Top all-time · #4925
Philip Rideout
Personal blog · prideout.net/blogmathprogramming
Philip Rideout writes The Little Grasshopper, a personal blog at prideout.net about math and programming. Since 2010, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “The Simple, Flexible, Octasphere”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Philip Rideout's blog for graphics programming posts on particle effects, OpenGL and WebGL, tessellation, procedural meshes such as octaspheres, and generated knot SVGs. Commenters cite it as a reference for these topics.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- Called the transform feedback article "great" and the OpenGL tutorials "very nice", including those on advanced topics such as tessellation.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Computer graphics and mathematics by Philip Rideout.
Most-linked posts?
- The Simple, Flexible, Octasphere2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-12-18
- Generating SVG for the prime knots2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-07-28
- Procedural Terrain with Distance Fields2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-10-07
- Serialization-Based Undo2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-10-17
- Exploring Special Relativity2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-05
What Hacker News says?
Performance for this kind of particle effect will be even better once Webgl2 is widely available. Transform feedback (or other hacks) let you manipulate the particle positions on the videocard itself. There's a great article about them here: http://prideout.net/blog/?p=67
Comment linking /blog/?p=67
on “Particle effects in JavaScript”Submitted 3D Wireframes Using SVG as a story · 394 points
HN discussionHow is it feasible to have a .svg file that has links to other .SVG files? https://prideout.net/blog/svg_knots/knottable_v1.svg . Has this capacity been around for some time?
Comment linking /blog/svg_knots/knottable_v1.svg
on “Generating SVG for the prime knots”Submitted Generating SVG for the prime knots as a story · 230 points
HN discussionLove the double hearts in https://prideout.net/blog/svg_knots/knots/8_5.svg
Comment linking /blog/svg_knots/knots/8_5.svg
on “Generating SVG for the prime knots”Submitted Filament and WASM: Physically-based rendering for web as a story · 87 points
HN discussionThis is the book that inspired me to create a WebGL knot gallery ( https://prideout.net/knotgl/ ) which I eventually rewrote using Filament ( https://prideout.net/knotess/ ).
Comment linking /knotess/
on “The Knot Book: Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Knots (1994) [pdf]”Submitted An unsolved problem in graph theory as a story · 79 points
HN discussionComputing distance fields with a jump flooding approach in O(n log n) is neat, but there is a O(n) algorithm, which might be faster https://prideout.net/blog/distance_fields/
Comment linking /blog/distance_fields/
on “Ray Marching Soft Shadows in 2D”Submitted Serialization-Based Undo as a story · 76 points
HN discussionAlso http://prideout.net/ has some very nice tutorials on advanced OpenGL topics (tesselation for example).
Comment linking /
on “Welcome to OpenGL”Submitted Filament (3D renderer from Google) for the Web as a story · 32 points
HN discussionI like this method better: https://prideout.net/blog/octasphere/ To me it produces more pleasant resulting mesh, which gets important with fewer subdivisions. Here's what it looks like: https://i.imgur.com/o3RFfZx.mp4 But the criticisms from slavik81 still applies, it produces long triangles with insufficient surface information for the flat parts.
Comment linking /blog/octasphere/
on “Procedurally generating a rounded box mesh”Submitted Hot loading C++ game code as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI recently got tip on a 3D version of round rectangles, called octasphere: https://prideout.net/blog/octasphere/ It's not a direct-to-screen rendering technique like the article, rather a way to procedurally construct the 3D mesh based on few parameters (W,H,D, radius, # of subdivisions). Just like rectangles in 2D, boxes in 3D are too simple and have harsh sharp edges. Adding rounded edges makes them nicer to look…
Comment linking /blog/octasphere/
on “Round rectangles are everywhere (1981)”Submitted Show HN: SVG Wall Poster of Knot Diagrams as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: Tiny C library for tessellating lines and curves as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mesh Generation with Python as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rust on the web and an ECS lite architecture as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Simple, Flexible, Octasphere as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vector Math with C++0x as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted C++ as a Scripting Language (Sort Of) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cube Games and Group Theory as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: The virtues of the subdivided octahedron (with demo and code) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: WebGL Renderer for Chip Layouts as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Exploring Special Relativity as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Serialization-based undo with ZSTD compression as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted An American Pedigree as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Procedural Terrain with Distance Fields as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rendering Chip Layouts with Rust as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
