Raytracer. July 15, 2010 at
2:24 pm
Ray tracing is one of many techniques to render images with a computer by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects (Reference: Wikipedia). Ray tracing has been used in production environment for off-line rendering for a few decades now, but in times of increasing computing speeds and due to the high quality of the visual effects it achieves, ray tracing is becoming more and more applicable for interactive and animated rendering. Yeah, real time ray tracing! Sounds good in the abstract - but of course mostly fails when it comes to Flash which has no hardware acceleration at all…
Ok, there have been attempts building real time raytracers with Flash in the past and probably Strille´s raytracer was worth mentioning in recent years, but a few days ago I took notice of Simo´s fantastic approach of real time ray tracing. In that case the entire calculations are done with Pixel Bender and Flash just draws the final result. Not forgetting Ralph´s raytracer at this moment, but his example doesn´t show all of its power by far because if you ever visited one of Ralphs sessions you´ll see that his raytracer took giant strides from then on!
Seeing all this great approaches recently I resolve upon writing my own little raytracer by not using Pixel Bender but Alchemy as my weapon of choice. I decided to stay close to Simo´s setup so we finally can compare framerates aso. So, after a few eves and nights of tweakings and optimizations I got my raytracer running ~32fps, so here we go…
Launch (click stage to switch movement)
It´s still a very basic raytracer, so no refractions, Fresnel, noisy bump or other procedural texture mapping, but it runs very smooth and that´s a good beginning so far. Lastly, believing in the Flash community and that open source helps on developing all that great stuff we can use with Flash today, feel free to catch the sources.
Enjoy!
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Astro, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
6 Comments
Space Goo. March 17, 2010 at
10:41 pm
Again at last, and due to the fact upcoming FFK10 conference waits right in front of the door, I finally got some time to give some blobs a new coat of whitewash (naturally it needs my vacation to do so… that figures!)
And indeed there´s nothing better than sitting in front of the chimney at your Scottish vacation Highland-lodge, generating some Space Goo. And as a result we achieve yet again, some nice little mass mindless bubbling around into time and space.
And let me tell you, this little space soup reacts quite well to music too, so you may wait whilst the track is loaded and maybe cheat some time simply rotate those chubby fellows in space…
Launch
Well, there´s so much more to show and speak about - but let´s do this at this years FFK10 conference in Cologne next time. Hope to see you there!
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
No Comments
BoomBlobs. December 11, 2009 at
12:26 pm
What happens actually if innocent blobs burst upon sounds from Andre Michelle? Well, they tempt to boom. But let´s tell this from the start. Last weekend Andre released a couple of new quite experimental tracks, one of them was ‘Method‘ which I enjoyed from the start. At the very time I was working on some new fluid blob-experiments and -snippets, and I quickly decided to combine my next release with Andre´s sound once more (thanks for permitting me Andre!). Therefore, now it´s the second time after my previous release ‘Chroma Drift‘ where I used ‘Overflow‘ which was produced by Andre too.
So, this time the blobs react on the sound in many ways while constantly merging themselves into 3d-space. Moreover I wrote a couple of Pixel Bender based Shaders ( the fun part! ) and added them to the setup. All things considered and BoomBlobs arise!
You can use your mouse to change the rotation of the blobs, but yet again, you first have to wait until the sound is loaded… Ohhh and you may ignore the first 10- up to -20 seconds of crackle and noises - that´s a matter of taste admittedly(!) - but then, when the beat starts BoomBlobs move into gear…
Launch (turn on your speakers!)
Enjoy!
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Astro, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
2 Comments
I just got feedback that I´m in for FITC Amsterdam 2010. Gee! I´m very excited and very looking forward to give a “Return of the blobs - RELOADED” talk there. “Whew” - and I´ll show lot´s of my new unpublished experiments then like isosurfaces, blob-meshes, 3D metaballs (the next generation then!), as well as filter- and effect programming. All together dealing with techniques to generate and use 2D-/3D liquid masses, fluid or gooey behaviours real time at runtime.
