GraphiteEditor / GraphiteEditor/Graphite

Canvases with spherical and non-euclidean coordinate spaces

Open
#2,010 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Architecture
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
27.3k
Forks
1.3k
Avg merge
20h 5m
Merged PRs (30d)
57

Description

A spherical canvas could represent a photo sphere, or maps of the Earth or other planet surfaces, or the stars around the earth. Unlike the standard Euclidean infinite canvas, this would have finite area but retain infinite zoom depth. Useful nodes could, for example:
- Provide base maps for GIS data such as satellite/aerial imagery
- Digital elevation maps
- OpenStreetMap layers
- Import custom survey datasets and lat/long/(elevation?) tracks
- Generate star charts from star databases
- Plot tracks for satellites, planets, comets, etc. from their ephemera
- Visualize KML files
- Construct conformal maps and Escherian artwork, see [this 3B1B video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxFjLJ3rVY)

Things you could do:
- Make videos with motion graphics incorporating city street/transit layouts or city/country/continent-scale boundaries
- Annotating maps or overlaying CAD site plans on a map
- Visualize sea level rise or flooding
- Process LiDAR or other survey datasets with image processing techniques
- Generate celestial body tracks over star charts
- Animate a planetarium show (and render its different projector views)
- Use tools to paint, draw, and animate over photo spheres and 360° videos
- Load accelerometer data to stabilize and reorient the spherical canvas
- Render out tiny planet projections
- Design skyboxes for games/animations

Besides spherical coordinates, other non-Euclidean canvas coordinate systems could be used, such as a finite tiling rectangle or hex cell. Drawing off one edge would result in drawing on the opposite edge. This would be more sophisticated than an infinite tiling node because the actual coordinate space would wrap, not just the content being generated infinitely. Other variants of wrapping could include a ping-ponging coordinate space or a Möbius strip (see [this video](https://youtu.be/v5ev-RAg7Xs?t=297)).

![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a960e839-5c0d-46a5-9f50-ee4a7b305f5d)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Orthogonal_coordinate_systems and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_coordinates

This all somewhat relates to #1271 which will involve moving beyond affine transforms.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reviewing related issue #1271 and the linked coordinate-system references, then identify the existing canvas and transform architecture. Done would require an agreed design and implementation for spherical or other non-Euclidean coordinate spaces, including the proposed wrapping variants.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
computer-graphics
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.