tutorial Archives - Page 4 of 9

Interactive Generative Art Series – 04 – anchor

Posted on February 7, 2011August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

Thanks for keeping up with this random generative art series. I know I’m having a ball just playing with code one step at a time. To watch each iteration, I was getting tired of drawing with my mouse to see the generative art, and as others had pointed out, in order for it to truly be generative, it shouldn’t depend on me moving my mouse. So instead of using the mouse position as my target anchor, I created a new node named anchor. This anchor I’m animating with simple random brownian motion which I’ve blogged about before. It just meanders along the stage as it pleases and the other ball will “chase” it just like it chased your mouse in the previous examples. The part that gets exciting is that my anchor wraps from one side of the stage to the other, while the ball does not. One second it’s target is far right and the next it switches to far left, this makes for some really interesting paths and lines. Experiment with the velocity of the anchor in lines 47 + 48 to see interesting effects. One thing I’m beginning to notice however is the performance of the little app gets a bit slower the longer you let it run, perhaps I didn’t realize it before since I didn’t have the attention to keep moving my mouse and watching it follow, now that it truly is generative (and less interactive btw), I watch it longer (seems kind of backwards to what I’d expect).

Note: in this example I have the anchor ball visible, as well as the other ball, but for an actual production, I’d have them both hidden and the lines just appearing. I prefer it that way but though you’d better see what was actually happening with them visible, even though it kills some of the magic. It’s like watching a magic trick when you already know how it’s done.

04 Anchor, play here

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ replaceId=”gen-art-4″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2011/02/gen-art-04-anchor.swf” width=”550″ height=”550″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Please visit the blog article to view this interactive flash content. Flash plug-in required:

[/kml_flashembed]

actionscript source code

[cc lang=”actionscript”]
var ball:Sprite = new Sprite();
ball.graphics.beginFill(0x000000, 0);
ball.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 5);
ball.graphics.endFill();
addChild(ball);

var anchor:Sprite = new Sprite();

anchor.graphics.beginFill(0x333333, 0);
anchor.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 12);
anchor.graphics.endFill();
addChild(anchor);

var div:Number = .1;
var line_max_width:Number = 42;
var line_min_width:Number = 2;
var line_width:Number = randomRange(line_min_width, line_max_width);
var line_width_velocity:Number = 0;
var dampen:Number = 0.95;

var ballax:Number = 0;
var ballay:Number = 0;
var oldx:Number = ball.x;
var oldy:Number = ball.y;

var anchorvx:Number = 0;
var anchorvy:Number = 0;

anchor.x = stage.stageWidth/2;
anchor.y = stage.stageHeight/2;

var colors:Object = new Object();
colors.r = 0;
colors.g = 122;
colors.b = 255;
colors.rv = 0;
colors.gv = 0;
colors.bv = 0;
colors.min = 0;
colors.max = 200;
var color_first:Number = 0xFFFFFF;
var color_second:Number = rgb2hex(colors.r, colors.g, colors.b);
var gradientBoxMatrix:Matrix = new Matrix();

function loop ()
{
oldx = ball.x;
oldy = ball.y;

anchorvx += randomRangeAxis(2);
anchorvy += randomRangeAxis(2);

anchor.x += anchorvx;
anchor.y += anchorvy;

anchorvx *= dampen;
anchorvy *= dampen;

if(anchor.x > stage.stageWidth) {
anchor.x = 0 – anchor.width;
}
else if(anchor.x < 0 – anchor.width) { anchor.x = stage.stageWidth; } if(anchor.y > stage.stageHeight) {
anchor.y = 0 – anchor.height;
}
else if(anchor.y < 0 – anchor.height) { anchor.y = stage.stageHeight; } ball.x -= ballax = (ballax + (ball.x – anchor.x) * div) * .9; ball.y -= ballay = (ballay + (ball.y – anchor.y) * div) * .9; line_width_velocity += randomRangeAxis(1); line_width += line_width_velocity; line_width_velocity *= dampen; if(line_width > line_max_width) {
line_width = line_max_width;
line_width_velocity = 0;
}
else if (line_width < line_min_width) {
line_width = line_min_width;
line_width_velocity = 0;
}

color_step();
color_first = color_second;
color_second = rgb2hex(colors.r, colors.g, colors.b);

