[Bf-funboard] Re: ShadowBuf name

[Konrad Haenel]

I'm 100% with Matt on this one.

Matt Ebb schrieb:
> On 02/12/2006, at 07:18 AM, GSR wrote:
>
> > OTOH, those new names hide any option of looking for paper that
> > explain how and why things happen. It reminds me of those chemical /
> > car / software companies that hide generic things (cyano glue,
> > variable injection, sorting algorithm...) behind cryptic trade names
> > and acronyms (SuperDuperGlue, VITXplus, FooIntelliSystem), to create a
> > brand, confuse the buyer or negate the information to competitors
>
> Ah, but that's a false dichotomy - that's not what we're proposing at all. 
> No-one's saying to make some lame brand out of it like 'HyperShadow Pro X' or 
> something, and nobody is saying that all technical information should be removed 
> completely. 
>
> To continue your glue analogy, currently it's like walking through the 
> supermarket and seeing boxes on the shelf called "Cyanoacrylate compound". I'm 
> proposing to call it "Strong fast-setting glue" with the exact ingredients still 
> there, on the back of the pack. Perhaps all the glue engineers are horrified at 
> that thought, and speak in hushed tones about how the supermarket's all dumbed 
> down, but I'm glad they're not the ones deciding on what I have to choose from 
> in the aisle.
>
> There's plenty of room for technicalities in the tooltip and in a reference 
> manual. The point is to provide the appropriate kind of information where it's 
> most relevant. In the interface where things are tweaked for a visual result, it 
> should be something simple and understandable that describes the practical 
> effects that it has.
>
> There is going to be text in the interface, something in a tooltip, something in 
> a manual, in any case. The trick is to weigh up which information is most useful 
> in which situation, and how useful it is *at that time* compared to other 
> information. What information is more relevant and useful to an artist, who is 
> in the middle of the task of trying to get their shadows to look a certain way? 
> The name of the algorithm that is used, or a description of what it looks like?
>
> The names 'irregular' or 'classical' or whatever algorithm names on their own do 
> not carry any inherent meaning. Calling them "flurblebrop shadows" would 
> communicate just about the same amount of meaning to the average artist. It's 
> just a name that's representative of something else, that then has to go though 
> one extra step of translation in the minds of artists, from programmer language 
> (irregular) -> plain English (causes sharp shadows) -> visual result, and going 
> through this thought process is completely irrelevant and extra mental overhead 
> to the visual task of deciding how you want your shadows to look.
>
> Artists don't and shouldn't need to understand the technical process to 
> understand the result. Often one can learn through experience that one thing 
> produces some kind of result and something else produces some other result. It 
> wasn't so long ago that I didn't know how raytracing worked, but I knew that it 
> was slow to process, and it enabled reflections and refractions, and that was 
> good enough for me to get stuff done.
>
> > OTOH, those new names hide any option of looking for paper that
> > explain how and why things happen. 
>
> Not at all, if you *do* want to know the technical details of how it works or 
> what name programmers like to give to that process, you should be able to of 
> course! Nobody's trying to censor that information. But that's not the job of 
> main button label in the interface, it's the job of a manual or tooltip or 
> something, and artists shouldn't be *forced* to go reading computer science 
> papers to learn about the technicalities of the process just to get stuff done. 
> You're not going to learn anything by the word 'irregular' on it's own anyway, 
> which makes it much more relevant in a reference text which can explain the 
> process rather than just give a single word. It's also much easier to do a web 
> search for more information from there when you're in an explorational train of 
> thought, than it is when you're in the middle of doing test renders with a 
> deadline coming!
>
> Matt
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------
> Matt Ebb . matt at mke3.net . http://mke3.net
>
>
>
>   
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