Post #2098608
2026-03-27 18:00 UTC
In physics, you often see people making "crazy" approximations. For example, "sin(x)" is basically the same as "x" for certain values of "x". A trick you can sometimes use to simplify some gnarly integral.
In terms of graphics, we were mostly making rendered spheres. A first-order approximation to an antialiased rendered fancy sphere is a plain 2D solid-colored circle with a single pixel black outline around it.
So, maybe we should just do that. 17/n?
Replies (1)
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@dabeaz@mastodon.social 2026-03-27 18:05
About 5 years earlier, I had done a senior thesis project where I explored the Bresenham ellipse drawing algorithm (and also circle-drawing algorithm). I even presented this in my first ever conference talk as a student paper at a math conference in Topeka, KS. So, I had that code laying around. I figured I could adapt it into something where I rendered flat 2D circles into a 3D z-buffered 8-bit pixel array. This could be easily coded in C using just basic arrays. 18/n?