How many hobbies is too many?

[ChefPapiChulo]

How many hobbies do you have and how many is too many?

[petitedollbabee]

You’ve got too many hobbies if you don’t have time for them. I only have two hobbies right now, and that’s painting and video games. If I had a 3rd hobby, then I would have too many as I don’t have the time or energy for another.

[ChefPapiChulo]

That’s a good take.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I seem to fit the ENFP stereotype in this context:

So they're rather endless. I keep picking up new ones all the time and it makes it difficult to count. Yet I have a tendency to acquire a new hobby for a season or two and then lose interest and pick up another one.

I do have three that have persisted throughout my life. They're vert skateboarding, making music on my MIDI keyboard (not very good at it but I've always enjoyed it), and drawing/painting.

[ChefPapiChulo]

Same here man.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Has its pros and cons. Sometimes it has helped me even in my job as a software dev. For example, I broke into the VFX industry with an algorithm that used data mining techniques in the context of raytracing. I just published it and the code and binaries for free and it became widely adopted in the film and television industry and I got my initial set of job offers from that.

Yet the reason I used data mining techniques is because of that ADHD-like tendency to be interested in so many different topics. If I had mastery over sampling techniques in raytracing, I wouldn't have thought to use data mining techniques which were considered to solve a completely different set of problems back then.

So sometimes it helps to be able to draw from a wider variety of subjects, even though I lack as much expertise in any individual one, to find a novel solution to a problem.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

That's also how NVidia made their breakthrough in spatiotemporal importance sampling (fancy way to sample raytracing data over time and space very efficiently):
https://youtu.be/HiSexy6eoy8
That drew ideas from a completely disparate field from conventional computer graphics, delving into techniques used more in data mining and statistical analysis.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

So sometimes it helps to be a jack of all trades and be able to draw from a wide variety of subjects. Sometimes not though; sometimes we want that specialist with the deepest expertise over just one subject.

[ChefPapiChulo]

Damn that looks so realistic.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

The main thing that's impressive is that they're simulating millions of polygon lights (the most difficult lights to simulate followed by area lights, the simplest being point and directional lights).

Looks-wise NVidia demos don't always look so amazing since they lack the artistry of VFX and game artists to make it look so fantastic artistically, but they are showcasing some really awesome tech in each one.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Actually did a hasty implementation of their paper. You can compare the top image (conventional random sampling method) vs. bottom (theirs):

Basically the top image is what you get using the conventional random sampling, and below on each column is the result using their technique given the same amount of processing.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Their technique converges to a much nicer image in a small fraction of the time since it samples lighting so much more smartly and efficiently. But it uses techniques that were normally not widely known let alone ever used before in computer graphics. A lot of breakthroughs tend to come from drawing outside of our fields this way.

So back to your question of how many is too many, I don't know. If we have fewer, we can master them better. If we have more though, we can potentially draw from a wider variety of subjects in potentially novel ways.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

In my hasty implementation, I only used spatial sampling (sampling across space). Their technique becomes even more effective, like exponentially so, when you combine that with temporal sampling (sampling across time, like reusing data from previous frames of animation to help guide the sampling).

[Likes2drive]

I used to have a lot of hobbies but now no time for them, I suppose you can never have too many if you have time for them