A 1D vector depends on a coordinate system, has a basis etc. You can scale the coordinate system and still have the magnitude of the vector remain the same (under that coordinate system). A float does not share these properties, it's just the unit (EDIT: it's actually the data type) used to describe the components of…
Aw yeah! This is super cool Lee! I think all artists should learn the systems behind the pretty. I really like how you drew an example from the UE4 material editor, I think for future posts that'll really help ground the concepts in something tangible.
A float does share these properties, it's a scalar value. A vector, by definition, is a direction and a magnitude. The lowest dimension that makes "useful" sense in is 2, which is a 2D vector, which has two components (in our case, 2 floats, one for each axis of the space). A 1D vector has only one "direction" (the single…
If it's aimed at non-technical artists, I'd like to see some more pictures showing what a vector does; How the X/Y/Z components contribute to defining the direction of the vector in a coordinate system (and perhaps how that same vector works when interpreted as a colour). Might be worth mentioning that vectors effectively…