Back at it
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You know what I really could use at WWDC?
Teach a generative model to build high-quality vector SF Symbols so we can make custom ones, like say a full set for 3D modeling suites or PencilKit drawing apps, on demand

…asking for a friend…



Upgraded my raytraced renderer with bounce lighting and true reflections. Now it looks pretty legit!
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Upgraded my raytraced renderer with bounce lighting and true reflections. Now it looks pretty legit!
The floor also needed some bounce lighting

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The floor also needed some bounce lighting

'Could somebody with no programming experience recreate Photoshop with an LLM?'
I have absolutely zero Metal and near-zero 3D modeling experience. I know the basics of how to use a scene editor, and the names of rendering terms.
And I effectively vibecoded all of this in less than half a day with Codex 5.3 Medium, based on screenshots of a cool-looking app I've never used (Valence3D) and just a general sense of what a 3D app should do
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'Could somebody with no programming experience recreate Photoshop with an LLM?'
I have absolutely zero Metal and near-zero 3D modeling experience. I know the basics of how to use a scene editor, and the names of rendering terms.
And I effectively vibecoded all of this in less than half a day with Codex 5.3 Medium, based on screenshots of a cool-looking app I've never used (Valence3D) and just a general sense of what a 3D app should do
Raytracing uses every last ounce of my poor M1 Mac mini's GPU. It has never seen such a workout

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Raytracing uses every last ounce of my poor M1 Mac mini's GPU. It has never seen such a workout

@stroughtonsmith I don't think hardware raytracing was added until M3 — that M1 GPU must be cooking!
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Raytracing uses every last ounce of my poor M1 Mac mini's GPU. It has never seen such a workout

@stroughtonsmith Did you build the path tracer yourself or is that a system library?
And what exactly will this tool do? I assume you're not building a full modelling tool.
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@stroughtonsmith Did you build the path tracer yourself or is that a system library?
And what exactly will this tool do? I assume you're not building a full modelling tool.
@k0bin Codex built it from scratch. I don't know what it will do yet, I'm just experimenting
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@stroughtonsmith I don't think hardware raytracing was added until M3 — that M1 GPU must be cooking!
@edmn yeah it's not using hardware-accelerated raytracing. I don't know enough about the feature to know whether that would even be useful in multi-minute raytracing of static images rather than optimizing things for realtime
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Raytracing uses every last ounce of my poor M1 Mac mini's GPU. It has never seen such a workout

Since I am doing this on the GPU, not CPU, finding a way to render complex meshes without blowing the budget is a headache. There's a hard cap on how much work you can do before the Metal driver crashes
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Raytracing uses every last ounce of my poor M1 Mac mini's GPU. It has never seen such a workout

@stroughtonsmith add in some radiosity to really test it

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@stroughtonsmith add in some radiosity to really test it

@fatlazycat it's already doing bounce lighting
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@edmn yeah it's not using hardware-accelerated raytracing. I don't know enough about the feature to know whether that would even be useful in multi-minute raytracing of static images rather than optimizing things for realtime
@stroughtonsmith Sounds like you need to buy an M4 Mac mini!
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'Could somebody with no programming experience recreate Photoshop with an LLM?'
I have absolutely zero Metal and near-zero 3D modeling experience. I know the basics of how to use a scene editor, and the names of rendering terms.
And I effectively vibecoded all of this in less than half a day with Codex 5.3 Medium, based on screenshots of a cool-looking app I've never used (Valence3D) and just a general sense of what a 3D app should do
@stroughtonsmith are you using Codex GUI app, or are you using codex trough the Xcode 16.3 AI CLI ?
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@stroughtonsmith are you using Codex GUI app, or are you using codex trough the Xcode 16.3 AI CLI ?
@guybrooker the Codex app. Xcode has too many guardrails in place
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'Could somebody with no programming experience recreate Photoshop with an LLM?'
I have absolutely zero Metal and near-zero 3D modeling experience. I know the basics of how to use a scene editor, and the names of rendering terms.
And I effectively vibecoded all of this in less than half a day with Codex 5.3 Medium, based on screenshots of a cool-looking app I've never used (Valence3D) and just a general sense of what a 3D app should do
@stroughtonsmith This is what vibe coding should be used for. AI should be used to screw over Autodesk and Adobe
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Since I am doing this on the GPU, not CPU, finding a way to render complex meshes without blowing the budget is a headache. There's a hard cap on how much work you can do before the Metal driver crashes
I think I should probably add a denoiser to this…



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I think I should probably add a denoiser to this…



It’s a warm, sunny day, so I moved outside to sit with the dog. My iPad has a much faster GPU anyway, so rendering works great here side by side with my Mac over VNC. And it’s a nanotexture model, so working in direct sunlight is effectively the same as working indoors


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It’s a warm, sunny day, so I moved outside to sit with the dog. My iPad has a much faster GPU anyway, so rendering works great here side by side with my Mac over VNC. And it’s a nanotexture model, so working in direct sunlight is effectively the same as working indoors


@stroughtonsmith sunny enough to sit outside?! It's 2.8C here. 🥶
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@stroughtonsmith sunny enough to sit outside?! It's 2.8C here. 🥶
@bigzaphod I’ve just had two months of non-stop rain, let me enjoy it

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@stroughtonsmith sunny enough to sit outside?! It's 2.8C here. 🥶
@bigzaphod @stroughtonsmith We’re back to rain today here, but we just ended a beautiful sunny week — got up to 17°C yesterday. Still frosty some mornings though.
It’s been an exceptionally mild winter overall for us: we never even bothered to cover the vents into the crawlspace, or drain and cover the outside water taps for the first time I can remember.
Which sounds nice, but it’s going to be rough come summer — there’s not nearly enough snowpack, which we kinda depend on.