ODEjava makes it possible!

ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) is ” is an open source, high performance library for simulating rigid body dynamics” while ODEjava “is an ODE binding for Java whose API presents both low-level access to the underlying ODE library as well as high level access through Odejava’s objects”. Hugh.
I managed to install this library and was quickly able to run a simple example which consisted of 40 boxes falling , colliding and stacking on a plane. You can download it here. It was compiled on Windows with Processing 0087 Beta.
In order to make it run, you will have to install two other java libraries ( log4j.jar and vecmath.jar) in addition to ODEjava itself.

• Close Processing if it’s running.
• In your Processing/libraries folder, create a folder called odejava.Inside it, create another one called library.
• Download odejava release as well as the ODE native library (odejava.dll for Windows). Decompress both archives, locate odejava.jar and odejava.dll and move/copy these two files into the new freshly created odejava/library/ folder.
• Download log4j

. Locate log4j-*.**.**.jar ( dist/lib/ folder ), and then move it to the odejava/library/ folder.

• Finally, go to Java3D download page , download Java 3D for Windows (OpenGL Version) Runtime for the JRE. Install it, it will basically copy some .jar into your jre folder. (ex : C:/Program Files/jre1.4.1_01). Then, in the lib/ext/ folder, you should be able to locate vecmath.jar. Copy this archive into odejava/library/ one. The big major drawback is that Java3D is only available for Windows/Solaris platform. Maybe ther’s a simpler way to grab a copy of vecmath.jar, especially for MacOsX/Linux users.
• Open Processing environment, and run Boxes applet. You should see ugly-flat-rendered boxes falling one by one on uglier-red ground

If you have any suggestions or comments, do not hesitate to write me. If you managed to install all of this stuff on a Mac/Linux platform, contact me, I will be glad to correct this little tutorial.

Carlos Katastrofsky has started a weblog listing calls for submission in a variety of fields affiliated with media, art and design. If you find the effort useful (I certainly do), please make sure to give back a little by clicking on some of the Google Ads on the page.
Another similar but a bit more dated resource is the universes in universe categorized calls listing.

Sigh. Now I’ve done it. I have made my first porno-inspired project. Slit-scan Porn. Sounds dirty, but it is quite the opposite. The original intent was simply to see if viewing pornography along a different axis would create subtle sexiness. Subtle in that there would be no actual, uh… no actual recognizable parts or movements, but sexy in that organic shapes formed from this process would be made up of flesh tones.

If you think of video as being a series of parallel planes in a 3D space (or better yet, a rectangular solid that can be cut into slices), it becomes easier to see what is going on with this project.

Normally, the frames would be viewed in the order that they were filmed. One full frame after another. But with the slit-scan version, the frames are viewed all at once, but through a narrow window. For each frame of the slit-scan, you see the passing of time as you look from left to right. Each successive frame from the slit-scan video shows a change in the position of the narrow slit, as opposed to the passing of time. In terms of the solid block analogy, the slices are being cut at a 90° rotation from the original viewing.

Hmmm… probably made that more confusing than it needs to be.

For more images and the final video, check flight404.com. It will be the flesh toned project at the bottom of the list (remember, click on the black strip along the top and bottom to scroll through the projects that dont fit in the browser window).

I’ve been away from the computer a lot over the last couple of weeks… hence the lack of posts. Most recently, I spent 4 days of Vancouver Island, on the beach.

The cropped photo above is a portion of a set of macro shots I took of a stranded Red Jellyfish. Check out the full shots here and here. I may post some more.

These shots are both inspiring and deflating at the same time. Inspiring, because this animal is a perfect example of beauty in simplicity. Deflating, because I could never, not with all of the hours on all of the computers in the world, create something that amazing.

Let’s hope that it inspires something.

UnrealArt is a project by Alison Mealey. These artwork prints are generated by bots in Unreal Tournament.

“Each image represents about 30 mins of gameplay in which the computers AI plays against itself, there are 20-25 bots playing each game. The Bots play custom maps I create. Each map has been pathed so that the bots have a rough idea of where to go in order to create the image I want. I log the position (X,Y,Z) of each player each second using a mutator I created, I also log the position of a death. I then run my own code written in Processing to create postscript files of that match. Every image represents 1 full game, and the position of the dots or lines reflects the position of a player at a given time”. Great stuff! Read more here, a read development blog. The work will be exhibited as part of CoEDD graduate exhibition, Huddersfield August 13th, where hopefully the live drawing process will be shown.

A piccy of the real life framed canvas version of one of the pics. (frame made by yours truely… without one of those 45 degree angle cutting tool thingys)

scuse the birghtness from the flash…