My Blog: projects, sketches, works in progress, thoughts, and inspiration.

Tagged: generative art

Adding lines connecting nearby points in a particle system creates an interesting effect, but it does get a little messy. I thought it would be interesting if the lines only connected the nearest particles to each, which would vary from point to point, and if the lines didn’t overlap or intersect. The result would be a nice mesh with varied density. Of course after putting the script together I turned it into a drawing machine. I’ll post more on exactly how this script works sometime soon.

In this Drawing Machine a series of particles spawned when the mouse is pressed move through a morphing Perlin noise flow field. They also slightly repel each other. The netting algorithm is applied to the particles to create the dark lines and their colors slowly shift. Many different factors effect the size and transparency of the points and lines in order to keep everything moving smoothly. Lines fade out as they get longer and fade out with the points they join.

spinal_network_drawing_machine_3

spinal_network_drawing_machine_2

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My anemone piece needed a little color. Here are a few more renderings and a video of the system running. I’ve also added a few more objects to my particle script including particle generators, attractors, and repellers. A faint circle of somewhat random size around each particle gives a little texture in empty space and pushes back older tubes by overlaying a dark texture.

anemone color 1744

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Continuing with particle systems in Processing I stumbled upon some effects I’m very happy with. Although it wasn’t exactly what I was trying for at the time but have an aesthetic which is very interesting to me. The path of each particle is drawn at each frame with a semi-transparent circle, gray with a white border. The way the circles overlap create a pseudo 3d effect which reminds me a lot of an electron scanning microscope.

processing_particle_system_anemone_1

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