Perlin Particle 02

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perlinParticle02_movie04
Originally uploaded by warpcat

It's been a while since I've been in Processing, but it's good to be back. Lately, most of my time has been taken up learning the Harmonica ;)

I started out trying to make a particle system to render snow falling. And I actually had pretty good results (post on that later). But in the process I wanted to add a bit of "randomness" to the snowflakes, so I started investigating Perlin noise.

In this linked movie, you can see the background cycle through the different noise maps:

• The first background (in color), is the combined map, which is the 'x-map' in the red channel, the 'y-map' in the green channel, and the 'z-map' (speed) in the blue channel.
• The second background is the "x-map": Lighter values move particle the the right, darker values move particle to the left.
• The third background is the "y-map": Lighter values move the particles up, and darker values move the particles down.
• The fourth background is the 'speed map' Lighter values speed the particles up, darker values slow the particues down.
• The fifth background is... no background at all.
• And finally, it loops back to the first background.

When the sketch starts, it generates the x, y, & z maps (each based on random Perlin noise) and saves them to an off-screen buffer. Then as the sketch runs, the particle queries its position on each map, and modifies its position based on the above rules.

If I get a chance to advance the code, I'm going to try to have it calculate the noise on the fly (rather than pre-generating it and saving it as multiple maps) allowing me to animate the noise over time, giving it an even more varied look.

Find source code on my Processing Wiki
Find three other movies on Flickr

Learning Harmonica...

My grandfather could play the harmonica. And the accordion. In fact, I have his instruments, although they are in a bit of disrepair. I used to play harmonica with my old roomates back in LA, in the mid-90's. But that faded over time. Decided to finally get back into it.

Other than picking up a nice Lee Oscar Major Diatonic in the key of C, I found a swell instructional book that has both a CD, and a DVD. The DVD is great, since it visually shows the holes being played as the music is going on.

I personally like the concept of the harmonica being that it's such a small insturment: Easy to take with you, fun to play, and enjoyable to play with others. Only problem is it cuts into my other project time...

Progressive Beginner Harmonica @ www.learnToPlayMusic.com

Processing 1.0 released!

http://processing.org/
Not that I've had a chance to use it yet, but 1.0 is finally out. I'm looking forward to see why this one finally got the "1.0" badge :)

Processing Monsters

Picture 1.png
Originally uploaded by mb09

Ran across some of this stuff in Flickr, which took me to the main site:
http://rmx.cz/monsters/
Cool simple interaction in Processing with "monsters". Source code available, good resource.

Bad curves

The animation lead on my team started cursing this morning. When I went over to his cube, he showed me these animation curves in Maya's Graph Editor. This was an animation he was asked to "fix"...

The horror....

"A tiny plastic box! I must put my head in it!"

The original post is over here.
But I just had to host this video. The funniest part is, by the end the cat seems to be totally fine with its situation.

Dead Space is live!

As of yesterday, Dead Space, the last product I worked on, has gone out on the shelves. It's getting great reviews!
http://deadspace.ea.com/
As of right now on Metacritic, it's getting a 90 on PS3, and 89 on Xbox 360. The PC version should be out on the 21st I believe. It's currently the 8th highest ranked PS3 game of all time on Metacritic, not bad!
There's a new trailer on the main site link above. Gives is a "movie trailer" feel.

If you're wondering, my roll on the game was "Technical Character Director". I created and\or supervised the creation of the overall technical character pipeline from art to engine: Character\creature\weapon\prop rigging, skinning, building, export, and a lot of animation tools. Basically, if you see it move in-game, I had some part in it.