var dx:Number = ball.x – oldx;
var dy:Number = ball.y – oldy;
this.graphics.lineStyle(line_width);
gradientBoxMatrix.createGradientBox(Math.abs(dx), Math.abs(dy), Math.atan2(dy,dx), Math.min(oldx, ball.x), Math.min(oldy, ball.y));
this.graphics.lineGradientStyle(GradientType.LINEAR, [color_first, color_second], [1,1], [85, 170], gradientBoxMatrix);
this.graphics.lineTo(ball.x, ball.y);
}

setInterval(loop, 1000/30);
function rgb2hex(r:Number, g:Number, b:Number):Number {
return(r<<16 | g<<8 | b); } function color_step(){ colors.rv += Math.random() * 20 – 10; colors.r += colors.rv; colors.rv *= dampen; if (colors.r > colors.max) {
colors.r = colors.max;
} else if (colors.r < colors.min){ colors.r = colors.min; } colors.gv += Math.random() * 20 – 10; colors.g += colors.gv; colors.gv *= dampen; if (colors.g > colors.max) {
colors.g = colors.max;
} else if (colors.g < colors.min){ colors.g = colors.min; } colors.bv += Math.random() * 20 – 10; colors.b += colors.bv; colors.bv *= dampen; if (colors.b > colors.max) {
colors.b = colors.max;
} else if (colors.b < colors.min){
colors.b = colors.min;
}
}
//random number between min and max
function randomRange(max:Number, min:Number = 0):Number {
return Math.random() * (max – min) + min;
}
//random number range centered at 0 with the specified max, randomRange(-max, max)
function randomRangeAxis(max:Number):Number {
return Math.random() * (max * 2) – max;
}

[/cc]

download

swf and fla source file.

Interactive Generative Art Series – 03 – Gradient Colors

Posted on February 4, 2011August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

With the full range of colors randomly available to me, I wanted to get a more fluid randomly created color. I see the hard line breaking one color from the next in the generative art 02 random color experiment. I wanted to have the lines drawn between my 2 points to be a gradient of two colors rather than solid color followed by solid color. In this attempt at a smoother color transition, I needed to better understand the gradientBoxMatrix and createGradientBox. I knew visually what I wanted to accomplish but had to brush up on the docs and then experiment a bit to get the math right. The hard line color change still shows in places, but it’s only when one line is short enough and then is overwritten by the beginning of the next line, so technically it’s doing what I intended, but visually it’s still not as gradual as I was wanting. I could toy a bit more with the rate of color change, but I feel pretty accomplished after having figured out that trigonometry and arc-tangent.

03 Gradient Color, play here

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ replaceId=”genart-3″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2011/02/gen-art-03-gradient-color.swf” width=”550″ height=”550″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Please visit the blog article to view this interactive flash content. Flash plug-in required:

[/kml_flashembed]

actionscript source code

[cc lang=”actionscript”]
var ball:Sprite = new Sprite();

ball.graphics.beginFill(0x333333, 1);
ball.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 30);
ball.graphics.endFill();
addChild(ball);

var oldx:Number = ball.x;
var oldy:Number = ball.y;

var div:Number = .1;

var ax:Number = 0;
var ay:Number = 0;

var line_max_width:Number = 75;
var line_min_width:Number = 5;
var line_width:Number = randomRange(line_min_width, line_max_width);
var line_width_velocity:Number = 0;
var dampen:Number = 0.95;

var colors:Object = new Object();
colors.r = 0;
colors.g = 122;
colors.b = 255;
colors.rv = 0;
colors.gv = 0;
colors.bv = 0;
colors.min = 0;
colors.max = 155;
var color_first:Number = 0x000000;
var color_second:Number = rgb2hex(colors.r, colors.g, colors.b);
var gradientBoxMatrix:Matrix = new Matrix();

function loop () {
oldx = ball.x;
oldy = ball.y;

ball.x -= ax = (ax + (ball.x – mouseX) * div) * .9;
ball.y -= ay = (ay + (ball.y – mouseY) * div) * .9;

line_width_velocity += randomRangeAxis(3);
line_width += line_width_velocity;
line_width_velocity *= dampen;
if(line_width > line_max_width) { line_width = line_max_width; }
if (line_width < line_min_width) { line_width = line_min_width; }

color_first = color_second;
color_step();
color_second = rgb2hex(colors.r, colors.g, colors.b);

setInterval(loop, 1000/30);

download

Here’s the gen-art-03-gradient-color.swf and gen-art-03-gradient-color.fla.

