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Survival of a Language To have a thriving ecosystem, what does a programming language need? Short Answer: A Good Package Manager A package manager is a set of tools that help automate the installation, configuration, removal, and updating of libraries and programs. Package managers are key to an effective build system because they take the pain out of loading and organizing the correct versions of dependencies to create a consistent build. They can also be a gateway for module exploration. This discovery method can save developers loads of time they would have spent re-inventing the wheel. What Makes a Good One? A good program manager should have the following attributes: Cross-platform Free Easy Fast Deterministic Browse-able Promotes quick evaluation Examples C# Nuget JavaScript / Node NPM / Yarn Python PIP Anaconda PyPl Go go get Ruby RubyGems Rust Cargo Crates.IO Java Maven Gradle PHP PEAR PE...

Blender is an awesome tool for motion graphics . After watching some workflow videos by Midge Sinnaeve (a.k.a the Mantissa) I was totally blown away by some of the things that are possible using Blender's modifier stack. You can really create complex and interesting animations with a pretty simple setup. I decided to take a creative challenge by making an image using only a sphere. So here is my 2-hour project. Here is the modifier stack I used in Blender. The ability to animate a texture and affect the modifiers was made possible by using a VertexWeightEdit modifier as shown below. Modifier Stack Texture key-framed values The animated curves were part of another project where I experimented with creating curves from particle animations. Also something I learned from Midge.

Qt is an awesome framework for building responsive desktop applications. Before releasing an application though, you will need to deal with issues involving DPI. Depending on your target OS there are a few options and issues to consider. Qt gives some helpful information  here . On Windows you need to understand that there are 3 levels of dpi-awareness your application can have. By default a Qt application declares itself dpi-aware , either per-screen-awareness for Windows 8.1+, or system-wide-awareness for older Windows versions. This means that you will need to do some work to make your application adjust appropriately. The Easy Way If you are targeting Windows only , then there is an easy solution to make a dpi-unaware application look good on all displays. Simply tell windows that your application is dpi-unaware and Windows will scale the application window so it looks normal on high-dpi displays that have fonts scaled. Just add a qt.conf file to your applicatio...

Low poly models are pretty popular these days. I decided to make a deer for a quick 2-night project.

I completed a short side project of a toy train model. It's pretty simple and was fun practice. I'm not 100% happy with the PBR shaders but my main focus was on the model, which turned out pretty clean and simple.

Creating VR 360 videos in Blender is actually quite easy. I followed a few simple instructions and created a simple low-poly scene. Here is the my test video on YouTube: As you can see, the resolution needs to be much higher for it to be enjoyable. Next time I'll ramp it up to 7168x3584 or higher as is recommended. This is the tutorial I followed for the Blender settings: