The Secret Behind Valve's Flickering Lights - Alan Zucconi
For almost 25 years, Valve has been using the same flickering light effect in most of their games. Learn how it works, and how to use it!| Alan Zucconi
In today’s world, data is everywhere—and often, it’s overwhelming. Datasets can have hundreds or even thousands of features, many of which are redundant or noisy. Visualising data is an essential skill that allows Data Scientists to effectively highlight structures and relationships that would otherwise remain hidden. This series of tutorials will focus on Principal Component […] The post PCA for Programmers appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
For almost 25 years, Valve has been using the same flickering light effect in most of their games. Learn how it works, and how to use it!| Alan Zucconi
The Sunrise Sort is a sorting algorithm with a unique property: it is fully unstable. Learn when and why this can be useful.| Alan Zucconi
This article will teach you how to develop and deploy a Minecraft plugin for a Paper server, using the Bukkit API. As a toy example, you will learn all the steps necessary to create a plugin that allows players to craft special compasses that can teleport them to their linked lodestones. This is going to […] The post Minecraft Plugin Development appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This article will explain how to create four dimensional objects, in a format compatible with the Unity4D extension. You can find all the articles in this series here: Introduction The past three articles in this series talked at length about hypercubes and hyperspheres. And while Part 1 gave some basic intuitions on how hyperobjects are […] The post Unity 4D #4: Creating 4D Objects appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This article will explain how to render 4D objects in Unity, using three separate technique: orthographic projection, perspective projection and cross-section. You can find all the articles in this series here: A link to download the Unity4D package can be found at the end of this article. Introduction It is undeniable that what makes hyperdimensional […] The post Unity 4D #3: Rendering 4D Objects appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This article will show how to extend Unity to support four-dimensional geometry. This is the second article in a series of four, and the first one which will probably start discussing the Mathematics and the C# code necessary to store and manipulate 4D objects in Unity. You can find all the articles in this series […] The post Unity 4D #2: Extending Unity to 4D appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This is the first part of a series of articles dedicated to extending Unity from 3D to 4D. In this instalment, we will explore the fourth dimension, from its representations in movies and video games, to its more mathematical and geometrical interpretations. At the end of the series, you will learn how to create and […] The post Unity 4D #1: Understanding the Fourth Dimension appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
A slippy map (sometimes also referred to as tiled web map, tile map, or simply interactive map) is a web-based map that can be zoomed in and out seamlessly. The most popular slippy map you might be familiar with is Google Maps, alongside many others like that. This tutorial will show you how to create […] The post Slippy Maps with Unity appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
Seam carving is a technique that can be used to resize images, which is also known as liquid rescaling. Compared to the traditional resizing tool, it does not “stretch” the image, but it selectively removes the pixels which contain the least amount of information. As a result, it allows to shrink images preserving most of […] The post Seam Carving appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
Over the past ten years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have steadily crept into the Art Industry. From Deepfakes to DALL·E, the impact of these new technologies can be longer be ignored, and many communities are now on the edge of a reckoning. On one side, the potential for modern AIs to generate […] The post The Rise of AI Art appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This post completes the journey started in The Mathematics of Thin-Film Interference, by explaining how to turn the equations previously presented into actual shader code. You can find the complete series here: Part 1. The Nature of Light Part 2. Improving the Rainbow (Part 1) Part 3. Improving the Rainbow (Part 2) Part 4. Understanding Diffraction […] The post Car Paint Shader: Thin-Film Interference appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This post continues our journey through the Mathematical foundations of iridescence. This time, we will discuss a new way in which material can split light: thin-film interference. This is how bubbles (and car paint) get their unique reflections. You can find the complete series here: Part 1. The Nature of Light Part 2. Improving the […] The post The Mathematics of Thin-Film Interference appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This is the third part of the series dedicated to one of the most popular sensor de-noising technique: Kalman filters. This article will explain how to model non-linear processes to improve the filter performance, something known as the Extended Kalman Filter. You can read all the tutorials in this online course here: Part 1. A […] The post The Extended Kalman Filter appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This is the third part of the series dedicated to one of the most popular sensor de-noising technique: Kalman filters. This article will explain how to model processes to improve the filter performance. You can read all the tutorials in this online course here: Part 1. A Gentle Introduction to the Kalman Filter Part 2. […] The post Modelling Kalman Filters appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This is the second part of the series dedicated to one of the most popular sensor de-noising technique: Kalman filters. This article will introduce the Mathematics of the Kalman Filter, with a special attention to a quantity that makes it all possible: the Kalman gain. You can read all the articles in this online course […] The post The Mathematics of the Kalman Filter appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This series of articles will introduce the Kalman filter, a powerful technique that is used to reduce the impact of noise in sensors. If you are working with Arduino, this tutorial will teach you how to reliably read data from your sensors. This is a tutorial that will be very helpful even if you are […] The post Kalman Filters: From Theory to Implementation appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This is a companion article to the documentary about the world generation of Minecraft, which you can see below. This is a chance to expand on the content, including more information and resources that was not possible to include in the original 45 minutes of the video. Have you ever wondered how many grains of […] The post The World Generation of Minecraft appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This tutorial will teach you how to recreate a very popular effect in games: topographical maps. This is a two-part series, which will cover all the necessary aspects—from the Maths to the shader code—to make this possible: In this second part, we will focus on the edge detection algorithm that will be used to draw […] The post Topographical Maps in Unity: Edge Detection appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
This tutorial will teach you how to recreate a very popular effect in games: topographical maps. This is a two-part series, which will cover all the necessary aspects—from the Maths to the shader code—to make this possible: Part 1. Topographical Maps: Terrain Shading Part 2. Topographical Maps: Edge Detection A link to download the full […] The post Topographical Maps in Unity: Terrain Shading appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
Every serious game developer knows that world building is an integral part of the process that creates a truly immersive experience. There are a variety of techniques that can be used to achieve this: from presenting the backstory of your player with a wall of text, to clever level design tricks known as environmental storytelling. […] The post World Building Through Fictional Languages appeared first on Alan Zucconi.| Alan Zucconi
Learn to implement Subsurface Scattering in Unity. This technique is fast and allows to render even more realistic materials such as skin, wax and marble.| Alan Zucconi
