into 3D models.

A Veritasium video touring Relativity Space and explaining why 3D printing whole rockets cuts tooling costs, allows rapid iteration, reduces part count and enables new designs. It includes an interview with Scott Manley on aerospace engineering.

The 8-Bit Guy covers IBM's 1981 CGA graphics system, including how composite output and artifacting produced extra colors beyond the nominal palette. He argues CGA looked better in period than it does on RGB monitors.

The 8-Bit Guy explains the color limitations of 1980s computers and consoles such as the NES and Commodore 64. It shows how sprites, attributes and palettes shaped the look of old games.

The Plasticity creator explains what a geometry kernel is and compares commercial options C3D, ACIS, and Parasolid, describing his months of research and why he chose as he did.

A short Coding Secrets episode explaining why hitting a Sonic 3D cartridge triggers a hidden level select. The cause was a custom crash handler that redirected CPU error interrupts to the level select screen.

Freya Holmer explains how Bezier curves work, from the helper-line construction to their uses in animation, text rendering and shapes. It uses visuals from her Unity Shapes plugin and was a SoME1 contest winner.

Jared Owen's 3D animated breakdown of how a Brunswick GS-X bowling pinsetter works, showing its mechanisms for sweeping, lifting and resetting pins and balls.

A 3D-animated walkthrough of a heavy-haul diesel-electric freight locomotive, covering the frame, coupling, draft gear, engine and drive systems. Made in Blender by Animagraffs.

Retro Game Mechanics Explained shows how the Atari 2600 draws images with almost no video memory, by having the CPU race the CRT beam line by line. It walks through the techniques in detail.

Walt Disney Animation Studios' short introduction to path tracing, showing how rays are traced and bounced through a virtual scene to simulate light. It explains how this approach is used in animated films.

A short video built around an animation of the roughly 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, placed at their measured redshift distances. It gives a brief history of deep field images and ends with a 3D fly-through.

PolyMatter's first part of a series on China's demographic collapse, covering the effects of the one-child policy, shrinking workforce and economic consequences.

Insider explains how The Mandalorian replaced green screens with LED walls that project real-time 3D environments behind actors, with over half the show filmed on such virtual sets.

3Blue1Brown builds visual intuition for quaternions, showing how to think about this four-dimensional number system using stereographic projection and rotations in 3D space. It is part one of a two-part series with an interactive companion site.

Rune Skovbo Johansen explains Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering, a technique he invented and released as open source. It makes dithering stick to 3D surfaces and covers the experiments and shortcomings along the way, inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn.

VFX supervisor Jonas Ussing examines what studios mean by "no CGI", showing how much invisible CGI hides behind practical-effects marketing. It is the first part of a multi-part series that includes analysis of doctored behind-the-scenes footage.

Captain Disillusion debunks a viral Chinese invisibility cloak video while parodying popular educational channels. Along the way he explains chroma keying and green screen techniques.

Captain Disillusion's comedic, fast-paced explainer on how color works in cameras, displays and video. It covers the biology of color perception and what it means for screens.

A Blender-animated explanation of the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive, showing how the engine, two motor-generators, planetary gearset and battery work together as an eCVT.

Animator Noodle explains why frame interpolation does not make animation better, covering timing, easing, smear frames and using the wrong tool for the job. A pinned correction says the video is partly outdated given later AI developments.

A video essay from Every Frame a Painting on animator Satoshi Kon and his editing style, which distorts and warps space and time. It draws on his four features and one TV series.

Captain Disillusion explains the visual effects behind the Back to the Future trilogy. He covers ILM's motion-control, computer-controlled camera work and clever pre-CGI tricks.

This Place argues that the uncanny valley is a flawed concept, since 'human likeness' is too broad and the supporting evidence is cherry-picked. It proposes that the creepiness really comes from how animated characters and robots move.

Corridor Crew tracks down Disney's lost sodium vapor prism process, used for Mary Poppins-era transparency mattes. They explain how a narrow sodium wavelength and a beam splitter enabled better compositing than green screen.

Corridor Crew dive into the visual effects of Terminator 2 and try recreating the T-1000 bars scene with modern tools. They explain how the original effects were achieved.

Veritasium short showing Drew Berry's scientifically accurate animations of the molecular machines that drive cell division. It walks through mitosis, chromosomes and motor proteins.

Freya Holmer's 74-minute video essay on splines, covering Bezier curves, B-splines, derivatives and the different levels of continuity (C0, C1, C2), built with custom animation tools. She notes she did not cover non-uniform splines.

FortNine explains how Harley-Davidson ended up in decline, from a narrow lifestyle niche and an aging customer base to the pandemic hitting a company already in trouble.

A Kurzgesagt explainer on why the human population exploded and why growth is slowing, drawing on Our World in Data. It argues that birth rates fall as countries develop, easing overpopulation fears.

Retro Game Mechanics Explained dissects how Atari's Quadrascan vector displays and vector generator hardware drew games like Asteroids and Tempest.

Numberphile's James Grime introduces quaternions, a type of number beyond the complex numbers, building up from real and complex numbers and explaining why they are useful.

Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia analyzes Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, the first AAA game built around ray tracing. It covers the new global illumination, emissive lighting, DLSS and performance on AMD and Nvidia hardware.

A Kurzgesagt animation on South Korea's record-low fertility rate and rapidly aging population. It explains why a demographic collapse looks hard to reverse and projects the population shrinking sharply by 2060.

Linus Tech Tips looks at whether buying a used GPU that was previously used for crypto mining is a good idea, as miners prepare to sell off cards. The video discusses how mining affects wear on cards and what to watch for.

A short cartoon explaining how language models like ChatGPT work, from autocomplete and conditional probabilities to neural networks, gradient descent and backpropagation. It shows how networks act as universal function approximators.