Shapevent

This sketch is a few months old. It’s made up of ten horn-like formations that appear to glow:

Click any of the above images to see the flash version

To achieve something that at times looks like its being altered by light I use a technique that I originally stumbled upon in photoshop.

1) Take your abstract image that looks 2D or Flat
2) Duplicate it
3) Blur it
4) Place it over your original image with an offset and a blend mode / layer mode

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When I was in 6th or 7th grade I used to spend hours playing with Kai’s Power Tools or KPT 1.0. I used to imagine creating my own version of a the texture explorer… I’m still inspired by memories of KPT…

A few months back I read an article about snowflakes in cabinate magazine and for some reason it gave me an idea for a texture generator.

This sketch generates 64 textures - you can click them to see the full-sized texture - simply click again to go back to the thumbnail view.


Click above image to see flash version

After creating this I realized it wouldn’t be very hard to animate them:

Click above Image to see ANIMATED flash version

I also tried applying random colors but wasn’t too happy with the results - I’d say about 70% of the colored textures are hideous… the ones that aren’t look pretty good. I still prefer the black and white ones…

I may restrict the colors to a set pallet to remedy the problem, but for now I’m just going to leave it as is. Here are a few select results that I thought came out alright.

Click any of the above images to see flash version

I used Grant Skinner’s Random Seed class so that if something really interesting came up I’d easily be able to regenerate it. My current generator chooses a seed from 0-100… so there are really only 100 sets of 64 textures. If i decide to take this further, I may add the ability to enter the seed via an input textbox…

I have a folder on my computer filled with strange variations of cellular automata. I’ve spent many hours playing with the life lexicon - but most of the cellular automata experiments I have in this folder are similar (at least in their simplicity) to your standard sand CA. I usually base the rules on the color of each pixel. For instance:

- scatter a few randomly colored pixels here and there
- if a pixel is not black
- calculate a slightly darker variation of the current pixels color
- surround the current pixel with this color

Here is a variation on that idea - it’s a bit more complex than the above description, but the principal is the same:

Click above image to see flash version

It’s a bit easier to understand what’s happening here in the following example:

Click above image to see flash version

I’ll be posting things from my Cellular Automata folder regularly…