27. Sashimi Brainstorming and Green Tea Jitters
For the next several years I worked on a number of startup and independent projects in Montreal, which by now had become home. Prior to living in Montreal, the longest I had ever lived in one city at a stretch was less than four years (3.5 years in Cambridge, MA during my MIT years).
Mike Sweeney and I had gotten into the habit of having weekend lunches at a small sushi restaurant slash french cafe on St. Laurent Street. By that point Mike had parted ways with Softimage, and was suing them.
We would spend hours there, talking over plates of sashimi and many pots of strong Macha tea, mainly about 3D graphics, animation, and the like.
In fact, I had my first experience with caffeine jitters one afternoon during that time. Returning to my apartment, I picked up a pen to write down the messages on my answering machine and noticed my hand was shaking. Those readers too young to remember what an answering machine is should ask their parents. Mine had a built-in fax.
Inevitably over the course of time, the talk turned to “What do you want to do next?” A question which we answered by saying “Let’s do our own 3D system!”
Design & Code
In a cleanup pass, I decided to simplify the OpenGL shading controls and just make them globals rather than storing them on a per-object basis.
Since my UI consists of key bindings, this makes my test rendering easier to control. At some point in the future, I may implement an extensible command table scheme for key bindings. I’ve been wondering to what extent I can push a pure key-binding-based UI.
Been having unorthodox thoughts of a (mostly) mouse-less interface. Curious to see how using such a system might feel, especially for a 3D system.
