Filter Forge - The Pursuit for Paths

ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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Fo the longest time, I've been wondering how to realize something resembling freehand paths in FF. Today I made my first real breakthrough in this. This simple little picture has a story to tell.

Posted: April 7, 2012 1:50 pm

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
Filters: 89

The story is that it is "drawn" from two (random) noise gradient inputs which give the X and Y coordinates OVER TIME for a single point.

With the help little script that I put together, the location of this point over time is drawn all the same time onto the canvas.

I will describe this in more detail in the near future.

Posted: April 7, 2012 1:59 pm

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SpaceRay

SpaceRay

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WOW!! This could be very interesting and and could be something very good for FF to have freehand paths!!

Nice example you have put and amazing that this comes from two noise gradients inputs with a script and... the other things you have used

I will wait for your more detailed description

Put a note, do not disturb, GENIUS working smile:D

Posted: April 7, 2012 2:42 pm

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Morgantao

Can't script

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I love how it's a closed path, and not just a random squigly line going nowhere.
Genius at work indeed! smile8)

Posted: April 7, 2012 5:26 pm

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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So here's how it works, in more detail:

There are three inputs to the script, grayscale maps for X and Y and an integer slider for number of points.

The grayscale maps are simply two noise gradients.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:13 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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The script tells how many samples to take from left to right on these gradients.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:16 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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And converts the gray values at these points to X and Y positions.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:18 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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With ten points that looks like random points, but as you increase the number of points, you start getting a line. Here is the same with 128 points.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:19 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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And finally, we connect the dots:

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:20 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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When you change the variation, you get a different x and y points and a different resulting line.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:23 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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When you scale up the noise, you get simpler shapes.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:24 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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And smaller scale noise gives you more scribbles for your money.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:27 am

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SpaceRay

SpaceRay

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WOW!! Wonderful results!! Like very much how you have been able to make the scribbles from LOTS of points multiplied to form lines. Great work.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:30 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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Different types of noise inputs give different results. Block noise gives you more angular lines.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:32 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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A contrasty cells noise tends towards the edges...

Due to the complexity of the line, I had to use 1000 points here, so it is pretty slow. Nevertheless, quite a charming little scribble.

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:49 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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But wait, now the fun really starts: Two sine curves fed in as inputs gives you...

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:52 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Did you guess what two sine curves blended together would make?

Posted: April 8, 2012 4:59 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Or three?

Posted: April 8, 2012 5:07 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Just add elevation gradient:

Posted: April 8, 2012 5:11 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Never gonna look at a sine curve the same way again.

Posted: April 8, 2012 5:17 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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Thought you would never ask. Yes, you can use it for surface filters as well, although render times rapidly get into the CPU- and patience-testing ranges.

Posted: April 8, 2012 5:49 am

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xirja

xirja.com

Posts: 198
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2d parametric curves in FF, an excellent breakthrough! Does it use a bomber and how are the points connected? Is it possible to get variable line thickness as a function (x^2+y^2)^(1/2) like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md1q2oShx8A

Posted: April 8, 2012 8:12 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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Quote
Does it use a bomber and how are the points connected?

No, it is a script that draws the points and the lines in between. Currently the lines are straight lines.

Quote
Is it possible to get variable line thickness as a function (x^2+y^2)^(1/2) like this:

Yes, this can be easily included in the script.

Posted: April 8, 2012 9:05 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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Here's the line drawing scrippet.

The nice thing is that the script calculates the distance from the line and end points, so you can vary the line thickness by just thresholding the output.

Line Drawing scrippet.ffxml

Posted: April 8, 2012 9:10 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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Quote
Is it possible to get variable line thickness as a function (x^2+y^2)^(1/2)

Actually, no need to put it in the script, you can just threshhold it with a circular gradient:

Posted: April 8, 2012 9:52 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Heh, the next step was easier than I expected...

Not real fast in rendering, but it's the real thing.

Posted: April 8, 2012 11:27 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Okay, so what to do with all this?

Inputting actual X and Y values is quite tedious, for to make the above Bezier curve, you have to use 8 inputs, x and y values for all four points defining the curve. So that makes 8 sliders

It seems the more sensible approach is to use the built-in noises as sources for x and y information.

Or to program the values mathematically for such things as a fractal tree. Or for wireframed 3D objects. Or road maps between cities. Or tessalation patterns.

Now off to figuring out how to filled those closed shapes...

