I was an undergraduate student of George's many years ago and it's an absolute delight to see these renderings. He used to doodle them on any available surface -- blackboards, notebook paper, napkins, what have you -- often with a fountain pen. He was also big into using computers for visualization and had a number of programs that ran in the CAVE.
I was a grad student of him, all you describe resonates, and i still stay in touch nearing 40 years later. some of the happiest most fun stuff in grad school, and there were endless nerdy fun pursuits. i'm so grateful i learned under him. it was incredible to see him drawing.
In addition to making the sidebar dismissable on small screens, it'd be nice to add touch-action: none to the canvas so rotating the object doesn't get interpreted as a scroll on touchscreens.
Right now, at least in Android Chrome, dragging to rotate only works briefly before it's interrupted.
Very nice. I've been inspired by the same sources and have always wanted a way to render such drawings for any arbitrary 3D model (e.g. STL file). I've played around with that quite a bit, even recently with LLM assistance, but haven't yet gotten it as good as I want. Eventually...!
The app is primarily based on ideas of Hertzmann and Zorin in [this paper](https://cims.nyu.edu/gcl/papers/hertzmann2000iss.pdf), using directions of principal curvature for hatching directions.
Right now, at least in Android Chrome, dragging to rotate only works briefly before it's interrupted.