Resources

Interactive Generative Art Series – 02 – Random Color

Posted on February 1, 2011August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

With this example we’re taking a look at having randomly changing color. I liked the limits to the color in the last post, but couldn’t help myself and wanted to see it with the full range of colors to command. Also, I wasn’t a huge fan when the color would “wrap” and jump from one color to the next so fast. I wanted to use the same velocity (rate of change) principle from the line width experiment but apply it to color, and have it meander aimlessly among all colors. I created a color object to store a value for each of the RGB color values, and then had each element of the color change independently. I didn’t want to complicate my loop function so I made a new function that is called from loop that steps along to a color which should be pretty close to the previous color. I enjoy the range, but as I expected it was a bit much, or too many colors at once, also the step is a bit too fast at times it seems.

02 Color, play here

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2011/02/gen-art-02-color.swf” width=”550″ height=”550″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Please visit the blog article to view this interactive flash content. Flash plug-in required:

[/kml_flashembed]

actionscript source code

[cc lang=”actionscript”]
var ball:Sprite = new Sprite();

ball.graphics.beginFill(0x333333, 1);
ball.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 30);
ball.graphics.endFill();
addChild(ball);

var div:Number = .1;

var ax:Number = 0;
var ay:Number = 0;

var line_max_width:Number = 50;
var line_min_width:Number = 0;
var line_width:Number = Math.random() * line_max_width;
var line_width_velocity:Number = 0;
var dampen:Number = 0.95;

var colors:Object = new Object();
colors.r = 0;
colors.g = 0;
colors.b = 255;
colors.rv = 0;
colors.gv = 0;
colors.bv = 0;

function loop () {
ball.x -= ax = (ax + (ball.x – mouseX) * div) * .9;
ball.y -= ay = (ay + (ball.y – mouseY) * div) * .9;

line_width_velocity += Math.random() * 6 – 3;
line_width += line_width_velocity;
line_width_velocity *= dampen;
if(line_width > line_max_width) { line_width = line_max_width; }
if (line_width < line_min_width) { line_width = line_min_width; }

color_step();

this.graphics.lineStyle(line_width, rgb2hex(colors.r, colors.g, colors.b), 1);
this.graphics.lineTo(ball.x, ball.y);
}

setInterval(loop, 1000/30);

Download

View the swf and get the fla here

Interactive Generative Art Series – 01 – Color

Posted on January 31, 2011August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

After updating the line width to be still random, but more of a gradual step in variation (in the first experiment in this series), the second most obvious edit to the original in this generative art series is the color of the line. While it would be pretty simple to update the code to use any one solid color in place of the black, I wanted the color to vary over time. The simplest way I know to achieve this is to create a variable to hold the color value (as a number) and then change it over time. So here, I have a color chosen at random and just increment it every time the loop function executes by 1024. I chose this amount because it would loop through and eventually get back to where it started while restricting the color scheme. I think it brings a lot to the design to have color – and I especially like how it randomly creates a color scheme and sticks to it. Totally random colors may look a bit much, while problematically it’s not too difficult to get, it may be difficult to look at once it’s created. Above are a few screen shots of the random colors generated:

01 Color, play here

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ replaceId=”gen-art-01″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2011/01/gen-art-01-color.swf” width=”550″ height=”550″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Please visit the blog article to view this interactive flash content. Flash plug-in required:

[/kml_flashembed]

Source Code

[cc lang=”actionscript”]
var ball:Sprite = new Sprite();

ball.graphics.beginFill(0x333333, 1);
ball.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 30);
ball.graphics.endFill();
addChild(ball);

var div:Number = .1;

var ax:Number = 0;
var ay:Number = 0;

var line_max_width:Number = 50;
var line_min_width:Number = 0;
var line_width:Number = Math.random() * line_max_width;
var line_width_velocity:Number = 0;
var dampen:Number = 0.95;

var color:Number = Math.floor(Math.random() * 16777215);

function loop () {
ball.x -= ax = (ax + (ball.x – mouseX) * div) * .9;
ball.y -= ay = (ay + (ball.y – mouseY) * div) * .9;

setInterval(loop, 1000/30);
[/cc]
You’ll see if you’re following along that this only add 2 lines of code from the last version. We simply create and instantiate (with a random value) the color variable and then apply it in place of the black to the lineStyle and simultaneously increment it. Check the example swf here and get the fla here.

