Model Finalization
A significant number of updates have accumulated over the past months. As mentioned earlier, I was occupied with several peripheral tasks: migrating the knowledgbase, building a dedicated GitHub runner, assembling a streaming rig, and preparing for a Steam release, which—due to IP concerns —has been declined for now and postponed.
First, I unified the handling of all 3D items. Previously, they differed widely in size, rotation, and positioning, requiring manual scaling and placement with code in Three.js.
I have now normalized everything to a consistent scale directly in Blender and tailored the exports for the WTF-Model. This was also required for CI/CD tooling I am currently developing to inspect and capture screenshots of GLTF assets to aid in a streamlined compliance review.
Next, I decided to establish external branding for the WTF-Model. The WTF remains the core name and internal identifier, and all files and structures are still oriented around it.
However, I registered two The Fractal .net domains, as i believe the name is more appealing and identifiable for a manstream audience. While the model is mathematically not a fractal, most people are broadly familiar with the idea behind something like the Mandelbrot set and general self-similarity. I think this will provide a mental bridge to the model.
I also accumulated a number of short videos showcasing updates to the final model. Initially, these videos were MP4 files from screen recordings and, despite being short, still ranged into tens of megabytes each. Previously i just compressed these into H264 with PowerDirector but i wondered if there was a better option available now.
I looked into FFmpeg and ended up building a script that converts videos with AV1 into optimized .webm files. File sizes dropped here from around 40 MB to roughly 1 MB—while retaining most of the visual quality. The script converts all files present in a directory and automatically detects available hardware encoders (e.g. Intel Quick Sync), falling back to CPU encoding if necessary. I will keep using that for future videos and am (sharing it publicly).
The first concept I added is called Ties: It illustrates the progression from a single strong bond to multiple finer ones. I think this is intuitive and an additional entry point to the model.
Updating the (electrical) resistance is, I think, from all listed here, my most important one: I had resistance done already earlier, and that it is stronger at the center was known to me. Now the gist of the update here is that resistance increases in the local domain because the area gets smaller. In the global domain, it increases because the connection gets longer.
Next, I added the Kirchhoff rules.
The first rule concerns current: what flows in must equal what flows out, representing the direction of opening or closing the vortex, independent of domain.
The second rule concerns voltage: the total voltage in a circuit must balance to zero across all producers and consumers. This maps to positive voltage in the local domain and negative voltage in the global domain. Voltage is a centric, vertical property and current a peripheral, horizontal one - It may take a moment to conceptualize, but i think that mapping is clean.
I then added a mapping for Loop and Recursion, implemented as a simple left/right (periphery/center) property. Since recursion explicitly refers back to itself, i aligned it with the center.
The new LowLevel view in the Model category shows the drill down of a single wave: In the local domain, we have discrete steps and a definite intersection at the top. In the global domain however, where things become continuous the bottom is never reached, stylized by a circle.
The OpAmp item models closed versus open feedback loops, again as a left/right property. Closed loops provide very high gain and are ideal for comparison (very centric), while open loops offer controlled behavior with broader applicability.
The final addition is the Atom mapping, representing the proton–electron relationship: It visualizes increasing or decreasing relative electron count and maps the ideas of ion and anion. I’m not intending to add any more to this, as mentioned this acrued over the last months on the side. The WTF is feature complete for a while now, whats now left to do is get all the surrounding stuff done so this can launch.