Confetti is the latest Javascript feature on CAN, created by Patrik Svensson. If you click on the button at the top right corner the script will be activated.

Patrick explains: There are two types of confetti, the traditional pieces of ‘paper’ and a ribbon type that wiggles its way down the screen. The ribbon confetti uses a physics simulation for the motion while the paper confetti is animated using sine functions.

Many thanks to Patrik for his submission.

metervara.net/blog/ | metervara.net/cover/1-Confetti/

If you’d like to submit your own, see this page for more info.

Created by Angus Forbes, FluidAutomata is an interactive fluid dynamics application for the iPhone and iPad. It let’s you create dynamic interactive abstract composition using multitouch, sliders and camera. It uses a custom fluid engine that Angus created and a GPU-accelerated version of Line Integral Convolution for the visualization of the fluids.

To begin using Fluid Automata, simply start touching the screen. Creative control of the fluid system is available through a set of pop-up menus and a set of ten slider. You can adjust the color palette by loading in a photo, by turning on the front or back video camera, by choosing a texture of random colors, or by choosing one of the many presets. Once the main color palette is loaded, use the left sliders to adjust the contrast, the brightness, the saturation, and the amount of blending between the original colors and the colors swirled around by the fluids. You can use the right sliders to control various aspects of the fluid itself. Below are images of the main user interface, the color and fluid sliders, and the popup menus accessible from the toolbar. The toolbar and sliders can be hidden at anytime by double-tapping anywhere on the screen. To bring back the controls, simply double-tap the screen again. Detailed instructions are always available by pressing the “?” button on the left hand side of the toolbar.

Mor info is available at fluidautomata.com

+ See more examples on Angus’ flickr.

Platform: iPhone/iPad (Universal)
Version: 1.01
Cost: $1.99
Developer: Angus Forbes

Angus is a media artist and researcher currently affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara where he is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media Arts & Technology department.

Created by Anthony Mattox, Pulsus for iPad is a game in which players must solve puzzles by arranging objects in order to move particles from an emitter into goal points. The game is in part about solving puzzles, but also about exploring and understanding a dynamic, engaging, system.

The game has been completely rebuilt from the ground up in native Objective C and C++. The original game we wrote about few months back first appeared as Flash online version created using AS3 (available at pulsusgame.com). It has grown in every way possible, Anthony writes.

It’s found a new home on a wonderful device, has fully redrawn graphics, a new soundtrack, improved physics, a much improved interface, and a suite of new objects and levels on the way. Pulsus for iPad takes the creative game mechanics to a new level of refinement, creating a mesmerizing visual and aural experience.

Visit the new Pulsus page for more information and screenshots. The app is initially only available for the iPad but will be coming to the rest of the iOS family later this summer.

All type set in Apex Sans by Thirstype. Sounds created with Ableton Live and Adobe Soundbooth. Original Flash game uses sounds developed using Pure Dataand Audacity.

Platform: iPad
Version: 1.0
Cost: $3.99
Developer: Anthony Mattox

(video below shows is of the flash version)

mis.shap.en.ness are the latest experiments by Reza Ali who we have covered on CAN a number of times in the past. The images below were created with a processing utilizing springs and particles. The program allows you to enter a string, then that string’s type is traced out, rendering its outline. Using the outlines consisting of points allow these points to be transformed into particles, connected (via springs) to other particles in their proximity creating mesmerising effects of leaking geometry.

The springs apply force fo the particles which keeps them together and also apart. Then gravity is applied to these particles, which causes wet paint-like drips to form in the image (when the background of the image is not cleared of course). I interact with the decomposition of the text’s form via the mouse (soon to be the touch screen of an iPad). This interaction pushes particles away from the mouse’s position in such a way, that it resembles paint splattering on a canvas or a pseudo Jackson Pollock effect. The process of creating the image is fun, and really where the magic happens, where you can see the decomposition process unfold before your eyes.

Although no download of the app is available, as with most Reza’s experiments expect this to appear soon.

More info on syedrezaali.com and also keep an eye on his flickr.

See also:
A Drifting Up [Processing] – Audio reactive piece by Reza Ali ..
Superformula | CreativeApplications.Net
BioRhythm [openFrameworks, Mac] – glsl noise distortion in …
Lormalized [Processing, Mac, Windows] – Lorenz + 25k particles …

and

Jacob’s Cave [Cinder] by David Wicks

For the last month Victor Martins has been exploring what is possible with Microsoft Kinect by simulating cloth behaviour using Processing. It all started off with simple surface with plastic-type shader applied to it. These experiments quickly progressed to trying shadows and gamma correction control, tweeking parameters and finally rendering fur on top of cloth skin. The results are very impressive videos of Victor interacting in real time with quite realistic cloth like surfaces.

