As I prepare for my new job which starts on January 4th, I’m taking some time to learn Derivative’s TouchDesigner. It’s a realtime procedural 3D / compositing tool. Well, it’s actually so much more than that, but it’s very difficult to describe.

Anyway, I’m trying to learn it. And I’ve found the best way to learn stuff (for me) is to take something I’ve already made and try to recreate it in the new environment. So, that’s what I’ve started doing here. I’m not sure how much further I want to go with this, but it’s nice to know that I could pull this much together after about an hour’s worth of work.

This software is terribly powerful, and more and more documentation / improvements / tutorial videos are being added all the time. It’s making me very excited about 2010.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

Some progress has occurred. C++ is becoming clearer. Here’s what progressed in the first couple images:

1. I created a Tween class for animating values. It’s modeled after CASA Lib’s Tween class. I’ll probably be releasing it to the community soon.
2. I hooked up my MIDI controllers to the piece, so I could have more control over tweaking values. I’m using a great add-on for openFrameworks called ofxMIDI.
3. Along the way, I learned how to implement openFrameworks event dispatchers and listeners. (Hint: search for “poco events” in the openFrameworks Wiki if you want to learn how.)

In doing all this, I was able to trigger light movements with a MIDI controller. I used my M-Audio Trigger Finger’s velocity-sensitive pads to animate two lights. Hard tap = fast movement.

+ View hi-res on Flickr.

Here’s a video of the animated lights in action. Please excuse the stutters; while this does run at 30fps in realtime, SnapzPro isn’t able to keep up because of the CPU usage of the piece.

Now after all this, I came to realize that I really wanted to be able to loop the Perlin noise that was creating the height map of the tube. Because, though you can’t see it, there’s an awful seam on the side facing away from the camera. By looping the noise, I could reliably look at it from all angles.

After some research, I came across a great library called libnoise. Took me a little while to get it to compile, only to realize that while it did the job, it dropped my framerate from a respectable 45fps to 9fps. Definitely not suitable for realtime noise generation.

So I went back to the fastest Perlin noise generator I could find (this class from John Ratcliff), and I decided to live with the seam in the back.

Amidst all this, I also stumbled upon this awesome blog post about Twisted Architecture. I thought it would be cool to implement something like that in my piece. So I did. But then I forgot about it.

It was only when I started twisting the “twist-associated” knob on my MIDI controller that the damn seam actually came to life. So, you can see how it starts to play out in the rest of the images here:

+ View hi-res on Flickr.

+ View hi-res on Flickr.

+ View hi-res on Flickr.

+ View hi-res on Flickr.

Also, in those last couple renders, I added a convex mesh to the background so that I could start incorporating background colors properly. Moreover, so I could get some light-generated gradients happening. More to come… more to come.

+ View higher res image.

For those of you following me on Twitter today, you witnessed the pain I endured under the cruel, icy grip of OpenGL.

That pain: learning how to compute vertex normals.

But eight hours later, I managed to pull it off with the help of the OpenGL SuperBible, this thread, and this article. Oh, and this amidst porting it to C++ (openFrameworks) for maximum control and speed.

Along the way, I learned how OpenGL lighting works. I was having such a hard time with it before because my form didn’t have its surface normals nor its vertex normals correctly calculated. So light wasn’t bouncing off it the way I expected. Now it’s all making good sense.

My next steps will be adding interactivity. I’m going to try to use my HP TouchSmart for touch input along with its webcam for vision input. Separately, I’ll try to make some sort of music visualizer out of this — or at least make it audio-responsive.

Check out a video from today:

I’m continuing the Perlin noise saga. The last thing I did was port the Noise Column project over to Processing and openFrameworks.

This time I wanted to add some actual volume — not just perceived volume — to the form. These are just some initial tests that you see above. I’ve got a ton to learn about lighting and optimization and matrix transformations. Robert says I need to use “per-vertex normals”. I say “OKAY!” Hopefully I can start adding some of these things over the next couple weeks and really use this project as a general learning tool.

For now, I’m developing all this in Processing using the PGraphicsOpenGL renderer. I’m not using any actual OpenGL calls directly; I’m only using the Processing API. One little discovery I made yesterday: PeasyCam turns out to be a really sweet little camera library for Processing. Adds mouse control over the camera with a single line of code.

