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What to learn to be a graphics programmer

blog.demofox.org

31–40 of 251 posts

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#31
If anyone needs a quick tutorial on linear algebra, you can check out this printabale four pager that I wrote: https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in...

I also have some notebooks with SymPy code examples here: https://github.com/minireference/noBSLAnotebooks

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#32

Somewhat surprising there is no mention of basic design principles, or understanding the quirks of human perception. My brother was a production artist for some well-known computer games in the '90s-'00s, and continually complained about programmers and managers with zero visual sense, or curiosity about understanding the artists' side. Graphics aren't my specialty, but as a musician, sound designer and producer, by…

I see this all the time with audio too. The amount of bits you need to reserve a

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphics programming has this one very, very useful aspect, exponentially more valuable today: the matrix algebra pipelines, and then the requirement to 'think in matrix transforms' is a wonderful and visually engaging way to get your foundation for machine learning math.

This is like saying being a cashier prepares you for a job in high-finance because both involve arithmetic on dollars and cents. I've been in ML for ~5 years in multiple FAANGs and I have never seen a rotation matrix .

Doesn’t RoPE use 2D rotation matrices ?

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying being a cashier prepares you for a job in high-finance because both involve arithmetic on dollars and cents. I've been in ML for ~5 years in multiple FAANGs and I have never seen a rotation matrix .

Is the linear algebra of machine learning more complicated than that of graphics?

i think so

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#35

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

Graphics programming has this one very, very useful aspect, exponentially more valuable today: the matrix algebra pipelines, and then the requirement to 'think in matrix transforms' is a wonderful and visually engaging way to get your foundation for machine learning math.

I don't really see this with modern graphics programming, but I was highly amused that my 1980s-1990s graphics skills (in particular, coordinate transform math) were very useful when I started working in robotics in the 2010s-2020s (because forward and inverse kinematics are exactly the same thing as 2d/3d projections.)

The trick there is that they both have related physical analogs, and machine learning math doesn't really (in that while you can visualize them spatially, it doesn't seem to help solve any problems in that space.)

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying being a cashier prepares you for a job in high-finance because both involve arithmetic on dollars and cents. I've been in ML for ~5 years in multiple FAANGs and I have never seen a rotation matrix .

Doesn’t RoPE use 2D rotation matrices ?

congrats you've found literally the only example ("the exception that proves the rule").

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#37

If anyone needs a quick tutorial on linear algebra, you can check out this printabale four pager that I wrote: https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/linear_algebra_in... I also have some notebooks with SymPy code examples here: https://github.com/minireference/noBSLAnotebooks

Good Books :)

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#38

I'm a graphics programmer. The most useful resources I've found for graphics are scratchapixel, UC Davis' graphics lectures, songho's articles, and Essential Math for Games and Interactive Applications. I highly recommend you read this last resource front to back. Seriously, its the best freaking math reference for graphics out there. But knowing theory is not sufficient. You also need to get your hands dirty by writ…

Thank you! I started recently as a greybeard engineer, and I found SDL3 GPU to be modern enough yet not too low level for a newbie compared to Vulkan. SDL in general is a fantastic framework. And if you use it from Odin, the dev experience is so smooth and enjoyable as everything you need to create graphical applications is builtin.

I will definitely check out Essential Math for Games and Interactive Applications, I feel I need some solid understanding of theory to see how it all fits together.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying being a cashier prepares you for a job in high-finance because both involve arithmetic on dollars and cents. I've been in ML for ~5 years in multiple FAANGs and I have never seen a rotation matrix .

Is the linear algebra of machine learning more complicated than that of graphics?

I'm a data scientist and not a graphics programmer, but my guess is that it's just abstracted away more. If you're using ML/DL libraries, you're mostly just calling APIs that handle the linear algebra and calculus for you. Unless you're actively contributing to those libraries, you likely don't ever need to "touch" any of the underlying operations. Up to a point, it's useful to understand how things work under the hood, but where that point is kinda depends on your job. For instance, I could write code to do 'naive' matrix multiplication, but I couldn't, like, contribute to BLAS.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#40

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

There is more to graphics than AAA games or blockbuster movies.
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