Aras Pranckevičius

Programmer. Unity 2006-2021. Now Blender. Website at https://aras-p.info Admin of https://mastodon.gamedev.place

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npub15kf8vswgjcnqfgjn49glxwgux6778u5jrayqndgt0m5w8evsga8scztze2

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aras@mastodon-gamedev-place.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqs2tynkg8yfvfsy5ff6j50n8ywrd00r72fp7jqfk59ha68rukgywncpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsqxd7qc

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Last Notes

2026-05-22 18:10:24 UTC

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@nprofile…5wq2 I don’t know, and TBH I had forgotten about it myself.

2026-05-03 07:37:49 UTC

Metric: “we need to increase Copilot usage”. Solution is easy, make it co-author all the commits.
In every large company various metrics tend to become the actual goal. e.g. at Unity at some point there was a metric to “fix many bugs”. Sounds good! What actually happened often tho, was that bugs were simply closed without an actual fix. Because the graphs presented to the management still look great!

2026-05-02 06:07:38 UTC

Happy to report that the wireframe teapot still works!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/503/481/882/875/695/original/6eeb06c7208bf103.jpeg

2026-05-02 03:13:58 UTC

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@nprofile…x9sp yeah

2026-05-01 12:34:16 UTC

“Cycles Texture Cache” writeup about new tiled/mipmapped texturing system in #blender 5.2 :blender: https://code.blender.org/2026/05/cycles-texture-cache/

2026-04-29 08:03:01 UTC

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@nprofile…zdn5 subscribing! I'm on CLion, but the typing latency and general "it loads all my CPU cores with _something_ all the time" is getting on my nerves. All my projects are CMake based, what are other IDEs good for this on Linux?

2026-04-28 16:43:18 UTC

I can’t say I’m a fan :(

2026-04-28 07:04:00 UTC

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@nprofile…622w @nprofile…hm63 mine is Hugo too, website https://aras-p.info and actual “source” of it https://github.com/aras-p/aras-p.hugo
Hugo tries to do “everything” these days, but I just ignore everything I don’t care about. Singe executable that I just put into version control means I don’t have to worry about updates.

2026-04-25 05:16:52 UTC

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@nprofile…3v4s ✅ IS IT PROVIDING?
✅ IS IT VALUE?
✅ IS IT FOR?
✅ IS IT THE?
✅ IS IT SHAREHOLDERS?

2026-04-24 06:29:01 UTC

"We have Sebastian Aaltonen at home". Aaltonen at home:
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/458/267/542/645/863/original/445c247f72f2a63b.jpeg

2026-04-22 18:12:42 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc devil’s advocate point could be that maybe they don’t post about all the cases that were just fine.
Anyhoo, what’s your overall feeling about AI for coding? Mine is convoluted and complicated :/ I can see areas where it is useful and improves things, but also plenty of problems and gotchas too…

2026-04-17 07:06:57 UTC

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...aaand closed with "lol sorry, won't fix" :/ https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/terrain-shadows-changing-shape-when-they-are-viewed-at-a-different-angle-from-the-same-position

2026-04-16 18:14:21 UTC

Oh, so turns out #unity has introduced a terrain shadow bug somewhere between 2022.3.7 and 2022.3.62, i.e. in the "critical bugfixes only!" LTS release train. Nothing related mentioned in the release notes. The bug is still present in all later versions (6.5 a8 is latest I checked). Fun fun fun!
The bug is: when there's a very steep terrain cliff behind camera, and light is also from behind, sometimes shadows use really low res LOD.
Let's see if a bug report goes anywhere...
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/415/742/511/802/037/original/749ce93f5b7f962a.mp4

2026-04-03 16:27:31 UTC

This birch tree has grown a light saber
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/341/712/313/101/973/original/680ab8a0b4833ced.jpeg

2026-03-31 17:56:15 UTC

I was today years old when I realized that just like OBJ files are really useful to write while debugging 3D stuff, SVG files are useful for 2D cases! So obvious, but I never did it before! Well, turns out an old dog can still learn some new tricks. Example: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/156622

2026-03-30 17:12:37 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 most excellent. Did I tell you that you have a superpower of going really deep into rabbit holes like that, emerging with fantastic stuff?

2026-03-30 09:38:06 UTC

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@nprofile…raqz “vibe coding whole games into existence” the CEO already said somewhere? I wonder if they tried vibe-businessing the whole company into profitability yet.

