Ben Houston
@ben3d
Personal. Serial Entrepreneur. Founder: (product photos for eCommerce), (3D for eCommerce), (online 3D editor), Exocortex, and Frantic Films Software.
Wrote a minimal, extensible Gaussian Splat renderer PR for @ThreeJS using TSL for sorting, vertex processing and fragment shading + instances. It separates the GS3D data structure from the loader and from the renderer. github.com/mrdoob/three...
Updated web3dsurvey.com, the WebGL, WebGL2 and WebGPU extension and feature tracker with a more informative homepage and added some new browser statistics.
Quick little PR to @ThreeJS to add support for retroreflective materials via the Minimal Retroreflective Microfacet Model. github.com/mrdoob/three...
Proof of Possession: How to solve rampant developer token thief: ben3d.ca/blog/proof-o...
My painting of Ghibli-style dust gremlins for our 3 year old who loves Totoro. Simple but she thinks having them looking over her at night is “awesome!”
Preparing a major PR to improve #ThreeJS MaterialX support significantly. In order to perfect it, I've written an open source @materialx.bsky.social Fidelity Suite inspired by the @khronos.org / @gltf.bsky.social fidelity tool: material-fidelity.ben3d.ca
Beta 4 of my project "Land of Assets" is live. New features: - Robust task system at extreme scale. - Webhooks for automations. - Server event streaming for tasks. - New design aesthetic across the board. landofassets.com/blog/beta_4
HDRify, the JavaScript/TypeScript native HDR and EXR library gets luminance EXR loader support with version 0.11.0. Thank you "krapnikkk" on Github: github.com/bhouston/hdr... Try it out here: hdrify.benhouston3d.com?image=%2Fexa...
Beta 3 of LandOfAssets.com is live. Supports uploads of Blender .blend and USD .usdz files automated conversion between all formats. KTX2 and MeshOpt optimized GLBs now also supported. landofassets.com/blog/beta_3
Zstdify: A Pure TypeScrpt Zstd Re-Implementation Pure JavaScript/TypeScript zstd compression/decompression library. No native dependencies, works in Node.js and browsers. github.com/bhouston/zst...
And MacOS Preview will actually load the UltraHDR jpegs produced by hdrify as BT 2020 images that have bit depth 10. It was a little tricky to figure out how to get Preview to recognize them and I think its tonemapping in the preview app is poor but it does work.
HDRify, the pure JavaScript implementation of EXR, HDR, and UltraHDR Jpgs, now has its own VSCode & Cursor extensions. Preview (with tone mapping/exposure) and convert between HDR, EXR and UltraHDR Jpgs. marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemNa... open-vsx.org/extension/be...
Explaner: Why "Land of Assets" Standardizes on glTF for the Master Asset benhouston3d.com/blog/why-lan... #3d #gltf #landofassets
LandOfAssets Beta 2: - Support for environment map assets: EXR, HDR (via hdrify) - Asset creation wizard - Signup/login via Google - Improved styling across the board. landofassets.com
HDRify, the JavaScript library for reading/writing EXR, HDR, and UltraHDR, gets a website: hdrify.benhouston3d.com Load, convert, and preview your high dynamic range images in the browser in real-time.
FYI Github only has 93% uptime the last month, it is becoming a liability to rely upon it for production needs: mrshu.github.io/github-statu...
Excited to share Land of Assets, a new project I've created: landofassets.com It's 3D asset infrastructure designed for developers working with glTF. Think GitHub for your 3D models: versioning, CDN delivery, and a typed SDK. Free for public assets. Looking for initial testers now.
Using real-time Wifi monitor PingBar for MacOS from elitasson and loving it. Try it yourself: "brew install --cask elitan/tap/pingbar" Github repo here: github.com/elitan/ping-...
Why I Stopped Creating package.json Scripts Over the past year, I've dramatically reduced the number of scripts in my package.json files. What started as a gradual shift has become a deliberate practice: minimize abstractions, maximize clarity. benhouston3d.com/blog/stopped...
Bough a cheap thermal camera and found out that my metal door to the garage is one of the major sources of heat loss. First pic is from garage side and second is from inside the house. It is a heat transfer device.
How I re-wired my home's HVAC to maximize my @Ecobee's control capabilities. benhouston3d.com/blog/upgradi...
New #ThreeJS PR: high quality 3D procedural wood materials via TSL. Includes maple, oak, walnut, cedar, poplar, cherry wood types and also includes raw + coating variants. Full detais: github.com/mrdoob/three...
New Github PR to #ThreeJS that adds much improved #MaterialX support. New nodes & properties supported: thin film, sheen, transmission, rotate, determine, inverse, floor, reflect, refract, opacity, specular, anisotropy, etc... Full details: github.com/mrdoob/three...
Three hard-won lessons for entrepreneurs I learned in my journey from VFX to Enterprise SaaS. My talk at the Ottawa Network last night (May 22, 2025) benhouston3d.com/blog/lession...
I wrote this for myself but figured I would share it: TanStack Router provides powerful data loading capabilities through its beforeLoad and loader functions. Understanding their behavior is critical for effective use of TanStack Router in your projects. benhouston3d.com/blog/tanstac...
The Rise of "Test Theater": Enabled by AI AI coding assistants are excellent at generating tests with high coverage. But there's often a critical problem: they're testing that code behaves as written, not as intended. This "Test Theater" creates a dangerous illusion.