Whilst this is still work in progress and we expect to see much more from Victor, please enjoy the collection of clips, ordered by oldest to newest.

Previously:
Graffiti Viscosity [Processing] #GML by @victamin …
Kinect – OpenSource [News] – amazing work created within a few …
Kinect – One Week Later [Processing, oF, Cinder, MaxMSP] – Now …
…and many more Kinect examples collected by us here.

(hmm) Kinect Cloth Shaper from Victor Martins on Vimeo.

Cloth simulation with kinect depthmap

(hmm) Kinect Cloth Skin from Victor Martins on Vimeo.

Cloth simulation and kinect #2

(hmm) Kinect Cloth Skin #2 from Victor Martins on Vimeo.

Now with shadows and gamma correction control.

(hmm) Kinect Cloth Skin #3 from Victor Martins on Vimeo.

Changing parameters (and another try for better encoding quality).

Furry furry from Victor Martins on Vimeo.

Rendering fur on top of cloth skin

Below is a collection of ‘Wind Tunnel’ experiments created by Jason McDermott. The openFrameworks application uses Memo Akten’s MSAFluids library (part of MSALibs) which has recently been updated and also ported to Cinder. I have included most of Jason’s movies below showing the development from the first MSAFluid example to the latest experiments simulating wind tunnel scenario. Of course, we don’t expect these to be used to airplane design anytime soon but they are absolutely wonderful to look at …and play with (thanks Jason).

Jason writes:
The first versions used the ofVertex(x,y) method to draw a bezier curve, describing a shape outline to locate the forces – which was useful for doing simple outlines of physical objects – but fell short of simulating pseudo-3D objects. This latest version includes a series of points which describe a field of forces, as depicted by the grid of cyan pixels.

Jason McDermott is an architecture graduate, design tutor and an interactivation design researcher. Jason now works at Arup in Informatics with Dan Hill (aka cityofsound).

MSA Fluids (OpenFrameworks) from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.

MSA fluids demo application, using sample code and made in openFrameworks. Rendered using the ofxMovieSaver addon, see here for more

Wind Tunnel Sim (openframeworks) from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.

Test rendering of a wind tunnel sim, using Memo Aktens MSA Fluid lib. An invisible sphere is located in the wind tunnel, surrounded by a simple particle flow visualisation.

Wind-Tunnel simulation (openframeworks) from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.

Early test for a wind-tunnel simulator, built in OpenFrameworks and using the MSAFluids library. This test uses 9 forces to push particles across the screen. Voticity confinement is turned on, also note the colour cycling on each force position.

Update: I’ve since discovered a better technique is to manipulate the fluid cells themselves using the ” int index = fluidSolver.getIndexForCellPosition(forcePosX,forcePosY);
fluidSolver.u[index]+= 0.001;”
method.

Wind Tunnel simulation (Openframeworks) from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.

Wind tunnel sim, made with Openframeworks using Memo’s awesome MSA Fluids library. Wing shape can be deformed and modified live, along with wind speed and object ‘force’.

Next steps will include more complicated shapes, ‘completed’ beziers and a few more controls.

Wind Tunnel Simulator V3 from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.

The latest version of my wind tunnel sim, this time round I’ve included draggable handles on a completed polygon made from bezier curves.

Fun!

Next steps? I’d like to combine this with something like box2d to get all points within the polygon creating a force on the fluid (not just the outline). Not sure what else, perhaps a centroid with angle of attack for the object.

Created by Peder Norrby of Trapcode, Vortex.A is his personal experiment with fluid dynamics: how liquids and gases behave – a classically difficult problem in physics/maths. Instead of adopting the available solutions for specific cases, Peder has been trying out his own approach and as a result making some pretty promising animations. The app visualizes the flow by emitting particles where you touch the screen (multi-touch works) and the fluid itself is also affected by touch. The lines are so called “pathlines” that trace the particles’ paths over time.

He will also be bringing it to VFX/motion graphics artists as a tool for fluid dynamics animations in the future. For those unaware, Peder is the author of the very popular Trapcode Suite plugins for Adobe After Effects, seen in many movies such as Terminator Salvation, Angels and Demons, Sin City, Spider Man 3, Quantum of Solace and more..

See also ProLoop, iPhone audio loop playing and sound experimentation app from Trapcode we covered few months ago.

