GuruBlog

I wrote a simple processing sketch today that allows me to generate green,noise-based, blocky, desktop-background images. So if you are in urgend need of one of those - like me - copy the code below and run it in processing :-)

you can also Download a hires version in case you are to lazy to run the code yourself

void setup() {
  size(1960,1280);
  noLoop();
  noStroke();
  colorMode(HSB, 255,255,255);
}

float s = 50;
void draw() {
  noiseSeed( frameCount );
  int wx = int(width/s);
  int wy = int(width/s);
  for( int x = 0; x<=wx; x++) {
    for( int y =0; y<=wy; y++) {
      fill( 50, 256, noise(x/2.0,y/2.0)*64+128);
      rect(x*s,y*s,s,s);
    }
  }
}

void keyPressed() {
  redraw();
}

For this animation I used a keyed-particle system and changed the time and the duration values for each stop.

I used a sphere and two cubes as my particle emitters. The first particle system is a particle system on the sphere with no physics to make the particles static.

Then the keyed particles move on to a particle system on a cube where the particles get moved my a forcefield.

Then the keyed particles move to the second cube where the particles again have no physics but are distributed in a grid.

And finally the move back to the sphere where they started.

you can download the blend file here

For this animation I used 3 different particle systems and one that uses them as target for a keyed particle system.

The first particle system has no physics at all and sits on a cube. The second particle system uses fluid particles. And the third one uses newton particles on an ico-sphere that get influenced by a forcefield.

you can download the blend file here

I got two cheap canon A490 point and shoot cameras for my BookScanner.

I need to take a picture of the two pages of a book at the same time without touching the cameras, to prevent me from moving them. Unfortunately the cameras don't support a remote control. But I found that there is a nice alternative firmware for the cameras from the chkd project.

This alternative firmware adds a ton of new features and among others allows to execute a Lua script when the USB port gets power. This script then can be used to trigger the autofocus and take a picture. :-)

The installation of the firmware on the camera was pretty simple. Download the package for your camera unzip the package to a SD card and use the update firmware feature of the camera to install it. The chkd firmware starts without modifying the original camera firmware so you can test it without potentially destroying your camera.

In my BookScanner I don' t want to start the firmware manually all the time so I made the SD card booteable. Unfortunately my cameras only boot from the SD card when it is formated as Fat16. This limits the size of the partition to 4G which isn't great but should be sufficient for my BookScanner. To make the cards booteable I formated them as Fat16 and placed the firmware in the root directory. I started the firmware manually and then used the ..... menu to set the boot flag on the partition. Finally the card needs to be put in the read only mode using the little switch on the side. Than the camera loads the alternative firmware automatically when the camera is turned on. The new firmware also ignores the read only flag on the card and stores pictures on them whithout the need to flip the readonly switch again.

For this animation I have used an emission shader in a volumetric material for the first time. I added the shader on top of a volume scatter and a volume whatever shader and used a gradient curve to modify the density values for the emission shader a bit.

The input for the density function is a Point-Density Texture which is connected to a particle system.

The results aren' t quite as I expected them (which is kind of a recurring theme in my blender experiments :-) ) But I really like how it looks.

you can download the blend file here

I made another animation featuring the explosion modifier. This time i used a torus as the base mesh.

The particles are influenced by a texture-force field using a colored cloud texture. To make the shards better visible I used a solidify modifier after the explosion modifier.

you can download the blend file here

For this animation I used an explode modifier to destroy a subdivided ico-sphere

you can download the blend file here

I planned to build a book-scanner for a long time and finally managed to elevate the project out of the planning stage :-)

Here I proudly present you the first part of my bookscanner. I used a sheet of plexiglass, which I cut in half using a dremel. Then I mounted the two parts in a 90 deg angle using the mounting brackets of an old ikea bookshelf (cant remeber it´s name)

I made a particle system that wanders through different stages of beeing influenced by forcefields. I used 3 different particle system each influenced by a different type of forcefield and a keyed particle system to blend between them

you can download the blend file here

I created a Preset for the Bitwig-Studio Reverb Device for my latest song and have been asked several times if I would share it. So I decided to write a short tutorial how I created the effect.

And while you read this article you can listen to my track "Vast Space Ahead" so you know how it sounds like

To create the effect I used a Reverb device in "Hall"-with a very large Size and maximum Width