Time to give Boards of Canada a chance to play. I set this one up to use 2000 particles. The last one uses 500, and a realtime version can run fullscreen with about 150 to 200. Needless to say, this was an overnight render.

I dont think it was as successful as the Trentemoller version. Something is missing. Maybe it was too dark, or perhaps more != better. So I did a little post work in iMovie (I need Final Cut Pro) and added the mirror effect to give it some extra something. The kaleidoscope look works well with the song, but I do think I cheated a bit by using a precanned iMovie filter on this piece. Whatever. At least I didn’t add the Earthquake effect or any star wipes.

There are a couple of physics-related mods for this version. Before, each gravity orb had a spongey springy surface. If a particle breaks through the outer barrier, the x, y, and z velocities reverse and it begins to to move back out of the barrier. I decided to change it to be more like a hard shell… even a sticky shell. If a particle hits the barrier, its velocities are set to zero. I will show a video of this effect shortly.

Also, I played with the ribbon trails a bit more to make them a little softer. Did this by changing over to a TRIANGLE_STRIP from a QUAD_STRIP (dont ask, I have no idea why it helped), and using some texture mapping.

Here are the video links. Large (98 Megs) or Small (33 Megs).