Making Waterfalls (lgm2025)

Come learn about some ways to create waterfalls for video games! Inspired by a variety of waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest of the USA, Tom has been playing around with different ways to create waterfalls in the open source Godot game engine, with the help of other open source software such as Blender, Krita, and Gimp. Video game fluid flow is a complex subject, and this talk will outline various methods to cheat so that you don't really have to know complex math to make something acceptable. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/lgm25-upstream-2025/talk/3330112692/
Video:lgm2025-83659-eng-Making_Waterfalls_hd.mp4

3000 % FasterFile Saving With Time Travel (lgm2025)

A developer talk about coming up with a new file format for [Drawpile](https://drawpile.net/) with the focus being on the findings and ideas that would be useful for other programs as well. Some of those ideas are already implemented and have brought a massive speedup in file saving and loading, some wilder ideas like continuous autosave with history-altering time-travel are in various states of currently still being worked on, but sufficiently cool to talk about anyway. ## Links * [Drawpile](https://drawpile.net/) Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/lgm25-upstream-2025/talk/2882617605/
Video:lgm2025-83662-eng-3000_FasterFile_Saving_With_Time_Travel_hd.mp4

Introduction to Usability/UX Evaluation Methods (lgm2025)

The session will start with an introduction to the topic of usability and user experience (UX), including the human centered design process (HCD) and design thinking (DT). After having laid out the foundation, a brief overview of different usability evaluation methods is given. The main part of the presentation is about introducing two often used methods: On the one hand the heuristic evaluation as an example of a usability inspection method, and usability testing on the other hand. Both methods can be used to find (potential) usability problems in a software. Whereas a heuristic evaluation is conducted by an expert...

From Printer Dust Till Graphics Dawn (lgm2025)

In this presentation, we partly follow this year's topic "RE:imagination" and will explore old but not old-fashioned printer control languages such as HP-GL (1970s and 1980s) and PostScript (1980s) and device-specific commands for dot matrix printers (1980s) to better understand how we relate to printers and printing today. What can we learn from these languages from current graphic practices and perspectives? What context were these languages developed in? Which aesthetics can be created with them today and which tools are needed to do so? How can the sharing culture of the FLOSS/LGM community be applied to such old "closed source" devices? This...

Fontra —The Browser-Based Font Editor (lgm2025)

Fontra is a novel, libre, browser-based, cross-platform, variable-first font editor. ## Links * [website: Fontra](https://fontra.xyz/) Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/lgm25-upstream-2025/talk/64122622/
Video:lgm2025-83660-eng-Fontra_-The_Browser-Based_Font_Editor_hd.mp4

Libre Designers and the Software Apocalypse (lgm2025)

So, is LGM all about libre tools that software developers make that designers and artists use to make creative work … ? At previous LGMs we’ve talked about open-source design feeding back into improving the look, feel and usability of creative software. But what about the tools used to write those tools? Can we link things back another step? Coding environments have barely changed in decades. Yet the complexity of software produced in them has risen exponentially. The disconnect from cause to effect has become ever greater. All software has bugs, most bugs involve software doing exactly what it was...

Re:Imagining a 3D and Interactive Internet (lgm2025)

Hubs is an open-source interactive browser based 3D meeting space. It is now fully integrated in Blender 3D, which is using an extended version of the gltf format. An extension allows you to attach all the basic components to objects, like particles, UV animations, water and much more. But you can also share links, videos and audio right inside your 3D rooms. Soon another feature was added to the gtlf exporter, the Behavior Graph. It enables interactivity via node-based logic and is only available in Blender 3D. It is the very feature we would like to present to you. If you are...

Friday Squid Blogging: NGC 1068 Is the “Squid Galaxy”

I hadn’t known that the NGC 1068 galaxy is nicknamed the “Squid Galaxy.” It is, and it’s spewing neutrinos without the usual accompanying gamma rays.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Surveillance Via Smart Toothbrush

The only links are from The Daily Mail and The Mirror, but a marital affair was discovered because the cheater was recorded using his smart toothbrush at home when he was supposed to be at work.

The PDF Toolbox (lgm2025)

It is well known that PDF has become a very popular file format. Everyone use it everyday for many purposes. In this context, many software can produce PDF. Still, as graphic designers, we must often deal with provided PDF that doesn’t match our needs, because one PDF isn’t worth another. On the other side, printshops also come with their own standards and constraints. How can we deal with theses everyday outcomes and be sure our PDF will match the delivery standards, using only free softwares? In this presentation, we will talk about several PDF tools trying to reach this goal of giving the...