Platform: iPhone/iPad
Version: 1.0
Cost: $0.99
Developer: Trapcode

G is a Gravitation simulator designed for iPad /iPhone created by Oriol Ferrer Mesià. G allows you to quickly experiment the effects of the Universal Gravitation by adding bodies into the simulation, seeing how they react to each other in real time.

The app allows you can change the speed and the value of the Gravitational Constant which factors how strongly each body attracts other bodies. The placement, the mass and the initial velocity of the newly added bodies will dictate how “successful” your system will be. Bodies will collide in G so if one of your bodies hits another body, they will merge into a single body. The physics implemented in G follow “Newton’s Laws of Universal Gravitation“, which states that every massive particle in the universe attracts every other massive particle with a force which is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Luckily you don’t have to worry about the math, just click away and create your play in your own universe. Highly meditative.

made with openFrameworks.

Platform: iPad/iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $1.99
Developer: Oriol Ferrer Mesià

Andreas has finally found time to come back to the wonderful personal project he has been working on for some time now. I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce it to CAN readers, considering I have been closely following the development. While most of the project is still at theoretical/simulation stage, physical and digital elements are coming together and I just couldn’t resist not to share them with you.

The project started with a simple task in mind, to build a “Machine To Keep A Feather In The Air”. Using openFrameworks, Andreas first created a simulation, utilising 16 servos with a fan that are able to tilt in multiple axis, responding to the location of the feather.

The idea is that the “balloon” here will later be replaced by a vision system that tracks the object in real life and passes the information along to the simulation, some of the same rules should apply with tuning that system, such as for instance “don’t blow on the object if it is moving upwards” and “ignore the object unless it is below a certain height”.

The next part of the project was to develop part of the software to track the feather. Using two cameras one for XY and one for Z the image below shows the mapping of feather position in 3d space.

Here for debugging I’m using the same video on both, a short clip of peach I tied one a piece of string, but I need to set up a small test bed for this soon.
A bit of filtering and you have yourself the blob you are interested in and can transform from the camera positions into virtual space. The exact filtering steps will probably change later, now I get away with just some thresholding and erosion.

The video below shows a servo fan hooked up to openFrameworks. Clicking on each fan within the application makes the physical fan behave as in the simulation.

The next step was to build a mount for the motor shown here and attach it to the servos. To do this, considering there is 16 of these, Andreas used “Sable 2015″ CNC machine he got of eBay allowing him to create identical parts for the servos. The machine itself doesn’t have a big range but all in all it was under £1000, with taxes, shipping, dremel, random drill bits, etc etc.

Below, the idea was to use the POSIT algorithm in OpenCV to align a model of a floor ( for the algorithm, a cube) with known points in his image. This gives Andreas the camera parameters without having to align a grid on the floor by hand, which apparently proved to be a bit of a pain. Once he has the OpenGL camera transform that matches the real space, he can project the 2D point into 3D space, doing it from two angles to give him a 3D position.

Today, Andreas posted this clip on Flickr, showing an early version of a master control program. What you see below is the demo of a physical ball being held in the air on a string, motion tracked by the software with corresponding fans reacting to it’s location.

I am extremely excited to see where the project will end up. Until now, the sheer magnitude of something that might have seem simple at first is beging to reveal itself. Whilst working with software may be challenging enough, the physical component can be highly unpredictable. Building objects that behave as expected is very hard to achieve, making software that corresponds and responds to physical effects can be even harder. It is nevertheless wonderful to see this project develop and rest assured we will post once again when Andreas hits the next milestone which we hope will be soon.

To find out more about Andreas’ work, check out hahakid.net, his flickr and nanikawa.com.

Created as the result of Jörg Piringer’s ongoing research, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz is a sound toy and a performance tool. You can play with the letter-creatures and watch and listen how they interact with each other or use them to produce soundscapes like you would with an electronic musical instrument.

Create and control tiny sound-creatures in the shape of letters that react to gravity or each other and generate rhythms and soundscapes. Dive into a micro world of sounds, movement and touch. But beware! Using this app might change your daily reading and talking experience.

Jörg Piringer is a musician, poet and media artist living in vienna, austria. He is a member of the vegetable orchestra and the institute for transacoustic research. He works as a freelance artist and researcher in the fields of electronic music, radio art, sound and visual electronic poetry, online communities, live performance, sound installation, computer games and video art.

You can read more about jörg by visiting http://joerg.piringer.net

(made with openFrameworks)

Jörg was also very kind to send us 3 promocodes for our readers. If you would like one, leave a comment below and if you are one of first 3 comments, it’s yours!

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: $0.99
Developer: joerg piringer