Interactive Generative Flash Art Series – 00 – Line Width

Posted on January 28, 2011August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

After seeing the source code in the original experiment, I found myself wanting to play with the code. I saw many elements of the lines and actions that could be interesting to explore. This is the first in a series, of experiments I’ll post starting from this code and pushing different things each time. They’ll start slow and simple, like this one. All I’m doing is adding a few lines of code. The first thing I wanted to see from the original was a more gradual step in the width of the line. Here are a few screenshots from this iteration:

Play here

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ replaceId=”gen-art-00″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2011/01/gen-art-00-line-width.swf” width=”550″ height=”550″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Please visit the blog article to view this interactive flash content. Flash plug-in required:

[/kml_flashembed]

Source Code

[cc lang=”actionscript”]
var ball:Sprite = new Sprite();
ball.graphics.beginFill(0x333333, 1);
ball.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 30);
ball.graphics.endFill();
addChild(ball);

var div:Number = .1;
var ax:Number = 0;
var ay:Number = 0;

var line_max_width:Number = 30;
var line_min_width:Number = 0;
var line_width:Number = Math.random() * line_max_width;
var line_width_velocity:Number = 0;
var dampen:Number = 0.95;

function loop () {
ball.x -= ax = (ax + (ball.x – mouseX) * div) * .9;
ball.y -= ay = (ay + (ball.y – mouseY) * div) * .9;

line_width_velocity += Math.random() * 4 – 2;
line_width += line_width_velocity;
line_width_velocity *= dampen;
if(line_width > line_max_width) { line_width = line_max_width; }
if (line_width < line_min_width) { line_width = line_min_width; }
this.graphics.lineStyle(line_width, 0, 1);
this.graphics.lineTo(ball.x, ball.y);
}

setInterval(loop, 1000/30);
[/cc]

Method Explained

If you need a little walk through on my method to achieve this, all I did was create a variable to hold my line width, and the line width velocity (or rate of change). Every frame the line velocity grows or shrinks randomly and is applied to the line width variable. I apply a dampen to the velocity so it doesn’t get too out of hand and then set some limits to the line width. Pretty simple and it applies the same method of applying velocity to an object to make it move, but this velocity is being applied to a property of the object (width) that may not be as obvious as position. This still gives an effect of random width to the lines, but they are randomly widening and thinning, rather than just having random widths. It gives it a more fluid appearance. Any other ways you would use to achieve the same effect?

Download

Here’s the swf in action as well as the fla.

Interactive Generative Flash Art Series Intro

Posted on January 27, 2011August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

The world has been excited by html5/css3 recently and has been pushing limits and experimenting. It’s been exciting and funny at the same time – most of the things that are amazing people in html5 experiments have been done 5 years ago in flash. I’ve enjoyed it so much though because it has brought me back to what made me fall for flash initially: sites like levitated.net and yugop.com. People that wrote books about programming actionscript like Keith Peters, Jim Bumgardener Colin Moock, Robert Penner etc… and then art by people like Erik Natzke. I’m a geek and these guys are some of my heros (and don’t think that list is exhausted, I’ve got plenty of unmentioned flash heros), but not just because they could/can do what they do, but because they selflessly (open source-ly) taught me how to do some of it. The magic of creating something so engaging, responsive, animated, unique, random. Little experiments that feel like they contain so much life and are so lightweight -easily less than 10,240 bytes (read 10kb). I knew in high school trig and calculus that those formulas had power, but seeing it unfold and interact with it really is magical to me.

A little inspiration

So, I’ve been toying with a lot of the things that actually taught me (or at least pushed me to learn) the basics of programming. With the years experience under my belt now I’m understanding it on a totally different level and all I want to do is find more things to make balls and lines bounce, move and swirl. And I also want to share it. Well, I recently stumbled upon a flash sneak peak video by Erik Natzke about some of his technique and then his open source files and really had some fun. Anyways I wanted to share some of the experiments that came from it. Let me know your thoughts and download the code and play with it. Let me know what else you come up with and share what you learn. I’ll start this series with a post of the original experiment from Erik on his blog here, Flash Code 101.

