Polyhedrons : first attemp

[Wingnut]

*nod*    Ok, so, where do we stand?  Should I go for it?  Keep it brief, yet freely offer any further information that HE might want?  Show him how Jerome has presented his data?  Be very advice-seeking?  Portray it more as a PERSONAL request, so I can give my geometry buddy Jerome.... cool data to work-with... to please MY PERSONAL love of geometry and symmetry?  Any thoughts?  (Wingy chews his fingernails violently). 

[GameMonetize]

This is Jerome's call

[Wingnut]

Yeah, but I (and likely Jerome) would still be quite willing to take advice on how best to introduce/ask.... from anyone. 

 

But, yes, I was sort of speaking to Jerome, who is probably drooling on his pillow at the moment... and dreaming of his home planet of Orthogona. 

 

By the way, what the heck AM I asking for?  Republishing rights?

 

I am not trying to convince him to clear his data for commercial use, correct?  Or am I trying for the same rights he has for the .WRL folk (non-commercial)?  errrr?

 

Thoughts? 

 

Just for fun, here's Professor Hart's daughter... having a blast with the Golden Mean.  Love it!

[jerome]

Ok, I will ask him... introducing what I did from Stemkoski's former work, what is BJS and who I am (if any interest... maybe the university side ?)

 

I don't know what exactly to ask ... I can tell him we are (I am) interested in polyhedrons like many others in this community, that's why I used his data in our open source free framework : people can inject his data from an external file in our function and it draws the 3D polyhedron.

Of course, we mention his work and his site.

 

I will tell him that BJS does this but does also a billion different things for the web in 3D, so polyhedrons are just also a very tiny part of it.

 

BJS is free, open source, under the Apache licence 2.0, so it can be used by anyone, people wanting to make non-commercial projects and wanting to make commercial ones. So our (my) question will be : does he mind that things go like they do for now ?

 

I wish I can express all of this in some correct polite american English and won't make any misunderstanding that could ruin my request 

[Wingnut]

You'll do fine.  Act scared... right away... and get the pity kiss!  hehe

 

I think you have shown excellent respect and information with the .md doc...  I think he will be proud.

 

Go get 'em, Jeromino!  You're our hero! 

 

PS: Make him cough-up the algorithms, too... even if they are written in Ada. 

 

PPS:  Grab any other thrombinibinoids that he might have hanging in his garage.

 

[Just kidding, of course!]

[jerome]

Not sure I will do this today... a bit tired, not slept enough  (sport at night is not a good idea)

I start thinking about how to write this however.

 

BTW, did he really code this in ADA ? I love ADA, one of the first real pro language I learned (centuries ago)

[Wingnut]

hehe.  I was just trying for the laugh, Jerome.  Nice language, though, as best I can tell.

 

What sports, Jerome?  (if you don't mind me asking)

 

And if you are talking about bedroom sports... I probably don't need to know any more details about that. 

 

Back on the polyhedra subject... it WOULD be cool if we had the algorithms/code, though, even if a "universal polyhedra grower" was not possible.  I would imagine that these shapes need to have certain proportions... or they don't get to be labeled with a certain name.  And, they seem to be categorized... but I don't know if that is pertinent.  Let's visit Prof. Stemkoski's demo and look at the categories.

 

https://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/Polyhedra.html

 

Platonic Solids, Archemedean Solids, Prism, AntiPrism, and Johnson Solids.  hmm.

 

It has been 15 years since I've seen a solid Johnson in this household. 

 

What?  That's going TOO FAR to get the laugh, you say?  hehe.  Yeah, I suspect you are correct. 

 

ANYway... I suppose we could consider... ONE BabylonJS geometry generator class... for each of those primary categories.  hmm.  (droooool).  After Jerome gets done activating Options Object Parameter Stocking (OOPS) and Color-Per-Side (CPS) on all those "big-5" geometry generators... I predict he will be about 493 years old.  hah

[jerome]

sport : krav-maga

 

The categories are about the poylehdron features : this one is regular and convex, this other one regular and not convex, this other is semi-regular, convex and symetric, the other is blue-eyed, with red hair, half beard, farsighted and vegetarian, etc

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic_grid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_solid

...

