Here’s a continuation of the Line Sketching post I did last week. What you’re seeing here are larger, higher-resolution renders that use a further-tweaked drawing algorithm, concentrating more on form and color.

The key to these pieces is seeing them in their native resolution. There’s so much texture and pseudo-form that emerges from subtle shifts in a single line over time. Here’s an example:

Full View

+ View it large!

Detail View

I need to continue tweaking the drawing routine and color choices before I’ll be happy enough to take these to a printer. Also, I’m going to be sticking any additional interesting output from this thing into a Flickr set called “Line Topography”.

In the mean time, here are some interesting ones that came out of the last 50 renders I did yesterday:

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+ View it large!

+ View it large!

+ View it large!

+ View it large!

+ View it large!

+ View it large!

+ View it large!

+ View it large!

+ View it large!

Finally we’ve arrived at the final image to be used for the album art of Mode7‘s upcoming EP “Dusk Drops” (see above). There were a lot of contenders, but in the end, this image satisfied a certain visual balance and the general feeling of ominousness that we were looking to convey.

For these final renders, 2850×2850 images were generated by Sunflow, using the special Thinlens camera which allowed me to simulate a shallow depth of field. Each image took about 12 hours to render on a quad-core Intel i5 Windows 7 box.

Further post-processing was done in Photoshop to simulate things that we’d see in traditional photography: vignetting, chromatic abberation, and a subtle level of visual noise. Some color tweaking and other manipulations were done as well just to make the images a bit richer.

For the CD label itself, we’re going to use the following image:

+ View the piece on Flickr.

And then there were a few more images that I decided to render and treat, just because they were compelling to me and I wanted to see what they’d look like if I took them through the entire process.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

I’ll be following this post up with a video demoing the Processing app that I created for generating these compositions once they EP has been officially released in a few days.

After the last post, I went in and tweaked a couple of parameter ranges and how the noisy terrain was rendered and generated another 3,500 compositions, which you can see here:

+ See it super large on Flickr.

After the computer churned these out, I spent a few hours looking through them and managed to cull the set down to an even 350. But as I mentioned before, the next step was to render these using Sunflow, which I did right before I left for Minneapolis. Rendering the 350 images at 1280×1280 with no anti-aliasing and a very low sample setting took about 29 or so hours on a quad-core Intel PC. I had it dumping the output into a Dropbox folder so I could check on the progress on my phone during my trip.

Tonight, I took the next step and chose a final set of 29 images that are contenders for the final render. In that render, the visual noise will fall away considerably, and I’ll be generating a 2850×2850 image suitable for a 300dpi CD cover print.

You can see the 29 images I picked in this Flickr set. As of right now, these are my five favorite renders:

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

That is, they’re amazing at working tirelessly and generating variations, given the proper constraints.

I’m in the process of creating some album art for a friend of mine, Mode7, for an upcoming EP release. I wanted to create something that was simultaneously intentional (i.e. I had ideas for an image) and generative (i.e. I’d let the computer make stuff up too). For the last couple weeks, I’ve been slowly building a Processing app that helps me generate compositions given a curated range of possible random values.

Last night, I asked my app to show me 10,000 variations on a theme. Here’s what it came up with:

+ See it hi-res on Flickr.

And here’s a zoom of a 6×6 grid from that output:

And here are some random selects that I never would have come up with on my own:

These images are rendered in an OpenGL context, so the lighting is basic and even throughout. But this is only the first step in the process of creating the final image. The Processing app is a tool for creating compositions and color schemes. In the end, my selects are saved out as Sunflow scene files and rendered in Sunflow with global illumination at a super-high resolution. Here are a couple test renders to give you an idea of the end possibilities:

There are a couple things I want to note about this whole process.

Symbiosis

What has happened in this process of creation is the emergence of a symbiotic relationship between me and the computer. I started with clear intention for the type of image I wanted to create. As I began programmatically building the structures of the elements I wanted to use in the composition, it wasn’t until I saw the way the computer rendered my forms that I would continue moving forward. These renders influenced my direction and provided a sort of course correction.

The same happens when I ask the computer to provide me with a series of choices. I become the curator and the computer becomes the creator. It seemingly influences me as much as I influence its output. This is especially true when you introduce Math.random() into the relationship. That singular function is the computer’s very powerful voice.

This whole process is like a dance or a dialogue. And I’m beginning to learn how powerful this can be in discovering possibilities for creative output that I wouldn’t have been able to achieve on my own.

Discovery

When I tell the computer to give me 10,000 choices, the process of reviewing those choices makes me feel like I’m a scientist or an archaeologist exploring unseen worlds or newly revealed information. I’m seeing something wholly new. A world that had the possibility of existing, but only up until last night, never actually existed. And here I get to discover that new world.

There’s something so utterly enchanting and delightful about this. Flipping through these images brings me closer to some level of innocence and awe that I simply don’t encounter very often in my life. And now I’m hooked.

+ View large on Flickr.

+ View large on Flickr.

And tonight, got those vertex normals calculated. Much easier this time around — probably just because I understand it all conceptually now.

I’m really enjoying how this stuff is looking. Finally, I feel like this digital generative work feels as organic and alive as the source of the data itself. I can’t wait to add the UI controls for “sculpting” the composition and colors… and can’t wait to add more structural elements.

Now that I’m unpacked and settled in my new apartment — and since I have a 50 minute presentation coming up at FITC in just over a month — it was time to gain some momentum and get back on top of this stuff for Flow.

I’ll be the first to say that these definitely bear a strong resemblance to Evan Roth‘s latest Graffiti Analysis video called “Graffiti Analysis: 3D” — because they do. And because I was definitely inspired by it (just like I was inspired by the original project when I first saw it back in 2005 at FITC).

