Raytracing in a Week

I have just finished some graphics projects and I want to point out how cool raytracing and raymarching are. If you are not familiar raytracing is a 3D technique where you model light rays and test their collisions with a scene per pixel. Raymarching is a 3D technique where you make increments of a light ray and test to see if it hits any thing in a scene. I know both of these approaches pretty well but I found an online book for raytracing called Ray Tracing in One Weekend that gave me a great foundation for 3D graphics. The book starts out with Larmbertian lighting which is really just a shaded sphere. Next Metal spheres then (my favorite) Dielectric spheres which look like glass. I will admit it took me more than two days to finish the book but the code was written in c++ and I converted it to JavaScript. The image below is generated from my code based on one of the last chapters (the big sphere in front is Metallic, the sphere behind it is Dielectric, and the smaller spheres in front are Lambertian.

Savor the Flavor

There is a new twist to the Donut Pong game. Now you must battle the computer to acquire new donut flavors by notching a net score of 0 to 2 = glazed, 3 to 6 = chocolate, 7 to 11 = strawberry, 12 and up = mystery berry flavor. For instance, score 3 more wins than the computer to see the glazed donut turn into a chocolate donut and 7 or more for strawberry. Also, this game is the first to use the new signed distance field physics engine from PlumeriaSC. Finally I came across a cool JavaScript programming course on YouTube. After watching the series myself I highly recommend these videos no matter what coding level you are at or programming language you are using.

Bricks, Blocks, and Beyond

It's the New Year! First off, we have added 3D toy bricks as a new shape and background effect option for PlumeriaGIF so check it out! New features coming to PlumeriaSC 4.8 beta 2 include a new physics engine based on signed distance fields (SDF), instead of the usual Racasting. Also, the planet physics have always used SDFs but were missing features. Now that the entire physics engine uses SDFs all of the missing features can be added including bounce, drag, and friction. Finally, several other unannounced features added last year should make it easier to add updates and new games to our website this year.

What is RWD?

Merry Christmas! Today we released a new version of PlumeriaGIF. To celebrate Christmas we have added a Christmas Tree where you can change the color of the ornaments. Now, for the biggest change, PlumeriaGIF uses Responsive Web Design or RWD. If you have ever used Bootstrap or Flexboxes for a website you know what RWD is. For those who do not know you may have seen elements of a website snap to different areas of the page while resizing a page, simply put, it is an interface that aligns website elements differently for Phones, Tablets, and Desktop Computers.

Happy Anniversary

This month Plumeria Smart Creator 4 turns 5 years young. Also, Solar Fusion Software turns 20! Make sure to check out the new features that are being added to PlumeriaGIF every month. This month a puzzle piece shape was added.

New Worlds to Conquer

That's right we have updated and created new levels for some of our most recent games. The Orange Grove game has not been updated for awhile so it needed to be totally rebuilt from the ground up. All of the games that were updated now use a super smooth font with ultra crisp edges that look great on devices with higher screen resolutions and even smaller ones. Also check out the newly added particle effects that have been added to the Orange Grove oranges and Galactic Space Junk rocks. And yes, the Donut Pong game was updated too.

One More GIFt

As you may have noticed there is a new tab in our navigation bar. Introducing PlumeriaGIF! It is totally free, you can render some pretty amazing 3D graphics, and export it all to a GIF video. PlumeriaGIF is a web app that allows you to personalize every aspect of a GIF and it runs both on Mobile and Desktop computers. No annoying accounts to setup just 3D bliss.