An attempt to simulate an out-of-focus depth of field effect based on a depth map, plus a demonstration for the possibility to create blurs with smoothly increasing radius in Flash.

A depth map is a greyscale image which shows the distance of each pixel to the camera - white pixels are close, black pixels are far away (at least in my experiment, in other applications it may be the other way round). The depth map for this one looks like this:
Usually depth maps can be generated by 3D-Applications as an extra for a rendered scene, but as I used a normal photo I quickly drew the map manually with a few simple gradients. That’s why it’s not really exact, but it is good enough.

I’m not yet 100% satisfied with the outcome - as you will see there is a problem with the figure in front when she is out of focus - her body is blurred, but her outline stays sharp. The reason is that the depth map says that the area around her is actually behind her and is in focus - in reality her outline would be blurry and semi-transparent so you could see through the sharp background. To work around that I’d probably have to use a pixel-by-pixel solution which I fear might become too slow.

So here we go, just point the mouse to the area that should be in focus. I’ve added a few sliders so you can play with the depth of the focussed area and the length of the transition from sharp to blurry.

A good advice: track your inspirations. No matter how you do it, but I suggest to transform them directly into the artistic language of your choice. In doing it that way you grow you own archive, your own ways of treating things, your own libary, your own language.

From present state-of-view your recent inspration mostly look confused and non-coherent or very spontaneus. But if you step one step back and look at the whole, you will see the line it follows. There is a great song called “In höchsten Höhen” from Tocotronic that maybe deals with exact this fact. The line goes: “Im Blick zurück entstehen die Dinge, im Blick nach vorn entsteht das Glück.”

A good advice: track your inspirations. No matter how you do it, but I suggest to transform them directly into the artistic language of *your* choice. In doing it that way you grow you own archive, your own ways of treating things, your own libary, your own language.

From present state-of-view your recent inspration mostly look confused and non-coherent or very spontaneus. But if you step one step back and look at the whole, you will see the line it follows. There is a great song called “In höchsten Höhen” from Tocotronic that maybe deals with exact this fact. The line goes: “Im Blick zurück entstehen die Dinge, im Blick nach vorn entsteht das Glück.”

A good advice: track your inspirations. No matter how you do it, but I suggest to transform them directly into the artistic language of *your* choice. In doing it that way you grow you own archive, your own ways of treating things, your own libary, your own language.

From present state-of-view your recent inspration mostly look confused and non-coherent or very spontaneus. But if you step one step back and look at the whole, you will see the line it follows. There is a great song called “In höchsten Höhen” from Tocotronic that maybe deals with exact this fact. The line goes: “Im Blick zurück entstehen die Dinge, im Blick nach vorn entsteht das Glück.”

I just read “Get Off The F*cking Freeway”, an eye-opening article written by two eyewitnesses who describe how they survived the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A must read.

Well. Yeah. Been there, done that. And moved into a new flat. And really digged deep into a great new softwaretool. It is called vvvv and can be best described as max/MSP or PureData for visuals. Every free minute I spend patching, this is a real addiction.

I don’t want to write in detail about the software here, but just put up a few links. Go to meso’s vvvv website to download the beta for free. There is also good documentation and FAQ provided. Next up check ampop diploma thesis upon vvvv to get a broader view what grafic and VJ tools are all about. And last, but not least browse the screenshots of the day. Fresh and daily served directly from the vvvv application.

Well. Yeah. Been there, done that. And moved into a new flat. And really digged deep into a great new softwaretool. It is called vvvv and can be best described as max/MSP or PureData for visuals. Every free minute I spend patching, this is a real addiction.

I don’t want to write in detail about the software here, but just put up a few links. Go to meso’s vvvv website to download the beta for free. There is also good documentation and FAQ provided. Next up check ampop diploma thesis upon vvvv to get a broader view what grafic and VJ tools are all about. And last, but not least browse the screenshots of the day. Fresh and daily served directly from the vvvv application.

As someone who must probably have around a kilometer of various cables and wires lying around the appartment, I am astonished that I haven’t seen (or wished for) something like this before. Now, if someone could make the same for network cables, power cords and USB extension cords…

link
via boingboing

As perhaps the culmination of my work with L-systems, I am having an art show (oooh, fancy!) next week to show some large-scale prints of trees that I have generated using my Processing L-System classes. The opening is on Thursday, September 15th, at 9pm, at the Side Bar (523 Seymour). I’ll have two projectors going generating trees, there will be some free food and drink, and lots of interesting people. Come on down.

Getting the prints done was a bit of a challenge. First, I had to re-write my rendering engine to support Mark Hill’s AIExport Library. With some help from Mark, I was able to get this to work. But, rendering 420,000 shapes was a bit of a damper on my poor laptop, and Processing kept on throwing me out of memory errors. After a tonne of headache, I finally read the FAQ and things were underway.

Three 72″ x 38″ prints are as we speak being printed by Alan at Digital Art Reproductions and I’ll have them in my hands tomorrow night.

I always wanted to do blobs (or metaballs as they are also called) in flash - the problem is that while it’s easy to calculate them in a pixel based program it’s quite difficult to build them with vectors. Well, now that we have access to pixels I’m finally able to build something that is not exactly metaballs, but at least it feels a bit like it. Gaussian Blur meets Threshold filter - and I somehow the Bevel filter slipped in again:

Here’s my first go at a Flash 8 glass effect. In general I’m not the biggest fan of the Bevel effect, but in this case I just used it as a helper for the displacement map and voilá - doesn’t look too bad. I will show more of this stuff during the Flashforum Tour 2005 - my session about bitmaps and beyond will be on September 21st in Düsseldorf.

Source will be available as soon as as Flash 8 is in the stores.

I return with more work to do. Hayvend is all good and done - though I don’t see any mention of me on the website yet. Ciant was enlightening, I learned about motion capture and drinking a great deal. Am back in London now with ambitions of great work. However I appear too stupid to perform any: Can’t make a curve fitting algorithm, can’t load external code, can’t get motion capture working, can’t get Open Sound Control to work, can’t do nine tenths of bugger all.

On a lighter note Tekken 5 is a fantastic game. I’d sworn off computer games but was lured in by it’s promise of containing arcade roms and lots of wu-tang. It does not fail to disappoint, then it kicks ass even further by letting you unlock a space shoot-em-up. I got blisters on my fingers…

Paul of dataisnature has found a piece of unintentional generative poetry that made it through his spam filter. This is a nice example for how spam can get so elaborately nonsensical, that it’s hard to believe people who’d fall for “online pharmacy” scams would be able to decipher it.

Powerclients is a new german blog specialiced on the development of RIAs with Flash and Flex. As a free download they offer a ColorFan component which uses the interface metaphor of a Pantone fan. It’s very nicely done and feels good to interact with. I personally wouldn’t have chosen the 216 web color palette as a default - as that’s probably the most uninspiring color palette known to mankind. But of course the component allows to change that and define your own colorset.