pings from the void » Processing

New Year, New Library

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:58:02 +0000

As part of getting ready for my new job, I’m in the process of publishing a lot of the common code that I’ve been using over the years and I thought why not start a collection. And so the very humble and small PolymonkeyLibs begins.

The first official package is polymonkey.time it features 3 classes that relate to (you guessed it) time.

Time – used for keeping track of TimeDelta (the time in seconds of the previous frame) can also speed up and slow down time.

TimerEvent – A helper class that will automatically call a timerEvent() method in a set number of seconds.

StopWatch – A helper class for timing how long an operation takes.

Docs, Examples and version 001 of the library are in the Download tab of the page above. If you’ve got questions / problems / requests then send em this way.

Matt Ditton

Disclaimer: Although the internals are as accurate as possible. Everything gets converted to floats or ints when talking to processing. So your mileage my vary. And although it works like a charm I wouldn’t use it to run a pacemaker or anything.

When in doubt add more polys

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:49:27 +0000

Tessellate test on Evolving Geometry from matt ditton on Vimeo.

More tests, this time on the effect of tessellation on the geometry. Thanks for JohnK for the idea. I quite like low-fi polygons. But seeing the higher res version is quite nice. The full description is on the vimeo page.

Evolving Geometry. Or what I did with my Sunday.

admin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:55:39 +0000

Evolving Geometry from matt ditton on Vimeo.

For my first attempt at making a genetic algorithm, is there any better subject than the Mona Lisa and some random dude from google image search?

The premise is simple. By randomly changing the color, position and diagonal edge direction of a grid of polygons can you turn it into the target image.

All written in Processing, the grid draws to a PGraphic on every change and a fitness test is done against the target image. If the fitness is better than or equal the change is kept. If not, it’s reverted. Keeping the equal-to in the test causes that crazy vertex movement in the lower image, so that bugs going.

The left image is the grid with vertex colour, the right is the target and the middle is the wireframe of the polygons. The number is the fitness. The lower the number the closer tobeing an exact match.

This is the slowed down version for making a video. I’ve got it running in a thread and it’s stupid fast. But because I’m drawing in the thread I’m getting colour sync errors in the main draw thread. It works fast but the flashing colours get pretty distracting.

Inspiration for this work has to go to Karl Sims and Roger Alsing. They are the giants, I’m just standing here.

Processing vs. Unity

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:39:23 +0000

Recently I’ve been using Unity3D. And I’m impressed. I’ve been working in game engines for about a decade and I’ve never encountered one that is so easy to use. It’s got basically everything you need, integrated with any package you’d want to use, and you can get a license for $200. That is amazing.

Because I’m also teaching it I’ve been putting together a bit of reference material about it. The first one is a Processing vs. Unity document. It covers some of the syntax differences between UnityScript (a Mono run version of JavaScript) and Processing (well it’s Java under the hood). and here it is..

Processing_vs_Unity

The Swarm is Coming

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:45:36 +0000

Swarm (working title) from matt ditton on Vimeo.

In the mad panic at the beginning of semester I totally forgot to post this video to the game I’m working on. Swarm is all made in openframeworks for the iPhone. There are also a bunch of support tools that I wrote in processing as well. More info soon.

Processing SBS and HD

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:50:00 +0000

SBS ONE, First Australians from matt ditton on Vimeo.

I’ve posted a version of the processing SBS work to vimeo. You can watch it in all it’s HD glory.

So like, what happened to Matt?

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:52:05 +0000

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a number of projects that are slowly getting to a stage where I can talk about them. In the coming weeks I’ll be updating the site and writing up some details on all of them. But as a teaser.

One of the big one’s was work that I did for Qube Konstrukt. Qube was after something different while they worked for SBS ONE and SBS TWO. So enter Processing and that Generative “look”. As luck would have it they called me up, had a chat and hit the ground running making cool stuff.

There are few projects that I’ve worked on that have been so rewarding. It was a dream to work on, and Qube are flat out awesome. And now the output is slowly making it’s way into the world. To begin with SBS has posted a (badly compressed) selection of their new station id’s to their facebook page. You can see them here.

The first two are from Qube, the next two are by Mighty Nice and the last three are from Iloura. Amazing stuff all round. The sound reactive particle system in the first one (the red one) is mine.