I’ve been fiddling with curves a long time and I haven’t seen the Q3A-Bézier reference - what are you referring to exactly? Is there some blog post, and was this about game programmers knowing about cubic Bézier curves? Most of the ‘general public’ still haven’t heard of Bézier curves.
I don’t doubt something Q3 related might have popularized it. I’m familiar with the fast inverse sqrt approximation that was popularized by Q3A. That’s not what you’re thinking of, is it? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root) But animators and most people in graphics and rendering (the Pixar, ILM, and Siggraph types) as well as all font designers and mathematicians and car designers and CAD people all knew about Bézier curves long before Quake 3 Arena.
Why do you say that? I was in graduate school studying computer graphics when Q3A was released. Before that, at a different school as an undergrad, there were entire courses on Bézier splines and NURBS and multiple textbooks that had written about them. All the universities in the US with computer science departments that taught any graphics in the 80s & 90s covered Bézier curves, and that’s not to mention anyone studying design, drafting, CAD, architecture, engineering, etc.
Ah I looked it up. Bi-Quadratic Bézier patches were used in Quake 3. They were tessellated into triangles for the HW.
The first quote I found from Carmack about this: “Well, this is technology that's been done since the late '60s as far as the different geometric representations go.” So it wasn’t new in general, but was new to real-time game engines, and there is a pretty big group of gamers and aspiring game programmers who heard about Bézier patches for the first time with Q3A. https://www.reddit.com/r/quake/comments/16w5g1i/the_quake_3_...
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How many people knew about them prior and after Q3A?
I’ve been fiddling with curves a long time and I haven’t seen the Q3A-Bézier reference - what are you referring to exactly? Is there some blog post, and was this about game programmers knowing about cubic Bézier curves? Most of the ‘general public’ still haven’t heard of Bézier curves.
I don’t doubt something Q3 related might have popularized it. I’m familiar with the fast inverse sqrt approximation that was popularized by Q3A. That’s not what you’re thinking of, is it? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root) But animators and most people in graphics and rendering (the Pixar, ILM, and Siggraph types) as well as all font designers and mathematicians and car designers and CAD people all knew about Bézier curves long before Quake 3 Arena.
Dunno your age. You're probably bit younger than me.
You're right, I'm referencing to inverse sqrt.
Bezier curves were the main talking point about Quake 3 engine throughout all PC magazines when Quake 3 demo came out.
Because it was like nothing ever seen before, and noone ever expected it to run ~20-30FPS on period HW.
It wasn't a talking point for too long as with full game, Quake 3 became top multiplayer game, and graphics behind it were not important anymore.
Why do you say that? I was in graduate school studying computer graphics when Q3A was released. Before that, at a different school as an undergrad, there were entire courses on Bézier splines and NURBS and multiple textbooks that had written about them. All the universities in the US with computer science departments that taught any graphics in the 80s & 90s covered Bézier curves, and that’s not to mention anyone studying design, drafting, CAD, architecture, engineering, etc.
Ah I looked it up. Bi-Quadratic Bézier patches were used in Quake 3. They were tessellated into triangles for the HW.
The first quote I found from Carmack about this: “Well, this is technology that's been done since the late '60s as far as the different geometric representations go.” So it wasn’t new in general, but was new to real-time game engines, and there is a pretty big group of gamers and aspiring game programmers who heard about Bézier patches for the first time with Q3A. https://www.reddit.com/r/quake/comments/16w5g1i/the_quake_3_...