A teaching tool that bridges Alias/1-era curve-first surfacing (1985) with the immediacy of a modern browser. For very beginner design students.
Points is the working fork of ALYUS — the Classicery clean-room recreation of Alias/1. ALYUS is the museum room; Points is the room you can build in.
| Function | Where | Alias/1 (1985)? |
|---|---|---|
| Curves | ||
| Chained cubic Bézier (Illustrator pen-tool data) | curve view | ✓ Cardinal splines — close cousin |
| DRAG any anchor or handle | curve view | ✓ |
| + PT / − PT · De Casteljau split + delete | curve view | ✓ |
| Move a whole curve · grab its line in DRAG to translate / select it | curve view | ✓ |
| Undo / Redo · ⌘Z · ⌘⇧Z — full editable-state history | Edit menu | ◐ Undo arrived later in the Alias line |
| CORNER · click an anchor → hard cusp (zero tangent handles) | curve view | ✓ |
| SMOOTH · click an anchor → soft G1 (antiparallel tangent handles) | curve view | ✓ |
| PERIODIC · close the active curve into a loop | curve view | ✓ |
| Datatrace — load measured-data curves | ||
| EKG · one heartbeat (open) — Lead II PQRST shape | Datatrace menu | ◐ Curve fitting from data, yes; these specific traces, no |
| Keeling Curve · one year of Mauna Loa CO₂ (open) | Datatrace menu | ◐ Mauna Loa series began 1958 (predates); the 2024 monthly values shipped here postdate |
| Analemma · sun position over a year (closed figure-8) | Datatrace menu | ✓ Astronomical data; figure-8 was a known shape |
| F-hole · Cremonese violin top outline (closed) | Datatrace menu | ✓ Centuries-old measured templates |
| Humpback moan · one call envelope (open) | Datatrace menu | ✓ Payne & McVay 1971 data preceded Alias/1 |
| Presets — worked surfaces that animate from straight lines into form | ||
| Face · revolved head profile | Presets menu | ◐ Teaching gallery; the morph-in is modern |
| Banana · tapered multi-section sweep | Presets menu | ◐ |
| Cabriole leg · revolved S-curve | Presets menu | ✓ Furniture turning is centuries old |
| Boat hull · lofted cross-sections | Presets menu | ✓ Lofting comes from the boatyard |
| Leaf · saddle curve network | Presets menu | ◐ |
| Surface operations (live rebuild) | ||
| Revolve · profile around Y | panel | ✓ |
| Extrude · profile along Z | panel | ✓ |
| Sweep · sections along rail (XZ) | panel | ✓ |
| Sweep · two rails (Sweep2) · section fit between two paths | curve tabs ＋ rail | ◐ Two-rail sweeps matured later in the Alias line |
| Sweep · multiple sections · blended down the rail | curve tabs ＋ sec | ✓ Shape-curve sweeps |
| Loft · interpolate through a list of cross-sections | panel | ✓ |
| NETWORK · cross-section curves blended across two or more rail paths — add curves either way | panel | ◐ Curve-network surfacing (Rhino NetworkSrf) is later — here in spirit, from flat-drawn curves |
| Live Thicken · shell offset (one-sided or both, ± direction) with end caps | panel | ✓ Trim / skin family |
| Smooth / Fillet · Laplacian relax that rounds sharp edges | panel | ◐ Mesh relaxation matured later |
| Periodic-aware cap suppression on closed boundaries | automatic | ✓ |
| Sculpt on the surface | ||
| CARDINAL · a sculpt TOGGLE — an independent U × V control grid that overlays ANY render mode (shaded / glossy / wire / tri / zebra) | shaded view | ◐ Control cages existed; on-surface direct drag is modern |
| Drag along screen-projected surface normal · push / pull / move | shaded view | ◐ In spirit |
| Shift-click multi-select · drag the whole set, each ⟂ its own surface | shaded view | ◐ Multi-CV editing in spirit |
| Selection ops · Row / Column / Grow / Shrink from the current selection | panel | ◐ |
| Transform gumball · world X/Y/Z translate on the selected points | shaded view | ◐ Manipulators are modern |
| Grid count via U / V sliders · sculpt carried across on resize (resample) | panel | ◐ |
| Gaussian falloff in (u,v) · multi-sheet (outer + inner shells) | automatic | ◐ |
| Live U / V count sliders independent of mesh resolution | panel | ◐ |
| Surface evaluation | ||
| SHADED · solid phong + quad-edge overlay | shaded view | ✓ |
| GLOSSY · reflective render under a phosphor studio environment | shaded view | ◐ Reflective shading matured 1990s |
| WIRE · quad-edge wireframe | shaded view | ✓ |
| TRI · triangulated wireframe with diagonals | shaded view | ✓ |
| ZEBRA · diagonal phosphor stripes (continuity reading) | shaded view | ◐ Standard in later Alias; matured 1990s |
| TOP / SIDE orthographic views | opt-in | ✓ |
| View | ||
| Auto-orbit (paused while sculpting) | shaded view | ✓ |
| Drag-to-tumble · drag down tilts down | shaded view | ✓ |
| Two-finger drag to pan (2D + 3D) · pinch to zoom | both views | ✗ Trackpad gestures are entirely modern |
| Draggable split divider between curve + 3D views | between views | ◐ Workspace tiling existed |
| Animation (Animate menu) | ||
| Set Keyframe · snapshots curves + closed flags + cardinal sculpt | menu | ✓ Alias/1 was an animation system |
| Play / Stop · cycle-loop with eased interpolation | menu | ✓ |
| Clear All Keyframes | menu | ✓ |
| Operation switch auto-clears keys (topology change) | automatic | ✓ |
| Export | ||
| OBJ · real quad faces (no triangulation) | File / Export | ◐ Wavefront OBJ followed in 1990; Alias/1 wrote IGES + proprietary in 1985 |
| Filenames roll from a new-wave + astronomy wordbank | automatic | ◐ The taste, yes; the wordbank, ours |
| Export Video · 3 s / 10 s / full cycle (MP4 H.264 if browser supports, else WebM) | Animate / Export Video | ✗ Beyond Alias/1 — its output was a film recorder (physical 35 mm hardware) |
| Infrastructure (entirely beyond Alias/1) | ||
| WebGL hardware-accelerated rendering in a browser | always | ✗ 1985 = SGI IRIS workstations, tens of thousands of dollars per seat |
| Live preview on a phone (touch + pointer events) | always | ✗ |
| One-shot share via a URL | always | ✗ |
Could become a Rhino plugin (RhinoCommon, native NURBS, extendable as Grasshopper components for parametric definitions) and/or a Blender add-on (bpy, mesh modifiers, geometry nodes). Same curve-first ergonomics, with the host application handling units, materials, export pipelines, and the heavy lifting. Filed as a later-someday goal.