Natzke’s Flash Code 101

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ replaceId=”alt-ball-natzke” movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2011/01/ball-natzke.swf” width=”550″ height=”550″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

Please visit the blog article to view this interactive flash content. Flash plug-in required:

[/kml_flashembed]

If it looks like greek to you, I’d suggest going to Keith Peter’s tutorials (especially the first few on gravity, easing and elasticity).

Actionscript 3

For something so fun, it’s amazing that it’s barely over a dozen lines of code.
[cc lang=”actionscript”]
var Ball:Sprite = new Sprite();
Ball.graphics.beginFill(0x333333, 1);
Ball.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 30);
Ball.graphics.endFill();
addChild(Ball);

var div:Number = .1;
var ax:Number = 0;
var ay:Number = 0;

function loop () {
Ball.x -= ax = (ax + (Ball.x – mouseX) * div) * .9;
Ball.y -= ay = (ay + (Ball.y – mouseY) * div) * .9;
this.graphics.lineStyle(Math.random()*10, 0, 1);
this.graphics.lineTo(Ball.x, Ball.y);
}

setInterval(loop, 1000/30);
[/cc]

Here’s the swf in action, or download the fla to play (if you really would rather download a file than copy 15 lines of code).

Resolution

Well, I’ll be playing with this code and others and posting the experiments with some screenshots of what I create get’s created.

Access the html page URL and swf path from flash with as3

Posted on December 16, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

To get the url of the html page that contains the flash/swf file we need a little help from the browser. I’ve written about the following methods before, but they were in as2 with “Get current url to Flash swf using an External Interface call” and “Get Current URL and Query String Parameters to Flash in as2“. In as3, we’ll still need access to javascript in the form of ExternalInterface, so if you want to do this on a site that doesn’t allow javascript you’ll have to keep searching (or jump to the bottom for an alternative method). We don’t need to do anything with the javascript or have access to the pages source code, javascript just has to be enabled, and it works in every browser I have access to. All we do is call a javascript line from within the swf which gets the url in the browser, namely:
window.location.href
That is the javascript we need to call. But we do it from an externalInterface call like so:
ExternalInterface.call("window.location.href.toString")
or to make sure all browsers play nicely we can wrap it in a function in case the browser doesn’t want to execute that as a line, this seems to work more solidly:
ExternalInterface.call("function(){ return window.location.href.toString();}")
also note that we’re specifically applying the toString method, this is needed so the javascript actually executes something and can return it.

Other things you may want to do related to this is getting the query string variables form the url, which also uses externalInterface. You can also use this same method to get the domain, path, protocol, and even referrer. You could use some nice regex or substrings to find these from the full url, but it is already accessible. I can see a potential need for the speed to get the full url and then use internal code to cut it however I need it. But, I’m not convinced that using an external interface call takes that much time (but it’d be an interesting experiment to say the least).

You may want to find the url to the actual swf, and this doesn’t require javascript at all, the swf does know where it is even if it doesn’t know where it is embedded. We can use the loderInfo object and the url property. This returns the url to the swf file regardless of what page or even domain it is embedded on:
this.loaderInfo.url

For ExternalInterface to work in IE you need valid classid and id attributes in the

04 Anchor, play here

actionscript source code

download

03 Gradient Color, play here

actionscript source code

download

Resources

02 Color, play here

actionscript source code

Download

01 Color, play here

Source Code

Play here

Source Code

Method Explained

Download

A little inspiration

Natzke’s Flash Code 101

Actionscript 3

Resolution

Download Source Files

Demo If that doesn’t make sense try the demo to see it in action. I’ve got the source code listed on the demo page as well as the working example.

Source Code

JavaScript

HTML

Actionscript – AS3

Source Files

Javascript

HTML Code

testing hide js div

Show me slowly.

testing the toggle functionality of jQuery

testing fade out. you’ll notice that this is set to display:none once the fade is complete.

testing fade to 0. this fades out just as fadeOut, but it does no make the display none, so the page layout isn’t modified, just the visibility of this element.

Demo

If that doesn’t make sense try the demo to see it in action. I’ve got the source code listed on the demo page as well as the working example.