Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#1

Post by RojerGS » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 10:38 AM UTC

Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)
mathspp.com

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#2

Post by RojerGS » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 10:39 AM UTC

Hey there, OP here.

I jotted down some thoughts on how I think about (simple) animations and how to create them with some programming (in Python). I'd love to hear your thoughts on my write up and also what directions you suggest I take these personal explorations in.

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#3

Post by toppy » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 1:14 AM UTC

I like clarity of your examples. You could draw an inspiration from Daniel Shifman's book "Nature of code" (https://natureofcode.com/book/) - see chapters 2 and 3 for instance.

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#4

Post by tantalor » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

This is very accessible. With a few tiny changes it could run in JS in the browser, in a fiddle or something. Then reader could tweak the code and see changes without having to run pygame.

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#5

Post by bmer » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 3:11 AM UTC

I do not understand how this is from "first principles"?

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#6

Post by cdchn » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 3:54 AM UTC

bmer wrote: post #5

I do not understand how this is from "first principles"?

Drawing circles point by point from sine and cosine seems pretty first principles to me.

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#7

Post by RojerGS » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 6:07 AM UTC

cdchn wrote: post #6

bmer wrote: post #5

I do not understand how this is from "first principles"?

Drawing circles point by point from sine and cosine seems pretty first principles to me.

This.

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#8

Post by RojerGS » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 6:08 AM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #4

This is very accessible. With a few tiny changes it could run in JS in the browser, in a fiddle or something. Then reader could tweak the code and see changes without having to run pygame.

That’s a great suggestion. People could immediately see what they’re drawing!

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#9

Post by RojerGS » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 6:08 AM UTC

toppy wrote: post #3

I like clarity of your examples. You could draw an inspiration from Daniel Shifman's book "Nature of code" ( https://natureofcode.com/book/ ) - see chapters 2 and 3 for instance.

Thanks for the reference! I don’t know this book but I’ll take a look!

Re: Animations From First Principles (in 5 minutes)

#10

Post by noelwelsh » Fri, Sep 08, 2023, 7:15 AM UTC

Looks really nice. A few things that I think might make the presentation a bit clearer:

1. Using polar coordinates makes the maths a lot cleaner than using Cartesian coordinates. However you then either need to explain polar coordinates, or you assume people remember polar coordinates from high school which is often not the case in my experience.

2. I think the positioning of the points is a little bit opaque. I was expecting to see (r * cos theta, r * sin theta) and it took me by surprise to see an addition in there. Either just noting that stupid computer graphics libraries don't put the origin at the center, or adding that translation later (which is a chance to talk about function composition) might be beneficial.

(I've written my own take on this same topic, starting at http://www.creativescala.org/creative-scala/polygons/ It will take a little bit more than 5 minutes to get through it :-) It's really fun and you can do a huge amount with parametric curves.)