Let there be light!

Had a great time on Monday doing craft with one of my daughters. She always wants to make something and this time had the great idea of building a model world. “Not a flat one, a round one”. Excellent! That’s just what I like doing. I created one a few years ago on the computer. Took me ages to write, with thousands of lines of code. It’s terribly out of date now but at the time I was really pleased with it as it’s not built on a 2D plane but a 3D sphere. It only has a 2km radius but has the same height data as the real world so you can walk over England or Africa etc. I never got to do shadows but I did do clouds and 3D bumpy surfaces. The animals are very poor though. Here is a video of it. I had terrible trouble exporting it so sorry if it doesn’t work or is poor quality.

Building 3D worlds has always struck me as a very godly pursuit reminding me that I am made in the image of a creative God (that was my slightly forced justification for spending ours working on it anyway!). In the first chapter of Genesis God speaks things into being. Not unlike programming 🙂 These days though time is too short to spend all night hunched over a keyboard coding. There are more pressing aspects of God’s kingdom to give my energies too.

Luckily one of them is giving quality time to my family by building 3D spherical worlds! Right now our new one is downstairs drying. We made it by wrapping a PVA glue and tissue paper “fiberglass” shell around a football. Next we will cut it open to remove the football. Then glue it back together. It’s already got a sea and continents so just needs some trees and houses. The final plan is to put a light inside it so it glows: Can’t wait to say “let there be light, and there was a small PVA glue globe, and it was a good” and so on.