But this is just one layer of what I’ve finally settled on for my first real “pieces” to come out of this Flow project. I’m focusing on isolation of a few strokes, creating a strong composition, and building something structural — almost architectural — out of these energetic moments of frozen time.

The hurdle today was learning to draw a tube in space…this took the better part of the day. I would’ve used the GLE Tubing and Extrusion library, but unfortunately, that has dependencies on GLUT, which Cinder does not use. And I didn’t think that I’d be able to vary the thickness of the tube over its length, so I decided to try it from scratch. And we’ve got [decent] success. I do want to implement proper per-vertex normals to smooth the sucker out some more. I think I’ll be able to rip the per-vertex normals code from the old Noise Tube experiments, since it’s ultimately the same mesh structure.

And yeah, this is all OpenGL still. Once I get the other structural elements in place, I’ll be writing some sort of Cinder Block for creating a Sunflow scene / scene file and rendering this stuff out in Sunflow. The final aim is to create some prints from this thing. I’m giving myself till the end of the week to wrap up this visual direction, so I can focus on refactoring and documenting all the behind-the-scenes Flow applications for open source release around mid-August.

You can see the full set of this first bunch of renders in this Flickr set.

+ View large on Flickr.

+ View large on Flickr.

Spent a little time today on another tangent. One thing I didn’t like about those faux-cityscape renders was the fact that you completely lost all sense of the originating data. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but part of the reason I developed this whole system was to bring forth the energy and motion that actually went into creating the “seed” drawing.

So I took a step back and created a new renderer that let me isolate the individual “strokes” that were captured during the drawing session. In these renders, I’ve isolated three strokes; each has a unique color. The peaks in the height are derived from the relative velocity of a stroke at a given snapshot in time.

In Cinder, I created a GL scene that has a positionable camera and lets me page through each stroke. Then I can tap a key and dump out that stroke’s Sunflow scene data to the console. Along the way, I learned how to use the TriMesh class in Cinder. It made dumping the Sunflow scene data easier, since it really parallels Sunflow’s “generic-mesh” type.

The render at the top uses three sphere lights, a basic diffuse shader for each object, and Sunflow’s path-tracing global illumination system. The render below uses the Sunflow sunsky light, a foggy Phong shader on the three strokes, and the “fake” global illumination setting in order to get some vague ambient light. I started discovering that there are a lot of possible combinations for lighting in Sunflow — almost an overwhelming number.

Next I’m gonna try a different drawing technique for rendering these strokes.

+ View large.

So, you guys saw a still like this from the last time I posted. Basic OpenGL stuff with a couple lights and some simple cube-like structures. Immediately after getting that far, I wanted to get this stuff rendered in Sunflow. Now, Sunflow is an open-source global illumination renderer built with Java. But at it’s core it’s a ray tracer, which basically means you’ve can make stuff that looks real because it simulates real light rays. Moreover, it has different kinds of cameras… and one of those cameras can render a pretty realistic depth of field and even bokeh.

Here’s the thing, I’m working in Cinder, which means I needed to write something that took my geometry and dumped out a Sunflow Scene File (.sc). But first, I had to figure out how the hell to get the OpenGL viewport projection matrix mapped correctly to the Sunflow camera — and moreover, I had to figure out how to take all these OpenGL transformations (rotate, translate, etc.) and turn them into something Sunflow understood.

Today, I finally wrapped my head around the two main OpenGL matrices. I’ll go into the specifics for folks that are interested in a later post, but the point is this: I can write code and render stuff using OpenGL in Cinder, press a key, and dump out all my Sunflow Scene File data (to the console for now).

Here’s what the above image looks like when it’s rendered with a couple point lights and a pinhole camera:

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And here’s what it looks like with ambient occlusion (and no point lights)!

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But that stuff’s not too interesting. What’s interesting is what happens when you start playing with the sunsky light and the thinlens camera:

+ View large.

And here’s what happens when you play with the Phong shader and too many lights and don’t want to tweak things until they actually look good!

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All of this has me excited because now I can move quickly with framing and general colors and textures and such in OpenGL, then get super-nice renders from Sunflow. Yay open-source!

Spent most of today trying to pull off an idea that I had in my head since the last time I wrote. The idea came to me as soon as I saw a piece called Ephimicropolis by contemporary artist Peter Root. Most of his work is pretty compelling, visually dense, and labor-intensive.

But I thought, hey, I love doing stuff that creates visual rhythm with similar shapes and iteration (see here and here and here and here). And I’m really into this idea that my captured motion data can be turned into something structural, becoming an input stream for a different set of dimensions. I’m almost literally painting an entire world here.

Anyway, now I need to actually start playing with how this thing looks. With lighting and the camera and texture and distribution of elements. Oh, and all of this was built using Cinder.

Here’s a time-lapse render, so you can see it build up:

Here are some of the in-progress renders that happened along the way as I was stumbling my way through all this:

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+ View large.

Lots of new stuff learned over the weekend. Here’s a summary:

• Really understand basic OpenGL lighting now.
• Understand how to do basic material coloring now.
• Learned how to texture a quad!
• Starting to learn some things about the Boost C++ libraries.
• Finally remembered that OpenGL is a state machine.

I think I actually (finally) have enough know-how to execute what I’ve got going on in my head. It’s going to require some refactoring of code, but I don’t feel like I’m up against an unclimbable wall anymore, which is precisely how I felt by the end of the day on Sunday.

I still think this looks boring / uninteresting, but it’s just another step closer and a lot of lessons learned.

Here’s a video render of what it looks like in realtime:

Update on 04-29-2010: The C++ framework that I’m using has just been released to the public. It’s called Cinder. Big ups to Andrew Bell, Robert Hodgin, and The Barbarian Group for all the time and effort put into releasing such a powerful and fun open source framework for creative coding!