3d rendering

[jamievicary]

The plan is to do this with with Three.js. I anticipate the following major technical challenges:

• Devising the layout algorithm, probably by generalizing the current 2d algorithm
• Working out the formulas for the Bezier surfaces needed to make things look smooth
• Understanding how to implement transparency so the interior of a 3d proof object can be viewed
• Developing a mechanism for allowing the user to select parts (possibly in the interior) of a 3d proof to use as a locus of attachment

[jamievicary]

For interaction with the 3d proof object, this looks like a cost-effective approach: https://www.leapmotion.com/product/desktop

[zrho]

In the 3d-new branch there now is my implementation of this to try out. It features, so far:

• Layout algorithm that should work for all dimensions (though only tested in 4 so far)
• Bezier surfaces, although not too much of that should be visible right now, since control points are chosen in the corners. This needs some thinking where to put them, but the tech is there.
• Animation of diagrams. Animated 3D proofs do not look as good as the static ones yet, because of some technical difficulties of making this efficient.
• No interaction yet, but popups on mouseover to see the hovered cell's name.

Note that some examples on the nlab page (e.g. the commutative pants) trigger a bug in the calculation of an interchanger's bounding box, which makes the layout algorithm crash.

[jamievicary]

Hi Lukas, I couldn't load any of my workspaces in the 3d-new branch because code for this has changed. So I merged the master branch into 3d-new. I can't get anything to display at all in the main window. I think it's because of some changes you've made to the popup mechanism, so hopefully it's easy to fix. Maybe you could take a look. I've pushed my (potentially breaking) changes to the 3d-new branch.

[jamievicary]

OK, I fixed it, it was actually a trivial issue I introduced by mistake during the merge.