2026-03-28 15:46:25 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc @nprofile…yk06 ah, right indeed

2026-03-28 09:49:24 UTC

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@nprofile…yk06 whoa, how do you even begin to reverse engineer these formats?

2026-03-27 08:54:33 UTC

Unity, 2022: we have merged with ironSource! Unity, 2026: we are discontinuing the ironSource thingamabob. https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2026/Unity-Releases-Preliminary-First-Quarter-Results-Exceeding-Guidance-Will-Enhance-Growth-and-Profitability-by-Exiting-Non-Strategic-Ad-Businesses/default.aspx
Strategic brilliance is why the top men are paid a lot, eh!

2026-03-22 19:52:31 UTC

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Topic jump: Arseny talks about meshoptimizer compression for *mesh* vertex data compression, but turns out, it is very good for lossless compression of other same-sized kinda-structured data. I've used it to compress game saves (https://aras-p.info/blog/2023/02/02/Float-Compression-4-Mesh-Optimizer/) and HDR images (https://aras-p.info/blog/2025/07/08/Lossless-Float-Image-Compression/) and it fared very well there. Very fast decompression speed too.

2026-03-22 18:51:09 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc ...it *does* allow you to create/modify meshes to be in fairly flexible attribute formats, so people who really want to do have decent quantization/formats (e.g. octahedral normals in sane amount of bits etc.), they can do it. But does not come out of the box. Why is a good question, "it's two dozen reasons that all compound" as always.

2026-03-22 18:49:11 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc btw Unity and mesh quantization: it actually has it, but done in arguably strange way. It had user configurable mesh quantization forever (like since 2010 or so), but that was only for *storage*, it was always uncompressed at load time (strange/stupid? yes).
Then later it *also* got "a bit" of actual quantization that stays quantized in memory, but with much less user control and more opaque when that would actually get used & how.
However, ...

2026-03-22 18:46:50 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc Ren dropped by to hang out, but for some reason was *not* interested to learn about how vertex caches actually work.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/274/312/561/052/215/original/85292910f0b0c620.jpeg

2026-03-22 18:45:33 UTC

Oy! @nprofile…c3sc talks about meshoptimizer on wookash podcast! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtxiuFe83Hg
Great run down of all the topics there.

2026-03-21 19:40:16 UTC

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@nprofile…wgz8 some years ago I did that, wife & kids immediately went “plz never do that again”

2026-03-19 18:05:30 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc I *am* that predictable, yes

2026-03-19 17:48:58 UTC

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...I'm excited because I am biased -- I've been helping a tiny bit on that game for past month or two. Most of that time so far has been trying to remember how Unity stuff works lol :) game development, heck yeah!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/257/097/965/273/371/original/9b76b8e7761741fc.mp4

2026-03-19 13:29:01 UTC

Oy! @nprofile…grch's upcoming The Free Shepherd game has a new short! Excite! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GP50oPnnR34

2026-03-16 19:58:00 UTC

My first reaction to DLSS5 can be summarized as “🤮”. So now this completely discards artistic intent, and replaces all game characters with fake instagram influencers?
Is it just me?
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss5-breakthrough-in-visual-fidelity-for-games/

2026-03-10 04:56:53 UTC

I imagine @nprofile…c3sc sits down, legs crossed, eyes closed, chanting "OMM" as he makes pull request number 1024. https://github.com/zeux/meshoptimizer/pull/1024

2026-03-07 19:15:33 UTC

I ported Rapidhash to C#/Unity, and that by itself is trivial. But what surprised me: Unity Burst'ed Rapidhash is very close to native performance, whereas Burst'ed xxhash (XXH3) is quite a bit slower than native. Anyway, blog post: https://aras-p.info/blog/2026/03/07/Rapidhash-Unity-port/ #unity

2026-03-01 18:57:03 UTC

Another excellent thing for today: "A Day in the Life of an Enshittificator" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ (via @nprofile…raqz, thx!)

2026-02-23 15:16:34 UTC

:unity: #unity render pipelines strategy for 2026: https://discussions.unity.com/t/render-pipelines-strategy-for-2026/1710004 -- basically what could have been inferred from activity:
- URP is the one that's moving forward,
- HDRP is not getting any new features (except for Switch 2 support), so effectively dead long term,
- ye olde Built-in render pipeline (BiRP) is getting deprecated soon, removed "someday".

2026-02-22 17:33:33 UTC

Gmail has decided to stop supporting fetching email from external accounts, so time to start de-gmailing. It was a good 20 year run!
First attempt, Thunderbird. It feels... slow and janky? And *this* is the most popular free email client?! No wonder gmail took the world by storm.
Mailspring from Rune's thread (thanks!) feels decent, let's see how that goes.

2026-02-22 09:07:54 UTC

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@nprofile…j05z @nprofile…kudx right, I just have no idea whether any of them are doing anything

2026-02-22 08:29:39 UTC

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@nprofile…kudx well, technically it stopped being an "Intel" project, and became a "UXL Foundation" project. What is UXL Foundation in practice, I dunno, perhaps just intel :)

2026-02-22 08:01:15 UTC

So! Intel TBB (ok, new name is "UXL Foundation oneTBB") header files were including whole <windows.h> just to get a "void SwitchToThread()", more or less.
Well, not anymore, I fix0red that https://github.com/uxlfoundation/oneTBB/pull/1932 (a bug report to do that was open for 5 years lol)

2026-02-20 08:32:54 UTC

The other day: “hmm building blender got quite a bit slower” (by 10-15%). What caused it? Of course, enabling “plz C++20” instead of previous “plz C++17” compiler option. This is without actually *using* any of 20 features yet.
😭
https://projects.blender.org/LazyDodo/BuildBench

2026-02-07 17:18:55 UTC

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@nprofile…yk06 @nprofile…0kf8 whoa, memories!

2026-02-06 07:56:02 UTC

🧊
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/022/611/694/716/070/original/303ec09a76b5849e.jpeg

2026-02-05 05:11:58 UTC

"Normal Map Compression Revisited" by @nprofile…yk06: https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/02/normal-map-compression-revisited/ -- hmm, I was not aware of the "normal.xy = 2.0 * normal.xy - 254.0/255.0" trick! Funny now such an old and "solved" problem can still show small possible improvements, if someone cares to look at it closely.

2026-02-03 18:09:51 UTC

Me, casually running https://github.com/aras-p/sizer on a (WIP) Unity :unity: game build, because why not. Largest function in the whole game? ProBuilder ColorUtility constructor, which fills in a dictionary of 1200 color names, and converts RGB value of each into CIELab. I'm not sure if the game actually even uses ProBuilder LOL :) https://github.com/needle-mirror/com.unity.probuilder/blob/d315baee93c7d/Runtime/Core/ColorUtility.cs#L387

2026-01-28 08:03:22 UTC

"Life at two seconds per frame", triptych, unknown author, early 21st century
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/971/679/820/289/000/original/a41a7966c82e09ec.jpg

2026-01-28 06:30:40 UTC

tee hee :)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/971/315/175/076/404/original/b4c4b676400462b4.jpeg

2026-01-27 04:50:37 UTC

"Choosing Texture Formats for WebGPU applications" by @nprofile…yk06: https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/01/choosing-texture-formats-for-webgpu-applications/
TL;DR: use spark.js for realtime transcoding from AVIF et al into GPU compressed (BCn/ASTC/ETC) https://ludicon.com/sparkjs/

2026-01-26 06:21:41 UTC

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@nprofile…3v4s one could argue the whole “handmade” is kind of this (the other part of it often being “everyone who is not us is an idiot”, which also matches parts of the organic movement…)

2026-01-26 04:30:55 UTC

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@nprofile…m3v4 so you… just went with the Flow?

2026-01-20 20:30:21 UTC

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@nprofile…raqz I still stand by my theory that it did not start in 2020, but rather on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_David_Bowie

2026-01-20 19:11:03 UTC

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@nprofile…raqz Nice! (why no RSS feed tho)
This reminded me that I had actually read Seveneves, and had completely forgotten about it lol.

2026-01-14 10:58:02 UTC

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@nprofile…raqz tint it more blue and it turns into this
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/893/094/195/762/215/original/5274ceccd77848d9.jpeg

2026-01-13 16:52:44 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc think of bandwidth savings!

2026-01-13 16:52:22 UTC

35 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events

2026-01-13 15:46:58 UTC

Teapot wireframe: ON
Snow effect: ON
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/888/568/043/533/489/original/8b1b5616f810c679.jpeg

2026-01-13 04:53:56 UTC

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@nprofile…yk06 nice! a friend asks, is there a way for a non-commercial open source project to license Spark? :)

2026-01-11 09:45:09 UTC

Unrolling into 2026
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/875/820/825/484/388/original/3c798a3ad5b07127.mp4

2026-01-09 04:53:52 UTC

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@nprofile…22w0 hah tell me about it. it's as if the warranty period for this is designed to be ~40 years, and right after it is over everything starts to fall apart.

2026-01-07 07:30:25 UTC

Before video games, “a cool side scroller” was this
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/852/641/314/653/795/original/6b7850923f49cf66.mp4

2026-01-06 10:37:08 UTC

Most impractical thing I did recently? Got a double bass. Well, a "folk" style one (basedla/basolia), which is *really* meant to be played with just open strings (the distance from strings to the fingerboard is impossibly high -- like 2cm -- wtf). However it is not a proper bass, which means forbidden bass lines are allowed on it.
(if it looks like I can't play, that's because I really can't; still a long way ahead :))
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/847/713/155/992/057/original/b49d0c92a5aa8a4c.mp4

2025-12-30 13:11:38 UTC

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@nprofile…wvm8 hey now! but at least each paragraph heading will begin with an emoji! /s

2025-12-23 08:59:17 UTC

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@nprofile…wvm8 Ha! I haven’t even noticed. Maybe Windows 9x 11 then.

2025-12-23 07:46:28 UTC

Windows 11
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/767/770/035/232/782/original/64e5dc638ff063e8.jpeg

2025-12-19 20:44:01 UTC

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@nprofile…4pvh I guess, but showing this to someone who knows anything about armatures or painting would be better :)

2025-12-17 16:52:36 UTC

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@nprofile…n4pf I haven’t measured that (yet?)

2025-12-17 14:01:38 UTC

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Also, holy smokes Mac M4 is fast. Like, literally 3x faster at building blender codebase than my PC is (sure my PC is older, but still).

2025-12-17 14:00:53 UTC

C++ codebase build times! It is almost 2026, and one fancy trick to shave off 20% of the build time is... a precompiled header. Yup, technology from I don't know how many decades ago. https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/151766

2025-12-15 20:35:18 UTC

A while back we found “common Lithuanian-English phrases” book among grandfather’s stuffs, from around 1930s. Back then the common woes seem to have been that “I can’t get no work, since machines do all the work”. Now the same but with AI!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/725/494/798/378/345/original/843cd16adfc94c54.jpeg

2025-12-12 11:16:21 UTC

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@nprofile…53kh I did not actually use it recently lol :)

2025-12-12 04:13:03 UTC

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@nprofile…53kh saved what?

2025-12-11 19:42:55 UTC

So! Back in 2011, BitSquid made a "Header Hero" tool for C/C++ codebase header analysis. I did some updates to it in 2018. But now that I'm on Linux, I rewrote the UI (now it works on Win+Mac+Linux), did some performance improvements, and some other tweaks. Here: https://github.com/aras-p/header_hero

2025-12-10 07:06:30 UTC

Now this is a proper kind of vibe coding: https://youtu.be/GWXCCBsOMSg

2025-12-09 17:22:53 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel add the one with @nprofile…j2qh https://youtu.be/F1ax1iJTHFs

2025-12-03 04:33:33 UTC

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@nprofile…98z6 10 years? Whoa.

2025-12-02 08:34:07 UTC

So! This mastodon instance (mastodon.gamedev.place) has 136 custom "emojis" representing various engines & tools often used in gamedev. I made all of them 2+ years ago. Which notable ones have popped up since then that we are missing out on? Here are all the current ones: https://github.com/aras-p/gamedev-emojis

2025-12-01 04:43:20 UTC

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@nprofile…e8w8 a thought: would some of this have been a bit simpler in Superluminal? It captures all processes anyway, just by default displays the ones you profiled. But you can change timeline to show all processes.

2025-11-29 18:44:32 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel @nprofile…t5tr it’s only profiling if filings are done by the pros. Otherwise it’s just sprinkling QueryPerformanceCounters

2025-11-27 05:06:20 UTC

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@nprofile…yspl I got an email back then that the bug was considered a feature request. Now just got a new email saying that the bug is finally closed, since it is a feature request.

