I am a 3D artist who just kinda wanted a neat website, this is'nt exactly how I want it right now, at some point I want to make this website a fully interactive 3D experience, I will call it the "Surrealscape" to show off my 3D capabilities and programming premise. so consider the site as it is, temporary! and ugly, but thats just the aesthetic (and excuse im making for now lol)
going to jail for this one boys, im making a website using modern technology, on neocities.
nah but for real, i don't think anyone actually cares. people say the novelty of the old web is in how the development for it was slow and stuff.
but i don't really think that should be the case, i think web development shouldn't be about doing things manually,
the internet has always been about embracing modern technology while still keeping it cool.
so for this website, so that i don't pull my hair out, and don't hold me on this because knowing my
lazy ass the moment this setup becomes inconvenient ill abandon it and go for something "better"
but my goal for the surrealscape is to make a cool 3D website homepage for myself and have it be something cool and unique
for people to browse and explore. for that im trying to see if i can get it to work on babylonjs but if it does'nt then ill fallback on
three.js, so fingers crossed.
it did'nt work in the past because of GLTF loading and i cannot for the life of me
figure out how to apply a material to a 'naked' obj model especially ones with multiple materials.
so using GLTF and its asset referencing works locally, but on neocities it shits its pants because
of the fact that babylonjs is technically trying to import assets from the outside, even though its an outside script
trying to import from an inside asset. this issue would be fixed if neocities supported GLB files that just had the textures
bundled into the file itself, it would even save storage space, but for now im gonna try importing a gltf file by using
Vite to just bundle babylon js instead of having babylon be just a script tag.
ill let y'all know if this works, if it does'nt then ill just, cry.
but i wont give up, i would just use github pages and bypass all these limits entirely, but neocities actually tells me
when someone visits and it gives me more reach, im a bit of an attention whore, but at least its not cause i want money
its mostly just cause knowing that someone consciously checked out my website feels validating and makes me want to work on it more.
you don't get that with github pages unless you have a visit counter, but even then the culture is just different,
its the same reason why i use tumblr, its got that oldschool quirk to it, on github you don't get that quirk.
that being said, using a module bundler does make a considerable amount of the javascript unreadable, so as soon as its ready ill set up a github for this website,
im a massive believer in open source technology and i want people to learn from my code like i have from theirs,
i like to think of it as me giving back to the community, i did consider using a framework(svelte my beloved), most frameworks are focused on single page applications
which as of right now, this website is not, and i felt that something like that would be wasted on a website thats not really all about
interacting with HTML as it is about interacting with 3D objects. plus i sorta wanted to stick to the whole vanilla aspect of website design and not overcomplicating things
afterall, the most i need is typescript(intellisense by beloved) and i have that now
Me again!
so things have changed, GLTF loading still does'nt work even on gltf files with babylonjs
i tried to fix this through a package bundler so it was'nt being used with a external script tag
that did'nt work!
so im going to see if i can use Three.js and cannon.js, which might work though i have'nt tested cannon so lets pray
that it will work, but i don't see any reason why it would'nt, really its just so i can have some level of verticality
to my worlds without having to bake it in somehow or by basically making the doom engine but in typescript
which has already been done before. my goal is to have this whole website, including this blog to be fully 3D
even if its completely unnecessary
ont hat note, one thing ive realized is that some of my models are paid models!
that wont stop me from wanting to display them, but from here on every model int he surrealscape will be made to be totally useless!
this mainly means a few things:
you may think this goes against my open source philosophy, but even deeper is my philosophy for
supporting indie artists. I don't wanna act righteous, but being an independent artist myself, a 3D one at that, i don't want to be the reason why someone
is out of a very necessary paycheck that pays fr their life. so if me not including the original models in both the source code and the
actual files makes me a blasphemous wretch then thats how it is, sorry guys
in any case, i got advice on how to accomplish this partly with the help of Rai Kitamatsu, otherwise known as WhispWeaver
if you don't know, they are the person who made the Kita'vali, anthro yinglet(the one i use), Jerry avali, and others.
and yeah if it surprises you that all my sona iterations are VRC avatars then honey you should see my attempts to draw them
about my experience with talking with Rai, ill admit it was a bit nerveracking, afterall they had a bit of a reputation for
having an iron fist over making damn sure their avatars are used nowhere that they think they are vulnerable.
but in contrast the were very nice and understanding, being concise with what i wanted might've helped too lol.
They did'nt request for me to say anything, but in all honesty they make really good and high quality avatars, even though i ended up having
to bastardize mine so i can guilt-free display it on here. I personally like to call it the "Bootleg Yinglet",
purposefully made to be as unusable as possible, something a bit poetic about that, i think.