Project Title: Moving Paintings

1. Inspiration

I was attracted by this image when reading the article “Particle animation and rendering using data parallel computation” by Karl Sims:

This vortex field (or swirling pattern) reminds me of Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. He created a strong sense of motion, energy, and flux through the use of brushwork and colors.

There are many other examples that the static 2D paintings are trying to convey a sense of movement. I think it would be great if I could enhance this message to the audience by animating these drawings. Therefore, I decided to create a “moving” version of Starry Night for my midterm project using the flow field and the particle system.

2. Plan of Implementation

The vortex field is one of the sub-types of the flow field. All the flow fields have the same base logic, which is creating a grid of vectors that decides the velocity of the particles moving inside it. However, there are perlin noise flow fields, vortex flow fields, magnetic flow fields, and so on. I searched the Internet and found a simple way of creating this swirling effect.

Basically, you create a background image showing the distribution of the centers of vortices based on a 2D Perlin noise space. And then you calculate the “pressure differential” around every cell in the grid. That differential vector will point to the center of the vortex, creating an attraction effect to the particles. However, if you rotate every vector by 90 degrees, they will suddenly be turned to some force similar to the “tangential force”. This will magically turn the movement of the particles into a swirling pattern.

* The centripetal force and the tangential force

It is a brilliant idea and not hard to implement. And the challenge may be adding some aesthetic and creative aspects to my project.

Some ideas are:

• • Create the dying and respawn effect of the particles to make the moving painting more dynamic.
  • Explore other possible patterns of flow field. For example, how to achieve the effect of a river flow?
  • Allow user interaction. Users can create more “stars” and flowing directions in the painting through mouse interaction.

 

Sources of Inspiration and References: