The Renderfarm - 2018-07-13

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2:52 AM

Hi everyone. I wonder, does anyone know a developer at the Blender Institute whose job is to deal with physics engine integration in Blender? I'm trying to directly talk to the developers regarding my question here

3

Q: How to access Normal and Tangential force values of objects during physics simulation?

I have a couple of soft body objects that collide with each other as shown below. My goal is to get information on the Normal and Tangential forces for the selected shape. I wonder, is it possible to access such information in Blender for the vertices/faces of each object for each frame, ideally ...

python scripting physics rigid-body-simulation soft-body

3 hours later…

6:21 AM

I was mighty surprised to see that the asker of this question was not a one rep user. That guy has 2 gold badges and still ends their question with "Plz help."

7:01 AM

@David @kimholder

The code of conduct, or at least how I read it is entirely about how you say not what you say. There are many ways to skin a cat. There are many ways to deliver a message. The problem with friendliness on SE is that exasperated "curators" are almost constantly grumpy. And I don't blame them either. Review queues are tedious, and after the 10th idiotic post in the 100th queue full of idiots, any normal person would feel annoyed to say the least.

This new code of conduct simply says that grumpiness needs to be removed from comments. Just because someone is a help vampire who does not understand punctuation, does not mean anything valuable will be achieved by being rude. The code of conduct does not bar ideas from being communicated, its just dicitates that ideas be communicated respectfully.

Pretty much any idea can easily be expressed without sarcasam, rhetorical questions, or demeaning insults. Infact, if you are dealing with particularly incompetent users, you will probably be more effective communicating without any of the previously listed devices, regardless of their feelings.

If you can't control your temper, I feel any 10k rep user should know better than to post, already. That comment I called you out on, @David was a prefect example of uneccsary. Someone had already advised the user about the title, but you had to do it again, by combining a rhetorical question with a sarcastic example. Not needed, and very easily percieved as insulting, whether or not that was the intent.

When I read your comment, I would best describe the "intent" as "attempting to demonstrate how utterly stupid the title was." That does not sound like a friendly intent. Yes, the title was stupid, but its not polite to say so. Yes, some people are ugly, but we all know better than to make a point of brining it to light.

A lot of the protestors feel attacked and keep trying to refocus the debate on the OP because they know they don't treat posters with respect. Everyone should be encouraged to ask better questions, and bad questions should be closed. That should NOT change the tone of comments towards that user. Those who cannot control their tone are doing a diservice to the network, and I feel that, 10k+ rep or not, everyone is better off if they do not particpate in the curation process.

...
I do appreciate the irony of me jabbing at a bad question and then posting this rant. However, if you see how I handled that question, I tried to politely mine the needed information, rather than attacking the OP. I do still vent in chat because I am still just a cow and have emotions.

7:43 AM

+1

I myself have been commenting less lately in part because I just haven't got the energy to comment nicely at times. I think that's okay, too. There are lots of us users now, and if you or I don't comment (especially on the cut-and-dried things that most know about), someone else will. Hopefully in a nice and thoughtful way.

Skipping a comment just means you'll have more energy focus on questions which genuinely interest you in some way

@Amir I'm not sure there really is a particular maintainer in that department right now

Maybe ask on IRC?

Re: the stupid title thing, I'd just like to add, for clarity, that saying the title is stupid is not polite. That is however distinct from making the OP aware of how their title can be improved. There are polite ways to accomplish that.

2 hours later…

10:13 AM

@GiantCowFilms would have liked to see terms like geometric and some algebra in mathjax

10:27 AM

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Vote-wise my supposedly best two answers are here blender.stackexchange.com/posts/112746/edit totally inflated by HNQ. Sysoect tour answer to the cartoony motion trail comes under part ii, only to get the passive aggressive thankyou, but ...

@gandalf3 Ahhh ... . Then do you know any developer who you think would know anything about my question? Maybe not necessarily someone who only deals with physics engines integration but could potentially know things that are relevant.

10:47 AM

@kimholder Is it an indicator of how stingy BSE users are with UV's?

11:00 AM

@gandalf3 re

@batFINGER For a single stand-along edge as shown in my gif that sounds about right, but when the edge is next to some faces I think it would make the most sense to extrude in the plane said neighboring faces (as the addon mentioned by Robin Betts does) — gandalf3 ♦ 2 days ago

Not sure you can do both. For example take a face out of cube, extrude boundary edge(s) .. conject there is only one path the verts can travel. Not sure this will always correlate to requirement of question re edge angles.

2 hours later…

Duarte Farrajota Ramos

12:33 PM

@batFINGER I think you pasted the wrong link.

Coincidentally, this answer which is arguably a lot more comprehensive barely got any attention

5

A: Atmospheric Trail

For a cartoonish effect trail create a dummy object for your trail smoke, in this case I used an icosphere. Create a particle emitter attached to you moving object, in this case I used a simple plane. Animate it somehow so it moves about your scene. Add a new particle system to your plane. Ma...

lol, meant to link to the "fastest way to create an arrow" , forgot I coped that link for comment below yr answer there.

IMO it answers the cartoony motion trail perfectly

Duarte Farrajota Ramos

His comments just rubbed me the wrong way

Know exactly what you mean

Need a better Chrystal ball for mind reading.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos

I inflated your arrow a bit more ;)

thanks, it is after all, going by SE votes, my best answer.

12:59 PM

@gandalf3 Even pointing me to the source code files that are relevant to what I want would be very helpful. Do you know where I should look in the source code?

Duarte Farrajota Ramos

1:12 PM

@gandalf3 I have dialed down my amount of comments lately too, because sadly I fear I became one of those grumpy terse users too

1:40 PM

@batFINGER maybe. i think there is a lot of dry stuff that isn't interesting to read unless you actually have the problem or it is a part of the program you are actively trying to learn, and so most material doesn't get read much. so it isn't voted for much. BSE also now has a level of activity where it's committed user community just isn't going to get around to reading most things, even if they'd like to, and that's where most voting comes from, i think.

@GiantCowFilms That sounds very reasonable and kind, but there are a bunch of wrinkles here. First, chat counts in this. Several aspects of what you ranted about there would count as rude because it is entirely possible a new user will pop in here to ask something and see it. And yet the point here is you are a central part of this community who works very hard for no material reward, and you deserve a place to say things like that, without fear of being chastised about it.

You deserve to feel that instead of it being implied or actually said that your behavior is bad, you are helped with it, and if it could be offensive to others, that's handled on a case by case basis in a way that doesn't make you feel bad. Human behaviour is too complex for a page of rules on this.

Second, perhaps the thing that bothers me most about this is SE staff's tone on this. The CoC stinks to me of being a cynical business decision. New users mean more traffic. They are money. Committed users are going to stick around even if a very high standard is demanded of them and they are underappreciated. We have proved that over and over.

In fact, i bet a big reason this is happening is because they are worried about lawsuits. A lawsuit that gets thrown out still costs a lot of money. So they are all eager to get us to enforce a superhuman level of niceness without noticing that they are making all their core users nervous about being misunderstood, or slipping up and saying something that isn't entirely nice, while also being required to maintain a standard of quality in a difficult situation.

1:57 PM

Considering that jobs is the core money maker, their high skill high rep users are actually the most valuable to their bottom line.

it isn't the only money maker, and some of those new users will become high rep users eventually.

maximize traffic is still the tactic that makes sense

Which is why we should treat them in a way that they are encouraged to stay.

but not by having to be perfect all the time, and not in a way that denies us any ability to express our feelings.

why can't it just be allowed to be human, and we fix things that need fixing together, like we always do?

it wouldn't bother me if there was a lot more emphasis on supporting us

I guess the solution to "human moments" is comment removal without consequences. If you have a human moment, your peers can spot it and remove it before it offends people.

You can then go about your merry way.

which is really what happens, and what will continue to happen. SE has just put this in a setting where it feels like there are going to be unfair consequences at times for the people who have made this place what it is.

2:03 PM

I do agree though, as a culture it feels like there is less and less tolerance for perfectly normal emotions like anger. Always polite. Never yell, never show your frustration. Just die on the inside.

heheheh. okay, a good sign is that actually made me chuckle

i have a bit of a history with this. on space, a fair number of high-rep users know that. we lost 2 people directly because they said things that were really quite rude, and the upshot was eventually too much for them and they left. We lost a third person out of sympathy for one of those.

especially in one of those cases, they were extremely rude. racist rude. cringe rude.

they took a lot of cleaning up and managing. but i have very mixed feelings about their absence.

they tried very hard to contribute and i have a strong feeling their experience there was an important social support for an isolated person.

not our problem, it could be said. still, i feel bad.

the other person was a pillar of our community and we lost them because they were taking too much on their shoulders alone and when they felt a need to snap about it to people who really deserved it, their wrist was slapped.

eventually they just exploded and left. and took at least one other with them. it probably is much more likely to happen in a small beta where a few users do a lot of the work.

Egh, Racist really is beyond "being emotional." Every once in blue moon someone says something that is prone to interpretation as being "suggestive" or having "racist undertones" completely by accident. That is different, and should be delt with by a reminder followed by an apology from the poster. But strait up racism is inexcusable.

yeah, it was very awkward. i'm not sure it could always have been managed properly. And yet, aren't we trying to be tolerant? aren't we trying to support our own and help them be better. Don't they count?

I think our tolerance effort would be put to better use showing noobs tolerance rather than racists. I mean not being racist is ban avoidance 101.

Not being racist is life 101.

it depends on how much effort it takes, i suppose. deleting comments like that was quick and easy. i'm not sure what made him leave, he may simply be banned right now and he'll come back.

still, his problem is a human weakness. he has a social issue. i feel for him. the issue is how to make sure handling him or people like him isn't too onerous. that's all it is to me.

i've been advised that my position is stronger if i don't mention that part... just stick to the importance of supporting our community and don't get into trying to manage racists kindly. :P

2:23 PM

I think the solution to people like that on the internet is AI filtering. The internet became an enabler of bad behavior of sorts due to the anonymity provides. However, I think it also provides an opportunity to allow computers and algorithms to pick up where humans slack off, so much so that discourse on the internet could be improved from the discourse in IRL.

I look forward to a world where you AI buddy withholds your emotional mistakes from the rest of the world. You can still be an emotional human, but you will no longer hurt the emotions of other humans, or the functionality of services.

How someone interacts with other people is one of the main ways you judge their character, removing that makes it a lot harder to judge. Wonder how that will impact job hunts etc in a world where everything posted publicly is pc . .. . . .

i find that a really scary idea. the point here is to grow ourselves, not to have some mechanism wash away the very things that reveal where we are vulnerable.

if people don't know you are hurting, they can't help.

Same

Thats what people IRL are for. Its also nice to have places on the internet where emotions aren't a factor. Being on emotional on the internet is a very public and permanent way to share one's vulnerability.

hey, when i realized the page on our profiles where every single thing we've ever done here is listed, is public, and not visible only to me? i didn't like that for a bit. then i decided well, this is how we are going to learn to judge people on the sum of what they do, not on a few weak links.

my feeling is SE built that to encourage us to maintain a consistent high standard. Business decision.

2:34 PM

Yes, SE is a professional network. Pretty much the entire concept of "professional" is repressing your humaness and acting like a functional machine to server a practical purpose.

Basically you want to limit the internet to a professional network then?

Not everywhere is a professional network.

@GiantCowFilms You know, at its best, i don't think it needs to be. At any rate, SE in my opinion has not done enough repressing of its human love of money in order to make the gigantic staff they don't pay or give anything to feel like they recognize our contribution.

I feel I have gotten more out of SE than I have given. I use SO in my programming all day every day. Its the best thing ever.

Contributing to a resource that helps people like that is self justifying. I don't really begrudge SE making a buck off it in exchange for hosting everything.

Its also not a money thing. Wikipedia is a non profit, but still expects its users to provide very professional stuff.

That being said, the idea of SE being a non-profit does seem appealing.

this is true. after all, i think that and i'm still here and as active as ever. however, i resent the fact they talk about us needing to do better without using language that communicates how extraordinarily well we already do, and how much they benefit.

@GiantCowFilms exactly. then i'd cut them all the slack in the world. and i think they would behave diffrently.

but, i suppose it also wouldn't be so polished. i just wish they showed their love like i think they should.

2:49 PM

It makes a lot of sense. They essentially are a knowledge charity. People donate knowledge, and they hand it out for free.

normally organizations that depend on volunteers bend over backwards to appreciate them.

@kimholder SE has always been a place of tough love. Half the welcoming-ness problem is that our love is a little too tough.

SE pushes its users to do better, because SE is better when its users are better.

And I think that is good. That little +10 rep is the pat on the back and thank you letter for your contribution.

ah, yes, the attraction of points and badges. this is true.

I would say though, that SE is kind of a non profit. Its a non profit sponsored by stack overflow jobs. I still feel like the Q&A business is treated like a non profit.

Its easy to say they are pushing their users to do better because it helps their bottom line, but the point is their bottom line is a direct reflection of how awesome their system is. That means that any attempt to improve their system will look like and be an attempt to improve their bottom line. I don't think SE's problems are a product of a profit motive. Except the new sidebar. That is there to fit monitization stuff, and it is going to ruin our awesome, custom site themes.

Where i disagree is where if it is better income for them to push their users rather than support them, that's what they do, and i think the CoC has a strong aspect of that.

stackoverflow.com/company

^ there's 5 investment companies at the bottom of that page.

are they interested in making this awesome new socially-based knowledge platform as supportive as possible of it's core community, or are they interested in making the biggest profit they can?

3:03 PM

Hmm. I guess I see the CoC as improving the network. I guess that is partly because I have always felt there were was a high tendency for rudeness towards new and inexperience users. I always thought the problem of being unwelcoming needed to be fixed.

