Concept
Forms in motion, interact spontaneously, knitting emergent interconnections.
Moving through scales, evoking natural forms:
Tech
The visuals are an emergent physical system of interacting particles.
At the core of this effect, each particle leaves a trace of its velocity in the velocity field, which in turn affects the velocity of particles passing through that field. This simple interaction at the individual scale gives rise to the complex organic forms at the collective scale, without explicit control or guidance.Fluid Simulation for Video Games, by Dr. Michael J. Gourlay for Intel — this is kind of a simpler advection, showing some fluid-like properties.
Stochastic noise also drives the process — to set it in motion, and to shape it through scales and forms with more control (increasing, cycling wavelengths of noise).
Noise is used here as a way to guide and direct the general motion of the particles, for animation.
An optical flow process is performed on the camera, so the motion of the particles is influenced by people moving naturally in front of their camera. I like this kind of natural interaction (as with the micophone interaction), lowering the barrier between you and the experience.Thomas DieWald
and
Adam Ferris
for some nice examples of this technique.
Controls
Explore through mouse, keyboard, touch, camera, microphone, and controls.
Main controls
Main settings and controls can be found in the edit panel, which appears at the right side of the screen.
Keyboard — main controls
The main keyboard controls - most of these can also be found in the edit panel.
Also, create your own animation with keyframes.
H — Toggle the edit panel on or off<space> — Play/pause[ — Seek backwards] — Seek forwardsF — FullscreenO — Clear the view0 — Flow preset1 — Wings preset2 — Fluid preset3 — Flow only preset4 — Noise only preset5 — Sea preset6 — Petri preset7 — Turbulence preset8 — Rorschach preset9 — Funhouse preset\ — Reset particles (keyframe)<shift> — Respawn particles (keyframe)' — Spawn particles from flow (keyframe); — Spawn particles from fastest (keyframe), — Spawn particles from form (keyframe)/ — Spawn particles from sampled image (keyframe). — Spawn particles from image (keyframe)<enter> — Keyframe current state at current time<backspace> — Delete last keyframe
Keyboard — editing controls
While holding any of the settings keys down, change them with the adjustment keys.
Settings keys:
` — Set rootNumP — Set autoClearViewQ — Set forceWeightA — Set flowWeightW — Set noiseWeightS — Set flowDecayD — Set flowWidthE — Set noiseScaleR — Set noiseSpeedZ — Set dampingX — Set speedLimitN — Set speedAlphaM — Set lineWidth<control> — hold and press another key to re-assign to current state
Adjustment keys:
- — Adjust setting, small decrease= — Adjust setting, small increase<down> — Adjust setting, medium decrease<up> — Adjust setting, medium increase<left> — Adjust setting, large decrease<right> — Adjust setting, large increase<caps-lock> — Reset setting to default<escape> — Reset setting to default (keyframe)