2025-11-26 09:28:51 UTC

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@nprofile…0feq no, they just never worked as far as I can tell

2025-11-26 08:53:07 UTC

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Look, sure, I can totally understand how this happens. And yes integer texture formats are "special" in that they are most often not filterable, etc. etc. But also! Back in the day, the guy implementing all this GraphicsFormat brouhaha spent *ages* doing it (felt like "a year"), and in the end still managed to ship some of them that don't actually work. That's impressive in a sad way :/

2025-11-26 08:49:04 UTC

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Act 3: year 2025, the report is closed as "that's a feature request lol". Oh well!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/615/133/972/609/425/original/debe0fa67a3c4983.png

2025-11-26 08:47:18 UTC

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Act 2: year 2022, people noticed that this particular format is not useful, i.e. you can't really *do* anything with it (like "create a texture"). So I filed a bug report with basically this as a repro: https://gist.github.com/aras-p/6807f4e9ec42c63a8bcb95143b549aac
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/615/126/949/833/291/original/50e6d8d27eb85779.png

2025-11-26 08:45:06 UTC

Act 1: year 2018, Unity added a whole bunch of texture formats to the scripting API, including integer ones, e.g. GraphicsFormat.R16G16B16A16_UInt (https://docs.unity3d.com/2018.2/Documentation/ScriptReference/Experimental.Rendering.GraphicsFormat.R16G16B16A16_UInt.html).

2025-11-26 04:27:50 UTC

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@nprofile…wvm8 fuuuuuu

2025-11-24 08:43:03 UTC

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@nprofile…xlvy I’ve no idea TBH. Mastodon does whatever it does for GIFs, which might mean “I’ll destroy your nice pixel art” too, I guess

2025-11-23 15:01:20 UTC

Two years of working on Blender :blender: Video Sequence Editor: https://aras-p.info/blog/2025/11/23/Two-years-of-Blender-VSE/
So far so good, let's continue! #blender #vse

2025-11-23 08:49:08 UTC

Back to regular dog photos posting
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/598/147/190/730/128/original/7f787b8f2ab6301e.jpeg

2025-11-22 10:40:43 UTC

Small blog post comparing binary sizes & performance of OpenEXR vs tinyexr libraries: https://aras-p.info/blog/2025/11/22/OpenEXR-vs-tinyexr/

2025-11-19 22:21:27 UTC

OpenEXR 3.4.4 is out, which reduced the size of the library binary by half a megabyte. This might have been my fault ;) https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr/releases/tag/v3.4.4

2025-11-18 21:13:40 UTC

Oy! Blender 5.0 is out! :blender: #blender https://www.blender.org/download/releases/5-0/
This is a pretty massive release across the board, I would think (but I'm biased) :)

2025-11-17 08:41:50 UTC

Alright, off to #gpc2025! Last time I was at any conference that would not be either :blender: or :unity: was... [checks notes] back in 2018. Feels like a lifetime ago! https://www.graphicsprogrammingconference.nl/
Also I'll get to cosplay as a graphics programmer, how cool is that?

2025-11-15 11:06:19 UTC

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@nprofile…vlqt by this logic, Word should take up two bytes

2025-11-14 07:39:19 UTC

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Finally actually setting up office. Fun fact! The installer screen lists the apps and their sizes on disk; Word takes 0.7GB while Teams takes 1.2GB :)))

2025-11-14 07:38:23 UTC

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On a more serious note. Setting up new laptop (Mac!) for my wife. She needs MS Office, which I do have a family subscription for. So, setting that up, and OMG just logging into my own Microsoft account is a hellscape. Can you "agentic" shite first fix your own websites, Microsoft? Since right now I already had to enter my own password 7 times, in your own sites that each look completely different from each other, ffs.

2025-11-14 04:56:24 UTC

Seen in Unity office :unity:
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/546/271/277/026/232/original/fc380272158f9222.jpeg

2025-11-13 06:25:42 UTC

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@nprofile…lldj one of my takeaways is how he found “back of the napkin speed of light estimation” to be useful waaay back. It still is! Much harder to do these days, but knowing how many orders of magnitude you are away from it is helpful

2025-11-12 19:37:57 UTC

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@nprofile…aved open source! If it breaks, you can keep both pieces! ;)

2025-11-12 09:53:16 UTC

Oh finally! I always wanted my OS to be an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity! 🤦
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/536/113/967/982/788/original/673e095f899e9b56.jpeg

2025-11-12 04:49:17 UTC

"Reflections on My Tech Career" from Bruce Dawson is great, in two parts: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/reflections-on-my-tech-career-part-1/ and https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/reflections-on-my-tech-career-part-2/

2025-11-10 12:33:28 UTC

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@nprofile…n4pf it is a realtime updated sphere map though, pretty impressive!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/525/419/287/913/748/original/efd563b8e3d411a0.jpeg

2025-11-06 15:26:35 UTC

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@nprofile…n4pf Another "quality of life" downside that annoys me more than I thought it would: M1 pretty much *never* spinned up fans, whereas M4 does that way more often. Not as bad as Intel-era MBPs, but once you get used to "it just never makes any noise", you notice when the noise is back.