Retrospectively treated I really have to say it was a great conference year for me by now. I recently got lot´s of opportunities to gave talks, and it all started with FFK09 in Cologne this year (thanks again Marc for giving me that initial chance) and not forgetting FOTB (thanks for having me John) where I showed my Meta.Piece demo for the first.
So far so excited! See you…
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Astro, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
2 Comments
Chroma Drift. October 12, 2009 at
11:49 am
Monday has arrived and I just couldn´t resist to release my latest study right before this working week moves into gear. As most of my recent works had a lot to do with Flash10 native 3d methods, I once more decided to create something based on this features. Actually ‘Chroma Drift‘ is a camera-flight through an infinite vertical tunnel, spiked with a lot of obstacles, all told via drawTriangles. In addition the cam is constantly rolling and rotating around the x/y-axes, which draws up a lot of interesting perspectives and views.
But that´s only a small proportion of the entire idee. Once finished I wanted to fill the whole scenery with sound and let the textures react on specific sound-peaks. Honestly, from my point of view, writing some nice little partly sound-reactive filters is where the fun starts! And I must say “Gee! The result. I like it a lot”- not only ´cause of the solid sound composition called ‘Overflow‘ made by Andre Michelle ( I´m quite sure some of you might now this guy ;) …) but in fact I added some kinda blooming chroma sound driven effects to the surfaces.
Well, the sound may take some time to load (~2.5 MB) but I think it pays…
Launch
Enjoy, and have a lazy week!
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Astro, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
12 Comments
Well, after FOTB means, in my case, before WebTech Conference. Once again, I´ll speak about developing Filters- and Effects with Flash and of course Pixel Bender, which will be the last time I´ll give that talk because I´m already working on a new session topic!
But for those of you who can´t part with FOTB, here are a little more photos (via flickr) and also a little conference review I´ve written for Create or die:
Up next, WebTech, another chance to meet and have some nice times there.
See you!
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
No Comments
Meta.Piece September 25, 2009 at
12:36 pm
Back home, and I had some very good times in Brighton (thanks for having me John), Flash on the beach was awesome! I got a lot of superb feedback on Meta.Piece, the Demo I´d prepared especially for my slot at this years FOTB Elevator Pitch. After a non-mentionable rehearsal on Sunday, I never thought that this session would ever work, but it runned like a charme on Tuesday. Well, much props has to go out to the excellent FOTB staff and the other presenters I was sharing a session with too.
So finally, for those of you who missed it for any reason, or maybe some of you even want to watch it again, I´ve just released the Demo now. So while loading (you can´t have sound for nothing…), be sure to turn on your speakers - I promise it´s worth downloading.
Launch
Lastly I´ve to say that the whole conference was absolutely amazing! Looking forward for next year…
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
5 Comments
A little less than three weeks before this years Flash on the beach kicks off and I´ve just finished my demo called ‘Meta.Piece’ that I´ll show there for the very first time (hope to see you in the Elevator Pitch). It´s all jam-packed with a lot of triangulations-, Voronoi-, Pixel Bender- and Metaball-experiments. Phew, can´t hardly wait to show you my stuff!
To shorten my waiting time I´ve created this little icebreaker. Well, how shall I put it? It´s about playing with Voronoi Diagrams once again…
Launch
FOTB 2009. Only 15 days to go. Very very excited!
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Astro, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
4 Comments
Art, trash - opinions differ on this question. I think the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In my point of view most generative art results are beautiful and partly even gorgeous. Recently I´ve written a little article on this subject wich was just published on Create or die. Featured therein is following small experiment, a procedural painter…
Well, I´ve defined a few presets and rules in there, so that the program allows you to switch between various painting-, form- and drawing-modes.
Launch (try to paint this by hand in the same time)
Btw., the full sources of this example are part of the article on Create or die.
Enjoy!
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Astro, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
No Comments
Use 10000 perlinNoise driven particles to repaint an image continuously. According to your mouse movements you can influence the particles flow. I used a little Pixel Bender Shader I´ve written to shift each particles colour value steadily.
Launch
Damn, I really like those kind of playthings…
Posted in:
Pixel Bender, Astro, Flash, Actionscript3
by
frank reitberger /
No Comments