@kimholder I'd argue that the biggest profit will come from the best socially-based knowladge platform.

i hope they also see it that way. it takes a broad, long-range view to see it that way. it's possible.

I would use two metrics for a socially based knowladge platform:
* Reach (how many users it helps)
* Effectiveness (how effectively it helps those users)

I think the Code of conduct is attempting to improve reach, which is good.

i trust the Bezos Expedition, for instance.

I also agree that it is important to put rude curators out to pasture in the most gentle way possible, because they mean well. I am going to point out though that there is tones of precedent on SE for brushing problems aside in a very harsh way.

I find it amusing that these curators are suddenly freaking out when they are the ones being curated.

"Oh wait, getting in trouble for posting bad stuff kinda sucks.... huh, who'd have thought."

I've always thought SE's moderation mechanisms are heavily bent towards holding new users accountable, without holding existing users accountable.

Old users should be able to hold themselves accountable

3:09 PM

But they don't.

We have a very robust flagging system for edge cases

That's a different issue

@VRM the problem is that we don't have a system for medium cases.

We have close votes for questions that are not edge cases, but are still a problem.

I think we need a system for curator actions that are not edge cases, but are still a problem.

Specifically, I think we need a downvote/disapprove button for comments that don't need moderator attention, but are still not constructive.

In a comment string only the highest upvoted ones show

Often though, problem comments are in pretty empty comment strings.

i.e the only comment on the post is someone putting down the OP for badly asking the question.

And the review queue also ensures that comment is shown to a bunch of other grumpy curators, who are inclined to 2nd it.

To me the code of conduct is an advisory on which comments should be kept (and as such, a guide to avoid posting comments that will have to be removed).

The main value in it is that someone authoritative is finally taking a stand against sarcasm and rhetorical put downs, which have been seen as acceptable. They really shouldn't be.

i've almost never seen comments like that, either here or on space. big sites like SO are a different deal, it's chaos over there.

if it's wearing to go through the review queue here, imagine what it's like over there. (maybe you have the points to know, i don't).

3:19 PM

You need 3k, which I don't have.

But their CV queue has 9.7k questions in it. 9.7k questions.

aaaahhhhhh

I thought 25 was bad

That is nearly 1/4 of our ENTIRE question base that is in their review queue.

Basically, they have as many questions to review now as we will probably receive in the next year. Not review in the next year. see in the next year.

Someone can sit there and review until they are are mad as a hatter. Based on how people on SO treat posters, I think alot of them do that.

that calls for a support system as well as a comment moderating system.

that's all i really mean. if they let us have chat to blow steam and cheer each other on, i'm mostly content. they've made noises about stopping that.

if they let us have a private conversation now and then, that would be really nice.

private conversations are drama factories.

sometimes.

the ones that are cancel the helpfulness of that for the rest of us.

3:32 PM

TBH, Other than maybe wating to talk to friends about personal stuff I don't want public on the internet for privacy reasons, I have felt very little need for private conversation on this platform.

I think making every conversation a group conversation builds community in many ways.

They need some better AI sorting.

every now and then i really wish i could chat with someone privately to help them out in a way that doesn't make them feel embarrassed or defensive.

Yeah, AI would really help with the curation problem. AI can always be polite.

also AI can interactively help thousands of user simultaneously in real time, to fix their questions.

It can also quietly remove the lost causes with no snarky responses lol

@kimholder yeah yeah, have you considered politics?

3:37 PM

@batFINGER read on, politics is the theme of the day :P

it's very TL;DR tonight

:D

TL;DR I'm right about everything as usual.

:P

That's not what I gathered but whatevs

:P

3:40 PM

@GiantCowFilms I'm always right too. Sometimes though I am prepared to admit you're wrong. :D

4

@batFINGER SE said 'SE high-rep users sometimes get a tad grumpy, discuss.' And lo, 100 pages of debate ensued, and it was all rather emotional.

XD

On another note, using something like

github.com/MeteHanC/Python-Median-Filter

on dodgy low sample cycles renders produces a weird oil painting is result

3:56 PM

i've sometimes liked the effect that can be gotten from denoising on a low-light scene. i suppose it's for similar reasons.

2 hours later…

Duarte Farrajota Ramos

5:50 PM

Curiously that heavy denoise "oil painting effect" is remarkably similar to what I used to get on low sample Mental Ray renders back in my 3DS Max days

It is funny to see actually, I come to the conclusion now that internally MetalRay probably applies a similar algorithm to its light samples to smooth things out, causing similar patterns to appear on the image

6 hours later…

11:35 PM

is self-collusion an oxymoron?

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