Andy Li's Blog

I continue the journey of creating a piece of generative art everyday. And I am still using hxOpenFrameworks. BTW, since I don’t have a Mac running at this moment, I can’t have a Mac build. And actually I’m still messing with the Linux build… So hxOpenFrameworks is currently Windows only. I will release it to haxelib once it is cross-platform.

Anyway, here below are the selected pieces from my set of creations.

After last time I discovered the beauty of physics, I went with some typical simulations…shooting bullets.
It is not in real-time, but a frame-by-frame rendering. It would be nice if there is a haXe binding to PhysX or something.

Following is simply putting some circles from inside of a grid of sands. Look pretty like corruption.

And then there is a series of connecting points on a circle. It generates soooo many patterns with a single algorithm, I have to align the variations in a grid. Don’t draw them on a paper, it may summon a fire ball or something, don’t say I haven’t warned you

Since I was leaking idea, so better do some old school recursive stuffs… Turn out applying color on them can give you nice harmonic color scheme, and the proportion is perfect!

I like the following one very much. It first generates an array of points according to some regular polygon math, then sorts them according to the angle from origin and finally links them up.

Same as above, but reversed part of the math so the lines point outward.

Still playing with the above idea, but applied lots of tweaks to bring the interesting parts out.

In the latest weeks, I have been trying to create more concrete graphics. It takes more time then messing around with math equations, but I have more artistic control. First one plays with circuit board like structures.

Applying Tron-style color.

Second concrete thing I created is a feather, as I really like birds. I used the easing equations(which are usually used for tweening) by Robert Penner to create the curves.

Creating a pair of wings is easy when you have feathers.

And finally, why not have 3 pairs when you simply can? Here comes a seraph.

It has been some time since the start of building hxOpenFrameworks, the haXe binding to OpenFrameworks. Actually it is already around 80% complete several weeks ago. I was facing some GC problem on the use of ofSoundStream, but finally I’ve solved it with the help of Hugh. As a by-product, I’ve made a binding to RtAudio, a cross-platform real-time sound input/output API. However, I think I will wait till OF 007 and haXe 2.07 is released before really releasing hxOpenFrameworks.

In order to test it, I’ve been using it for some little projects. I decided to create (at least) one piece of generative art everyday… right, everyday starting from the 1st day of 2011. Quite similar to what Keith Peters did some time ago (art from code). The process is pretty fun once I had got used to start my day by coding some art.

Accidentally I found setCircleResolution a very interesting function to play with. It controls how a circle is approximated by drawing regular polygons. Below is circles with radius increasing and resolution(number of sides of regular polygon) decreasing.

Sometimes the generating process is even more amazing than the final image.

sin/cos/tan are also interesting functions that often give you unexpected results. Below is a combination of sin and tan.

Writing recursive/iterative code is the easiest way to produce complex graphics with few lines of code. Spiral forms are particularly attractive, as there is a point of focus.

With some modifications, it looks like some kind of rose.

Below is my favorite piece at the moment. I used physaxe for physics simulation. Thousands of particles(in fact, tiny circles) are shot from outside of the canvas, producing trails of blue. When they collides, some red will be drawn, which look like sparks. The generating process is recorded, you can find it on youtube.

Finally, all the codes of the above pieces are open source, can be found in the description of individual flickr/youtube page. I’ll post some more interesting ones next month.

PS. Nicolas Barradeau is producing a series of basics in generative art in his blog, which contains a lot of useful codes in AS3. Be sure to check it out if you’re interested in generating some art!