Up to now, I’ve always treated particles as their physical equivalents: pointlike objects undergoing forces. As a physicist, this way of thinking comes natural, however it is fairly limiting. There’s a lot of work out there dealing with particles as agents, capable of steering towards goals, avoiding obstacles and flocking together in interesting ways.

Towards is my first step in exploring the possibilities of agent-generated graphics. It has an old-fashioned feel about it. (And yes, I got stuck on the black-white-red palette again…)

To get a feel of how this kind of explorative programming goes, I’ve uploaded seven versions showing the chronological (pro/re)gression of the code. All pieces need some time to reveal their true dynamics. Click on the applet to restart the construct.

towards 01
towards 02
towards 03
towards 04
towards 05
towards 06
towards 07

Tags: particles, Processing, steering, towards

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 19:35 and is filed under Processing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.