Many Meanings of the Word Model

0byte — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 22:54:48 +0000

As a person who went through many phases, 3d graphic, real-time engines, programming and now AI, I noticed that there is a plethora of words that persist through these fields. At the very fundamental level, they might describe the same thing, but they are abstracted into a unique, niche fitting idea.

That's why, depending on your expertise you'll understand the word "model" differently. Mostly because you see it through a different abstraction or you use models in a conceptually different way. A model can be used as a predictive tool but it can also be used as a descriptor. Is some cases it's also prescriptive.

3D MODEL – MY FIRST MODEL!

If you're a 3D Modeller working in Blender, 3Ds Max or other tool, you see a mesh that can be deformed, textured, animated or rendered. That all it was for me. Something I look at and manipulate with instant feedback.

At some point I got involved in interactive applications and worked alongside Unity (a real time engine) engineers. I realised “model” meant something completely else to them. They were asking about vertex orders and weights. Flipped normals, gizmos that weren’t matching Unity coordination system. (Damn you, right-hand coordinate system!). Model wasn’t a visual thing for them. It was a weird combo of constraints and very specific properties.

Read the rest on my blog: https://0byte.io/articles/many_meanings_of_model.html

Visual Introduction to PyTorch

0byte — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:21:26 +0000

PyTorch is currently one of the most popular deep learning frameworks. It is an open-source library built upon the Torch Library.

Most tutorials assume you're comfortable jumping straight into code. I made a visual introduction that walks through the core concepts step by step, with animations and diagrams instead of walls of text.

Whether you're completely new to deep learning or just want a clearer mental model of what's happening under the hood, this should help.

What's covered:
Tensors - what they are and how PyTorch thinks about data
Initialisation Functions - how weights get set up before training
The basic ML training loop - forward pass, loss, backward, update
Activation functions - ReLU, Sigmoid, Tanh and when in the training pipeline they are used

...and a few more concepts to tie it all together!

DEV Community: 0byte

Many Meanings of the Word Model

3D MODEL – MY FIRST MODEL!

Visual Introduction to PyTorch