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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

I did this awhile ago, but found myself simply copying and tweaking graphics algorithms, rather than gaining any intrinsic understanding of what linear algebra is really doing. I guess I just didn’t have enough computer graphics background? Yes, I can use lighting equations to define a pixel shader, but I’m basically copying and translating the algorithm from a book.

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No I mean do full software rendering, no shaders, no graphics card.

> No I mean do full software rendering, no shaders, no graphics card.

But why?

There doesn't seems to be a lot to learn about applied linear algebra (in the sense discussed here) by implementing a rasterizer.

But there is plenty of LA above and below that (in the scene management, in the shaders).

Eh, it's basically a project consisting entirely of the parts of LA that the article is talking about.

I'm sorry if this comes across as curt, but can't you just decide to not do that? Decide to not look at the examples in the book, but write it from the explanation instead. You could even forego the book and just sit down with a piece of paper and do the work from first principles. You might not come up with the most efficient algorithm, but you'll have a foothold into understanding the one you can then go and look up.

Sure that would be ideal. But I would need some 101 knowledge that I couldn’t really find in the books I had, or maybe I wasn’t patient enough in reading them, like somewhere there was a key realization of linear algebra that would have made doing everything from first principles possible, or perhaps I could just read Phong’s original paper.

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