Morphing Spheres and Phyllotactic Spirals
#047 - Creative Coding / Generative Arts Weekly
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It's a great time to be a creator. Trust your creativity. -Ron Howard
Have you seen this:
This was the first computer-generated portrait in 1968 of William Norris created by Walter Allner. It was drawn on a CalComp Plotter using a Control Data Computer 3200.
Also, many of these resources are geared toward 3D-generated pieces.
Have a great week!
Chris Ried
P.S. Eventually, I’ll get back into the swing of things and post more content. I’ve been spending a bunch of time collecting a bunch of resources and putting an interface to them. Here is a little taste of them. Let me know if you have more thoughts, but I am excited about where this is going.
🔖 Articles and Tutorials
The Art of John Edmark
What do plants know about numbers? A certain spiral pattern commonly seen in sunflowers, pinecones, and many species of cacti contains some surprising numerical properties. In this brisk talk, Paul Dancstep investigates this pattern through several kinetic sculptures by artist John Edmark. These mesmerizing artworks provide a number of insights into the mathematical lives of plants.
A Review of Shader Languages
A review of the state of the art in real time graphics shading languages and compilers in both graphics and compute. What are some of the differences between HLSL, GLSL, MSL, and WGSL? What are some ways to transpile shaders?
The post gets a little more into the weeds of the various languages used to talk to graphics cards. These are lower-level languages than a javascript library. However, there are always advantages to understanding the chain down. It provides an opportunity to help find what is possible.
Making a Morphing 3D Sphere in Javascript with Three.js
I love 3d effects on the internet, and they’re increasingly all over the place. They can add an extra dimension to a website that helps to catch a user’s attention. I have previously covered 3d effects with the WebGL cards I made, but in this guide I wanted to create a morphing sphere with a cool, wireframe background. The effect is kind of hypnotising, so it has every chance of keeping users on your page for longer!
Blender Tutorial: Noise Advection with Geometry Nodes
Advecting points through vector fields is often handy for different purposes. It can be used to visualize noise fields or vector volumes or just to create some beautiful abstracted graphics. Follow Manuel in this tutorial, while he hacks Geometry Nodes to make iterative advection along vectors possible.
Entagma: Procedural Design Tutorials
I’ve been looking around at 3D packages/software to understand the landscape of tools. I’ve been amazed at how niche some of these communities are and continue to find these treasure troves of exciting techniques. So check out their content, and if you like it enough, here is their Patreon.
Houdini Tutorials Tailored for Mathematicians
The aim is to enable you to run your own geometry related algorithms while taking advantage of Houdini’s excellent visual graphics while avoiding to dig deep into the theory behind it.
Found there to be some pretty inspiring work.
Simulating the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in Python
The Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction is a classical example of a non-equibrium chemical oscillator in which the components exhibit periodic changes in concentration.
The post is more mathematical; however, the actual algorithm is interesting to look at and implement.
Artificial Life (Simulation & Code)
A simple program to simulate primitive Artificial Life using simple rules of attraction or repulsion among atom-like particles, producing complex self-organzing life-like patterns. Excluding the GUI elements, the code is less than a page. The video tutorial and walkthrough are available below.
📚Courses
Creative Coding 2.0 in JS: Animation, Sound, & Color
Coding is like solving puzzles; it's a constant cycle of learning, mistakes, and iteration that can be used to create something beautiful. Bruno Imbrizi is an award-winning graphic designer who has devoted the past 10 years of his career to mastering the art of creative coding.
He uses JavaScript to produce animations, prints, interactive pieces, and more which have seen him collaborate with brands including Google, Spotify, and Nike, and win awards including the Adobe Cutting Edge Award and FITC Best Digital Installation..
This is Bruno’s second Domestika course. In his first, Creative Coding: Making Visuals with JavaScript, he teaches you the essentials of programming and drawing with code from scratch.