Archive for June, 2008

Random Spirals

Friday, June 6th, 2008

Random SpiralsBased on the Triangle Flower example from the Processing learning basics site, I’ve come up with a rendered image that will generate a random, coloured spiral every time it loads. It’s similar to the appearance of a kaleidoscope. You can have a look at it online here.

At this point, to see a new spiral, you have to re-run the Java, or re-load the page rather than pressing a button, moving the mouse or anything like that. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that to work soon as I think it would look pretty cool if I could get it to change as you move the mouse over it, similar to the way a kaleidoscope changes as you move it around.

I suspect it is to do with the lack of a draw() function, but when I add it in and run the spiral() function from within the draw() function, it completely changes the way the spirals render and I haven’t yet been able to get it to behave correctly.

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Recursively Generated Clouds – Continued

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Continuing on from the clouds I had generated earlier, I thought it would be pretty cool if I could get it to move and appear to grow.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to make it do that yet. I have however, gotten it to generate random cloud combinations and position them randomly on the canvas with semi-random colours based around reds, yellows and oranges.

It is available online here.

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Recursively Generated Clouds

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

I have been having a look at using recursion in Processing to tile things, however, I got a little bit sidetracked.

Going through the online learning basics, there are two recursion examples, “Recursion” and “Recursion 2“. In the first of these, recursion is used to have a circle repeat itself twice at half the original size inside itself, and continue doing this with each smaller circle until the level is no longer greater than 1. The level is basically the amount of times the function will call itself.

The second of these examples builds on the first, but instead of repeating the circle’s inside themselves, it generates random sizes and shades of circles in semi-random x and y co-ordinates around the main circle until the level is no longer greater than 1. The level again basically being how many times the function calls itself.

Experimenting with these two recursive functions, I combined the two to create a cartoonish cloud that slightly resembles a mushroom cloud which can be found online here.

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Audio Responsive Lines 2

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

There were a few problems with the first responsive lines that I did. Mainly related to visibility. For the lines I decided to make their visibility based on the audio spectrum as well as the volume, so sometimes they vanish altogether when they shouldn’t.

I have mostly fixed this now, it does still occasionally happen but not too often and in general it responds to all audio better than it did before. It is more sensitive overall.

There are some changes to the rotations as well so now there is more variation in how the lines appear, including the illusion of a horizon, so there is a lot more randomness to it.

I have also gone through and added in notes to make it easier to figure out what does what later on, also so anyone looking at it can figure it out relatively easily.

The Quartz Composer file, responsive_lines_2.qtz is available here.

It requires input via the built in mic in Macbook’s or iMac’s. It can of course be changed to accept audio input from the microphone-in, or line-in on Mac Pro’s or Mac Mini’s. With the right plug-in, it can also accept input from iTunes.

The most ideal is via line-in or microphone in as this gives the most control over what exactly the graphics are being synchronised with. However, using the built-in microphone means that no extra accessories are required.

Note that this was done using  Quartz Composer in Leopard.

Audio Responsive Lines

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

I decided to experiment a bit more with the patches I had been using for my responsive particles to try making some audio responsive lines.

The lines turned out to be a bit harder to work with than the particles since there are quite a few more things to control, but they did produce an interesting result.

The Quartz Composer file, responsive_lines.qtz is available online here.

Note that this one involves a lot more flashing than the other’s, so if you are epileptic or just don’t handle rapid flashing colours very well, you are looking at it at your own risk.