The ultimate goal of this is to create two different pieces. One will be a rendered motion piece. It probably won’t have any audio and will function as an ambient looping video. It will be submitted to this call for entries: Flow Interrupted.

The second piece would actually be interactive. I’m going to toy around with camera, audio, and touch as discreet inputs (all separately). This will give me a chance to play with the new HP TouchSmart PC I got. So you could consider the second execution to be more of an interactive installation piece. And that’s going to be submitted to this call for entries: FLUID Interactive Digital Art.

Check out some of the stills:

+ View larger Image.

+ View larger Image.

+ View larger Image.

+ View larger Image.

For my friend Nate‘s 30th birthday, I created a one-off set of prints based on the Noise Column and Noise Column Wallpaper Generator mini-projects. It was largely an exercise in creating something with OpenGL.

Thus began the effort to port a bunch of ActionScript 3.0 vector drawing commands over to line loops in OpenGL. I used Processing as my framework since I’m used to it, and it gave me a 1:1 mapping of the OpenGL API. I was able to use various C++ OpenGL tutorials and books to accomplish my goals. I used the super-helpful TileSaver classfrom Marius Watz to generate hi-res renders.

Now after all this, I realized that it was time to take the plunge and start getting closer to the metal. Thus began the next port of Noise Column; this time I went to C++.

I’ve been reading Stephen Prata’s C++ Primer Plus for the last couple months on and off. For me, learning from books makes sense. Moreover, learning the reasons for writing the code you write is so essential for retention for me. This book is simply great.

So for the C++ port, I moved over to openFrameworks as my C++ framework. OpenFrameworks is great, but there’s still a long way to go before it becomes the Processing of C++. Regardless, I had learned just enough C++ to figure out how to port all this stuff over. Two days later, I was able to generate a moving version of Noise Column:

Now it’s time to start doing stuff with “real” 3D in OpenGL — a dimension I’ve got nearly zero experience with.

I spent the last couple days making a desktop wallpaper-generating web app out of the previous experiment. Click the image above to check it out.

I tried to add a majority of the common 4:3 and widescreen desktop screen sizes. Make sure you’ve got Flash Player 10. The app will generate a slightly-compressed JPG for you.

Now that I’ve created this, I’m going to apply for a Kuler developer API key so that I can add a “randomize” button for the color palette that pulls in a color scheme from Kuler.

UPDATE (11-29-2008): Added a size for the iPhone.

There’s an ActionScript contest going on (believe it or not). It’s called The 25-Line ActionScript Contest, and I decided to enter it. I’m posting the output here, but not the source. I’ll put that up once the contest is over.

Anyway, for now, just click on the image above and play. It’s microphone-reactive, so go ahead and blow into your mic. If you don’t have one, it’ll still do stuff. Caveat: you must have Flash Player 10 installed.

UPDATE (12-29-2008):

Now that the contest is over, I’m posting the source code for your dissection. You should be able to open up Adobe Flash CS4, create a new ActionScript 3.0 project, and paste it into the Actions window on the first frame of the timeline. Enjoy!

• Noise Column Source Code

Continuing from yesterday, I tried to reel in the exploration a little bit and focus on form. I was still feeling interested in this original sample output from visp, so I put more constraints on this piece and started to get what I wanted.

It’s time to start playing more with the shapes and colors and perhaps adding some blur to impose some depth of field.

+ Check out the evolving Flickr set

After yesterday’s little exercise, I decided to push things a little further and add some more control. Still playing with Perlin noise in Flash. Controlling the form of things a little bit more so as to add interest. And significantly increasing the total number of shapes to impose a couple different viewing distances.

I only played with one base shape this time — actually two shapes that are badly shape-tweened in Flash. It’s a little too noisy, so I’ll probably try something with a little more structure in it and add a couple additional shapes to help with compositions. Click any of the images to view their larger counterparts in Flickr.

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

+ Check out the larger version

Today I decided to try to use mxmlc as my compiler for Flash stuff. But, having recently acquired an FDT Enterprise license, I wanted to use that instead of Flex Builder. Found a great tutorial at for how to compile an AS3 Project with FDT. Also found an excellent ActionScript 3 library for managing library assets (both loaded at runtime and at compile time) over at Tink’s site.

So, in this post you can see some captures from the output of the experiment. And you can check out the actual thing here:

Shape Iteration 001

As you can see, I’m playing with noise and form multiplicity. Again.