No video for this one yet. Just a quickie screen grab of the flocking project with proper birdage. For this version, which features 3,000 or so flocking objects, I took 7 different silhouette images of birds in mid flight (from various Flickr photos) and created an image array. Each flocking object chooses a random image every frame. So yeah, they kinda flap around, but it is totally faked… for now. I want to eventually model out a simple bird in 3D and let it flap about with texture mapped wings. But that is for another day.
For now, I need to make the flocking behaviour a little less clumped. They tend to form vortices and linear strings so I must readdress the mechanics behind the movement before I get bogged down with the actual bird images.
I was just about to do this
The inspiration was from the swifts in The White Diamond by Werner Herzog.
It’s looking really great, I can’t wait for video!
will you, some time, open your sources?
Good stuff – I look forward to the video.
Inspired by your previous posts on using Perlin noise for ‘false’ flocking, I decided to attempt some processing work myself for the purposes of testing a firefly synchronisation idea I had. It’s a slightly different technique to yours, but inspired by it.
http://www.vimeo.com/clip:156477
with more as I update at :
http://www.vimeo.com/user:169945/clips
Keep up the interesting work, dude – it’s an inspiration.
Ryan
It reminds me of the famous and extremely beautiful MTV HD clip by psyop they made one year ago (http://www.psyop.tv/mtvhd). Your still looks very promising, I am looking forward to the movie, especially controlled with a Lemur the swarm thing is cool I guess.
I’m wondering how you manage to display 3000 objects in fluid motion. I made some tests for the limits of processing via OpenGL and found one with 1000 objects (loaded PNGs) at 30 fps at 1000 x 500 pixels.
Kyle, hadnt seen The White Diamond yet. And I will try to get the video up soon. I still need better bird images. And id rather use something other than pigeons for the final.
dux, I am not very good about releasing source code simply because I never take the time to properly document and clean, and I hate being on the hook for answering questions about why/how something in my code works. I will probably release some code in May in prep for a talk in Barcelona.
Ryan, the behaviour in those clips looks great. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses. (Id recommend some additive blending… I am addicted to additive blending!)
Andreas, that clip is fantastic. I saw it on the HD channel a few weeks ago… it floored me! Shame they dont have better copies of it on their site… the 400×300 flash video isnt quite cutting it. Seeing it on a 1080p television with surround sound was supremely inspiring. Oddly, though, I didnt set out to simulate that effect. It was a bit of a side effect. The perlin swarming was starting to look a bit like bird swarms so I threw the black silhouettes in and voila, pysop! I imagine I was subliminally trying to get there though. BTW, anyone know where I can track down some Mo-Cap data for birds in flight? I cant find any anywhere.
Robert, I never said this one was realtime.
2,000 objects gets me about 25 fps. 20,000 still runs at about 2 fps which seems pretty good to me. This is at 1440×900.
Robert, if you release some of your code I’ll pinkie swear not to ask any question. I’d just love to see some of the code behind these stunning movies.
They look like they could be bats!
In fact, this flocking looks like it SHOULD be bats.
Bats!!! I agree. I said that last night to Lance as I was starting to tweak the behavior. Much more bat-like. Actually, much more monsters-from-Pitch-Black style.
That’s a lot of flocking objects.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
hello robert,
bigup your work, very inspiring, got me back to programming after a while:)
can you please post example or maybe some litle advice to get additive blending you are still talking about?
Looking forward to seeing this too…
How about http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/ ?
Hi Robert,
I love this bird idea! I look forward to the video as well.
Since you’ve already used Processing for VJing, I’d like to ask you something (I’m a newbie!)… Do you run your applet full screen (”present” option?) or you found a way just to send the applet’s content to the video output whatever its size.
Thanks for your help!
jim
I’m speechless. That’s really pretty.
For getting the images right modeling the bird in 3D is definitely the right step, you’ll probably want to render a number of views rather than have the applet do it on the fly (no pun intended!). Birds don’t flap all the time btw, so you might want to script more wing flaps when there’s more change in velocity/direction and leave them soaring the rest of the time.
[...] Robert Hodgins, aka Flight 404 is equipping his new friend Shirley’s head, who uninvitedly came breeding on his window sill with a “dynamically added fez” that sometimes sits on its behind as well. And while on his site (i.e. if you’ve taken the bait), please be sure to check out his Grass-project, the flocking Birds and most of all his marvellous experiments with what he calls Magnetospheres. [...]
[...] Return of the birds! Finally! Here is the video that a few of you asked to see. The original post of this project was about three months ago. I had always meant to make a video of it, but just didnt get around to it. But here it is (Vimeo only for now). [...]