Project 2: Phase 4 - Code, Recode, Repeat
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

I decided to tackle the third dimension for this project. It's the first time I've worked in 3D with Processing and pretty much ever so I knew there was a lot of work ahead of me. I began writing the prototype program in small bite size chunks starting with a grid array of cubes. I had a rough idea of the visual quality that I want but like most my programming projects I find inspirations as I work. I wrote in small improvements here and there to get a better feel of the visual and also the structure of the program itself.

The first alpha build was running P3D but it was sluggish rendering the number of objects I wanted on screen. I switched over to using OPENGL for speed and some flair (e.g. additive blending). I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to use multiple textures (or any) in the OPENGL environment. I decided to take the source code from a simple program released by Flight404, strip it down to only its rendering code, and recode my program on top of it. It took quite a bit of work figuring out the way around the 404 code but it did exactly what I was looking for (see screenshot for BETA with OPENGL). From there the basic structure of the program was more or less finished and it was time to polish the interaction, build an interface, and add eye candy.

Sat, Mar 22, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Emergence and Navigating Space