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What I've learned about flow fields so far

damoonrashidi.me

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Re: What I've learned about flow fields so far

#21

Post by magicalhippo »

croemer wrote: post #18

As a trained physicist, it's weird to see such "unnatural", ad hoc fields used. I have the feeling that using a fluid dynamics solver might generate more realistic looking fields. One issue with the smoothing is that it introduces a discontinuous correlation function. When you crank down smoothing, you can see this artifact as horizontal lines that get closer and closer together as smoothing is lowered. Simulated flu…

Been a while since I dabbled with fluid physics, but I was thinking how about ensuring the input noise field was divergence free[2]?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_method_(fluid_dynam...

Re: What I've learned about flow fields so far

#22

Post by tehrash »

coldcode wrote: post #15

As a generative artist, I experimented with flow fields for a while but found them rather limited, especially given how many people use them. It's hard to distinguish yourself if you do what everyone else is doing.

I still feel like a lot of variation that can be achieved if you dig pretty deep, but I do agree that it's difficult to do something meaningful that other people aren't also doing since everything can easily become "same-y looking". What's great about flow fields is that they're easy to understand and you can get pretty interesting results for not that much effort, making them a great and accessible introduction to generative art for people who haven't tried it before.

Re: What I've learned about flow fields so far

#23

Post by tehrash »

matsfunk wrote: post #11
tehrash wrote: post #2

I wrote an article on the basics of Flow Fields in the context of Generative Art (no AI stuff, just for loops and if cases). It has some fun interactive illustrations and code samples for anyone looking to get into the field.

Really nice, I love the interactive explanations. We covered flow fields in a chapter for the second edition of our book 'Coding Art' [0]. We use p5.js to match the earlier Processing parts in the book. Btw, Tyler's page is referenced, but yours will be in a future edition. Thanks for writing this up! [0] https://codingart-book.com

Ah, super cool! Looking forward to reading the future edition!

Re: What I've learned about flow fields so far

#26

Post by Sharlin »

croemer wrote: post #18

As a trained physicist, it's weird to see such "unnatural", ad hoc fields used. I have the feeling that using a fluid dynamics solver might generate more realistic looking fields. One issue with the smoothing is that it introduces a discontinuous correlation function. When you crank down smoothing, you can see this artifact as horizontal lines that get closer and closer together as smoothing is lowered. Simulated flu…

First rule of computer graphics: simple and plausible beats complex and realistic, every time. A noise function you likely have anyway, as noise has a myriad uses in graphics. An FD solver, not so much, at least if you're not working on water/smoke/fire simulations.

Re: What I've learned about flow fields so far

#27

Post by [deleted] »

croemer wrote: post #18

As a trained physicist, it's weird to see such "unnatural", ad hoc fields used. I have the feeling that using a fluid dynamics solver might generate more realistic looking fields. One issue with the smoothing is that it introduces a discontinuous correlation function. When you crank down smoothing, you can see this artifact as horizontal lines that get closer and closer together as smoothing is lowered. Simulated flu…

[deleted]

Re: What I've learned about flow fields so far

#29

Post by samstave »

This is lovely.

First, I could only imagine playing ASCII like games (such as old Roguelikes, especially ones with outside worlds, such as OMEGA[0], with this as animating the fields, waters, etc - would be interesting.

However, I was really drawn to how this might be used on GIS pointclouds, topographical maps (for animating flows down topographic GIS data?)

[0] http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/05/game-55-omega-1988.ht...

Re: What I've learned about flow fields so far

#30

Post by passion__desire »

coldcode wrote: post #15

As a generative artist, I experimented with flow fields for a while but found them rather limited, especially given how many people use them. It's hard to distinguish yourself if you do what everyone else is doing.

Can a higher dimensional flow fields projected down along different 2d planes generate something good? And animating the 2d plane or rotating the flow field generate good visuals?
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