Project Euler Forum

Those on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid are quite nice I think.
There are also animated versions available.
You should check their licence.

I think part of the problem is that "graphics" are not my thing; you may have picked this up.

Not at all. They're lovely except the slightly rough edges...

euler wrote:I think part of the problem is that "graphics" are not my thing; you may have picked this up.

So if any members have talents in that area and would like to produce some better Platonic solids I would be delighted to use them. However, for the risk of someone spending many hours to produce some lovely graphics only to discover that someone else simultaneously was doing the same thing, then it might be better to mention in this thread that you are undertaking the task. Of course, if a few of you want to produce a set of images and post them here then maybe members can offer their opinions on which to use. However, one important consideration... the images must be free for non-commercial use. If you found them elsewhere then please let me know so that attribution can be given (if required).

I think I can produce these(*), but it would be a few hours work (I'll probably end up writing a simple renderer for it), so if someone else can do it more easily, I'll happily leave it to them.

If you'd like me to do it, can you specify a few things like the desired width and height, preferred colour, etc?

(*) I don't have any software for making animated gifs - if you want animated, I can either supply a sequence of images for someone to put through a tool, or if someone can point me at a workable tool I can do it myself.

Hans, those animated gifs are truly wonderful, but unfortunately they are very large files. For example the 256px by 256px icosahedron is about 820KB in size. But perhaps the other (non-animated) images could be used as they are rather nice.

David, only if it wouldn't be too much trouble, then it would be great to consider some alternatives. But I'd hate you to spend a lot of time for no good reason. In other words, if it requires a lot of work then it might be worth waiting to see if someone else can come up with something that won't require as much effort (perhaps someone out there has already written a program or has a set of images they'd let us use), or maybe people prefer the look of the Wikipedia images?

FYI: If anyone wants to produce images then ideally the images would be between 80px by 80px and 100px by 100px. I have no preference on colour, but I think that red works quite well; if you're able to easily adapt your work then perhaps you could produce an alternative that you think looks better. In producing the images I found rotating the solids to get a convincing perspective to be quite a challenge, but I think that the ones I produce are a good compromise, so feel free to duplicate their orientation.

euler wrote:David, only if it wouldn't be too much trouble, then it would be great to consider some alternatives. But I'd hate you to spend a lot of time for no good reason. In other words, if it requires a lot of work then it might be worth waiting to see if someone else can come up with something that won't require as much effort.

Yes, that was exactly my thought as well. Once upon a time I did use to know how to use PovRay, which is a simpler solution than rolling my own, but it seems to have moved on a way and I think I'd have a significant learning curve to do it again.

Consider the following as generic suggestions - it's not particularly attached to whether or not I do the actual icons.

I was thinking that it would be nice to have animated images; my original idea was to go for something very 'fancy' with specular highlights and/or enviroment mapping and possibly some post processed 'glint' effects. But you raise a good point about the animation size; if we do simple flat shading then the gif images should compress very nicely and then an animated gif won't be too big.

As for colours, I was kind of thinking maybe to go for bronze, silver, gold for the 3 highest levels; that might not work too well with a flat render though.

Colin,

I have the software to resize those animated gifs. This is 80 by 80, perhaps somewhat bigger would be better.
Any size is possible.
Would be 10 minutes work or less.

Here are all five resized to 80 by 80

They are spectacular. Nice work, Hans! As most browsers cache images, I think they are reasonable compromise of size versus beauty. If no one has any objections then I think we should go for it. What do you think we should do about the Sphere (250+ problems)?

It's not animated, but here is a possible sphere.

euler wrote:What do you think we should do about the Sphere (250+ problems)?

Sphere eversions are cool. One version is here (explanation: Outside In), but I don't know about the licensing.

I like the sphere idea, and I don't particularly hold a grudge against the current models, either. Would it be possible to have both (selectable)?

They are BEAUTIFUL, hk! I vote for the change

Yup, they look very nice! I can imagine they use more bandwidth though..

euler wrote:They are spectacular. Nice work, Hans! As most browsers cache images, I think they are reasonable compromise of size versus beauty. If no one has any objections then I think we should go for it. What do you think we should do about the Sphere (250+ problems)?

It's not animated, but here is a possible sphere.

Another possibility would be to use one of the animations for Archimedean Solids:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_solids

I sent a friend of mine the new (very nice!) score levels link but he said he can't see it.
Is it ok a person need to register to see the score levels?

Taifu wrote:I sent a friend of mine the new (very nice!) score levels link but he said he can't see it.
Is it ok a person need to register to see the score levels?

Moreover, if you visit http://projecteuler.net/index.php?secti ... =eulerians you can't follow pages after first one and the first page contains strange data.

Taifu wrote:

Taifu wrote:I sent a friend of mine the new (very nice!) score levels link but he said he can't see it.
Is it ok a person need to register to see the score levels?

Moreover, if you visit http://projecteuler.net/index.php?secti ... =eulerians you can't follow pages after first one and the first page contains strange data.

The links to the next pages go to "project...section=scores&page=x" where they should go to "project....section=scores&show=eulerians&page=x".

So for example, this is the correct link to the third page:
http://projecteuler.net/index.php?secti ... ans&page=3

Strange data cured by resetting the static data

Hm. I think I've encountered a bug. I just advanced to level 2, and upon posting the solution that pushed me over the border, the page proudly proclaimed thus: "Outstanding, bawr! You have advanced to the highest level possible.", which is a bit of an overstatement.

I was doing some testing and forgot to remove the line in the code that forced a variable value. Anyway, I've fixed it, which sadly means that you've got a little further to go before you reach the highest level.

Taifu wrote:I sent a friend of mine the new (very nice!) score levels link but he said he can't see it.
Is it ok a person need to register to see the score levels?

Perhaps my question got lost among minor bugfixes