For those interested, I explain some of the math involved in computing epicycles from sample data here: http://bldavies.com/blog/computing-epicycles/
My Fourier Epicycles
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: My Fourier Epicycles
#22As I understand a "time series" is created for both x und y coordinates, then these are fourier transformed for the spectral components. Then when redrawing, only the real parts are used.
Is it necessary to do it for x and y separated? Couldn't you just take x for the real part and y for the imaginary part of the time series and do the Fourier transform on that?
edit: monday morning typos.
Re: My Fourier Epicycles
#23Could this be a way to compress vectors?
I fear that by dropping high frequency components, the result becomes visually unappealing (such as lines being parallel in the original becoming extremely wiggly and non-parallel).
Maybe OP can make an example with high frequencies removed?
Re: My Fourier Epicycles
#24Brilliant demonstration!
As you undoubtedly know, there is nothing essential about using sin waves with Fourier stuff... it can work with any shaped curve. A cool modification would be use a combination of the users input to generate a circle instead of the other way around. That is, if I draw a square, a multitude of squares of different sizes and phases, each tracing their contour, will generate the X,Y values for a circle.
Re: My Fourier Epicycles
#25wow thats my website on hacker news!
Thanks @signa11 for posting it, didn't think this was something good enough to post here.
And yeh I admit it is somewhat buggy, was just a fun side project I did alongside school. Will try and update soon.