3d-artists-handbook

ℹ️Currently on hiatus due to university studies.ℹ️

Visit the 3D Artist’s Handbook

https://sidney-eliot.github.io/3d-artists-handbook

I’m happy to hear any feedback and requests on things to improve or add. Either create an Issue on GitHub or message me on Discord (username: epicrex)

Handbook’s Features

The 3D Artist’s Handbook lives on GitHub Pages, uses quartz as frontend and Node.js as backend.

📶❌ Fully Available Offline
You can download the entire handbook for offline reading. Just follow these simple steps.

🌍🔍 Universal Search
Use the search field to search for page names or words all across the handbook. (It’s located at the top left.)

🌑☀️ Dark and Light Theme
Use the sun and moon icons to switch between light and dark mode. (They are located at the top left.)

🏠 Quickly Return to Home Page
Click the title of the handbook (“3D Artist’s Handbook”), to quickly return to the home page. (It’s located at the top left.)

📂 Explorer
Use the explorer to see all pages nicely structured by topics, great for quickly navigating the handbook. (It’s located on the left. It’s currently not available on mobile devices and when the browser window is pulled too small, for this reason I’ve also added the explorer to the home page. Hopefully soon, the explorer will be fully compatible with smaller screens.)

📑 Table of Contents
Use the table of contents to view and navigate to all mayor headers of the current page you’re on. (It’s located on the right and at the bottom on mobile.)

🔗 Backlinks
Use backlinks to navigate backwards, to pages that link to the current page you’re on. (It’s located on the right and at the bottom on mobile.)

🗺️ Interactive Graph
Use the interactive graph to see how the pages are linked to one another, visualized through a spider web of connections. You could also use it as an alternative way to navigate through the handbook, although I don’t recommend it. (It’s located on the right and at the bottom on mobile. Its controls are as follows: Zooming, panning, clicking the node dots, enter full screen by clicking the icon at the top right of the box.)

👁️ Page Preview
Hover links that lead to other pages within the handbook, to get an interactive preview of that page. (You can tell internal from external links apart by the design of the link, internal links will have a box like background.)

▶️ Embedded YouTube Videos
All videos found across the handbook are embedded YouTube videos. This gives the videos nice thumbnails and allows for them to be played directly within the handbook. If it makes sense, I’ve also set the videos to start at a specific time.

⏳📅 Read Time & Last Edit Date
Every page shows an average read time as well as the last date it was edited on. (This info is located at the top. The date is a new feature I’ve added, so it won’t work retrospectively, meaning many pages will have the same generic date.)

⏱️ Instant Page Load Times
There are no load times when clicking on links to other internal pages.

🔻 Collapsible Sections
Collapsible sections are found all over the handbook. Clicking them will expand that within. I use them to keep things more digestible.

How to Read the Handbook Offline

There are 2 methods when it comes to offline viewing. The localhost method being the better experience but only working on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Localhost - Method 1

You will need to install the Node.js framework. It’s available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

1. Download the repository as a zip and unzip it (Click <> Code then click Download ZIP)

2. Open any terminal in the folder you just unziped and execute the following commands (To open a terminal on Windows, you can type “cmd” into the address bar of your file explorer. Alternatively you can also Shift + RMB click into the file explorer and select “Open in Terminal” or “Open Power Shell”.):

npm i
npx quartz build --serve

3. Now go to http://localhost:8080 in your browser. The page will be an exact copy of the online handbook.

Obsidian - Method 2

You will need Obsidian, which is a completely free note-taking software/ app available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and iPadOS.

1. Download the repository as a zip and unzip it (Click <> Code then click Download ZIP)

2. Open Obsidian and click Open folder as vault and select the “content” folder located at “3d-artist-handbook/src/content”.

3. (optional step) If you want to do this in a more clean way, then create a folder called “Offline_3D-Artists-Handbook”, move the files from “3d-artist-handbook/src/content” to the newly create folder and open that folder instead in Obsidian.

Technical Details of File Structure

All of the handbooks pages and images are inside of the “src/content” folder. Other than that, the quartz folder as well as the files: quartz.config.ts, quartz.layout.ts, tsconfig.json are responsible for the layout and style of the handbook website.

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Don’t forget to give this GitHub repo a ✨, so you can easily get back to it.