 

Unless being an idle math prof or a researcher, implementing a dedicated algo for each type would be far more lines of code (and time to code them) than to get these well-known for centuries data from some online documented source... like George Hart's website or Stemkoski's one.

Thre are plenty of sources :

http://people.physics.anu.edu.au/~mxk121/research/polyhedron.html

http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/Lynn/Coordinates/coord01.html

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/415348/goldberg-polyhedra-coordinates  (follow the links)

etc

 

Would you recompute the cube vertex coordinates ? of course, you wouldn't, you know obviously to set its faces in the space. Everyone knows it.

This is a bit the same in the geometry field : all the math guys (I'm not one)  know how to get the polyhedron coordinates, how to apply the right theorems, what angle to rotate, what symetry to apply and finally what are these coordinates because everything is in the public domain for centuries.

It's also why I think someone can copyright only the format he presents the data and not the data themselves : could you copyright the coordinates of some cube vertices that everyone knows  for milleniums ?

[Wingnut]

 

Would you recompute the cube vertex coordinates ?

Yes, especially if I wanted to bake-in an orientation at creation time.  Since boxes can be plotted with nice easy whole integers, no problem for a manual plot.  Yet we use an auto-plotter (but no calculating of vertex positions).

 

 

implementing a dedicated algo for each type would be far more lines of code (and time to code them) than to get these well-known for centuries data from some online documented source... like George Hart's website or Stemkoski's one.

At this time and place, yes.  But in general, I disagree.  Those "well-known-for-centuries" datum... were created by applying "well-known-for-centuries" formulas... that our computers could use and re-use... as the tools for the generators.  If the data has been long established, then so has the mathematical method of getting that data.

 

It is unlikely that I can comprehend the AMOUNT of calculation that is needed to extract said data.  It might be intense.  There is likely a very good reason why Prof. Stemkoski used static data instead of generators.  (Yes, Wingy, and Jerome is TRYING to beat that into your pea brain!) 

[jerome]

last news :

 

I just added the parameter singleFace to CreatePolyhedron() : if true,  the polyhedron has only a single face folded around it. This means vertex-reuse under the hood and not vertex per faces.

In other terms, you can't use color or texture per face but you can morph the polyhedron if you need with updateVerticesData() or as a particle in SPS. Please read the docs.

 

I asked Stemkoski and Hart about the external data file in the extension repo : https://github.com/BabylonJS/Extensions/blob/master/Polyhedron/readme.md

They agree with how it is introduced and nothing more. But I didn't ask them more than this ...

[adam]

http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/copyright.html

 

I'd be nervous about using these in any apps I plan on releasing.  I'm even a little nervous for BJS, since they are being posted in the playground.  This isn't my area of expertise, so maybe I need to relax.

[jerome]

Well, first the playground has no commercial purpose.

 

 

The fact is I think nobody can't copyright some geometric shape coordinates (unless you invent the shape of course). All these polyhedrons are known and studied for centuries by ancient math researchers (Euclide is quite distant, isn't it ?).

Their vertex coordinates are known (at some scale/rotation/translation) and documented in many books.

 

Well, here's a square in the plane. Its vertex coordinates are, say, [(0,0), (0,1), (1,0), (1,1)] from my own calculation.

Who says that ? me. So these values would be my exclusive rights ? no way.

 

What can be copyrighted then ? the file containing the values or the format used to set values in the file, not the values.

So WRL files are G. Hart's property and he can choose how people can used them. Note well that Hart talks only about his WRL files.

That's why I copied the terms, concerning these very files.

 

The data from these files were then parsed and transformed into JSON by Stemkoski (so in another single file and in another format) and published to github with no explicit licence : http://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/index.html

 

Finally, this is a modified copy from this last file that I published on the BJS extension site.

 

Well, if you are not sure, just modify all the values within the file (say, apply a rotation or a translation), or change their order, and it will just be your values.

 

If I find some time, I (or someone else) could change the values and the format in our file so everyone would feel more comfortable.