Add some more notes

This commit is contained in:
Chris Hodapp 2020-10-01 16:25:00 -04:00
parent 0ba914a7a3
commit 35daf01b8a

View File

@ -1,8 +1,44 @@
# This needs a title
This work was started as an attempt to make meshes in a more
"generative" style, described by recursive grammars and
replacement rules. One goal was to make it easy to produce
manifold meshes by following certain rules, and do so in a
"correct-by-construction" manner rather than by having to
patch up or subdivide the meshes in post-processing.
These grammars by their nature worked in discrete steps,
but at one point I tried (unsuccessfully) to extend this
system to working in a more continuous and parametric
way.
I also ran into problems anytime I wanted to produce
meshes in a way that was more "refining" than "generative".
They're not completely distinct. However, the specific issue
I ran into is that the rules were explicitly designed around
'child' rules never being able to modify topology of geometry
from a 'parent' rule, besides being able to connect to its
vertices - and sometimes the "refining" part of things
required this in order to work right.
Also, I did this in order to learn the Rust language, and I
repeatedly kept bumping into the conclusion that Rust was
just not the right language for this. I was in need of things
like closures and first-class functions and I neglected to
consider how much those assume the presence of garbage
collection. Really, I wanted a Lisp, and then the presence of
a REPL would have been another bonus.
If I actually understood my goals enough to put better
constraints on my model, Rust probably would have been fine.
As it stands now, the lack of clarity in both my theory
and in my implementation is a far bigger issue than anything
related to Rust.
## Highest priority:
- Fix the commented-out tests in `examples.rs`.
- Figure out the crash bug in `vec_indexed!` if I put a Vertex
*after* an Arg.
- Just scrap `parametric_mesh` as much as possible and use existing
tools (e.g. OpenSubdiv) because this DCEL method is just painful for
what it is and I have some questions on how it can even work