Monumental Quine

This is a monument that commemorates my book's release: "The world of obfuscated, esoteric, artistic programming"! (Sorry, it is written in Japanese!)

It has a spiral relief of a long one-liner Ruby program that generates a 3D model of this column itself. Save it as a file mquine.rb and execute:

$ ruby mquine.rb > mquine.obj

And then open the generated file (in Wavefront OBJ format) with your favorite 3D model viewer.

How to get a copy of the object

Available in my Shapeways shop. Just $198.00! (95% is a cost for 3D printing. I will get a margin of $10 per object. I will use it to improve and maintain this project :-)

If you just want to get a 3D model, or if you want me not to earn money, you can generate the data in the following way:

$ git clone https://github.com/mame/monumental-quine.git
$ cd monumental-quine
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rake  # may take a few minutes

Then you will get mquine.rb and mquine.obj.

Internal

                  compile.rb
[setup-font.rb] ----------------> [setup-font.src] ---+
                                                      |
                                                      |
                  compile.rb                          |
[triangulate.rb] ---------------> [triangulate.src] --+
                                                      | mquine.rb.gen.rb
                                                      +------------------> [mquine.rb]
                  compile.rb                          |
[make-obj.rb] ------------------> [make-obj.src] -----+
                                                      |
                                                      |
                font.dat.gen.rb                       |
[glyphs/*.txt] -----------------> [font.dat] ---------+

• setup-font.rb, triangulate.rb, and make-obj.rb are source code.
  • setup-font.rb decodes the font data and convert the curves to polygons.
  • triangulate.rb triangulates the polygons (with holes) to triangles.
  • make-obj.rb generates an OBJ data by composing the font triangles.
• glyphs/*.txt is a tiny outline font with quadratic Bézier curves.
  • The current glyphs are created by tracing Inconsolata.
  • Use foreman start and livereload to view and edit glyphs.
• Modify config.rb to change the column shape, font size, etc.

Related work

Trajan's Column: the most famous monumental column for its spiral bas relief

License

Monumental Quine by Yusuke Endoh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.