Posted: April 8, 2012 11:47 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Oh yeah, one more thing. The script output actually looks like the picture below. It gives the distance from the nearest line. Then it can be put through a threshold or other things to give the desired line weight etc.

Posted: April 8, 2012 12:00 pm

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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It wasn't too hard getting the fills. But now it is slow as molasses with both the line and the fill, so needs some optimization.

Posted: April 8, 2012 1:38 pm

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lipebianc

FFF = Filter Forge Fan

Posts: 555
Filters: 12

This is awesome, ThreeDee!!!!
You're raising the bar in the filter construction territory! smile:ff:

Thank you for your efforts, congratulations and respect for your achievement!

"From the moment we are born, we start being filtered..."

Posted: April 8, 2012 1:51 pm

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xirja

xirja.com

Posts: 198
Filters: 1

Totally! Splines AND filling, oh yeah! Looking forward to this one! Also its nice to have opacity on the filling so that you can get gradations on the overlaps, such as:

Posted: April 8, 2012 3:01 pm

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SpaceRay

SpaceRay

Posts: 6221
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Quote
lipebianc wrote: This is awesome, ThreeDee!!!! You're raising the bar in the filter construction territory!

I totally agree with lipebianc and I say the same as you.

Congratulations for your work.

Quote
xirja wrote: Totally! Splines AND filling, oh yeah!

WOW! very well done and very beautiful geometric shape, good work.

ALSO like very much all the beautiful and awesome works you have in your website here

Posted: April 8, 2012 3:37 pm

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Skybase

Who are you?

Posts: 1950
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Sweeet! Love the script, very simple but so awesomely done!

Posted: April 8, 2012 9:21 pm

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Kraellin

Kraellin

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Filters: 97

3D, did you mean the line drawing scrippet to draw more than straight lines, cause that's all it seems to do?

If wishes were horses... there'd be a whole lot of horse crap to clean up!

Craig

Posted: April 8, 2012 9:58 pm

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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Quote
3D, did you mean the line drawing scrippet to draw more than straight lines, cause that's all it seems to do?

Yes, that scrippet demonstrates drawing just one line. I'm still trying to come up with a more sensible path-drawing filter that I could submit to the filter library. Maybe I'll make something out of the sine curve input version. That will include the multiple-line drawing script.

Posted: April 9, 2012 4:39 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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I put the Sine-O-Graph filter in the queue, so you'll be able to dissect it. It is actually a fairly simple script.

Posted: April 9, 2012 8:18 am

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xirja

xirja.com

Posts: 198
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Quote
Actually, no need to put it in the script, you can just threshhold it with a circular gradient

Oh right

, the power of threshhold!

Quote
Or to program the values mathematically for such things as a fractal tree. Or for wireframed 3D objects. Or road maps between cities. Or tessalation patterns.

Many exciting possibilities there for sure.

Quote
But now it is slow as molasses with both the line and the fill, so needs some optimization.

And then I go and suggest opacity, bumping my graphic. I'm really not a smart ass most days, really smile:|

Quote
ALSO like very much all the beautiful and awesome works you have in your website here

Thanks SpaceRay, those were done in Mathematica (totally script and pixel based), so to be able to do something similar in Filter Forge is the tops. I've already found FF to be far superior in doing density plots using the scripting component; in a pixel based environment it is painfully slow.

...scalpel...check smile8)

Posted: April 9, 2012 8:56 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
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A slight modification, giving two separate inputs for x and y (line beginning points and line end points) gives us for instance this:

Posted: April 9, 2012 11:43 am

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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Improved version of the same.

Posted: April 9, 2012 12:31 pm

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

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With color added.

Posted: April 9, 2012 1:18 pm

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Ghislaine

Ghislaine

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Great ! I love wireframed 3D objects. The last example is awesome. For more comprehension, because all this seems to me a bit complicated, can you post the settings for the last one when your Sine-O-Graph filter will be in the library, please ? smile:)

Ghislaine @ http:3dscreensaver.t15.org

Posted: April 9, 2012 3:07 pm

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ThreeDee

Lost in Space

Posts: 1140
Filters: 89

Hi Ghislaine,

The last example is a different version of the script, so you can't do it with the Sine-O-Graph. Not sure if this one is going to end up in the library.

Posted: April 10, 2012 12:06 pm

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Ghislaine

Ghislaine

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3D wrote