Project 2: Transformation - Final

It's been a long time and there have been many variations 

but I finally setteled down for this as my final design solution:

(as always, click the picture to see the sketch)

Some features:

It has a carefully crafted interaction design where the way the waterfall reacts in different ways depending on how you engage with it. For example, if the input is very smooth, so is the response from the waterfall will also be smooth, reflected in both sound and visuals. The same would apply to a very hectic interaction but the waterfall will always tend slightly to the smother side of things, as it is the designed nature of the waterfall.

The visual part it strongly linked to the audio experience with colour being a important link between them.

(Technical) I've made quite a few adjustments to get what I think the best result:

Since the amount of the water particles depend on mouse movement and it had the best effect when there were a maximum of ~120 particles at once on the screen (when constantly moving the mouse), I modeled the time frame given for each particle in the system to fit this optimum limit. But this limit, as it was fairly high, had implications on the performance of the sketch: my initial solution was to give a track to each particle for they could do their neat sound effect, but this became a problem with the minim library not supporting this amount and therefore giving quite nasty results. A solution I was quite happy with was to only play a fading sound when the water is emitted and I found that this would fit the nature of what I intended the waterfall to be much better.

Project 2: Transformation - Research

On OpenProcessing I found a sketch labeled "Transformation - Join" which cleverly uses mouseX and transparency to create a effect upon interaction with it. There was also a sketch named "Sine Transformation" which varied a property of multiple sine-waves over time. It used its own Sine class which had its own variables and functions so it was easier for the coder to create more, similar sine waves.

I also found this video which explained transformations (translate, rotate, scale and shear) mathematically with matrices.

These let me conclude that Transformation is about changing an aspect of a something (eg. its form) but keeping its identifying features the same, although some dictionaries suggest a more significant change of aspects.

Project 1 Reflections

What have you learned so far,
what helped and motivated you to learn?

I've learned that, in creative coding, it is more important to have a good finish than a good base programm or project. eg. have a nice background detail(s) is more imprtant for design than a very interesting shape.
What motivated me to learn was was that I was able to use processing (and its reference) at home without any trouble and come up with new concepts for my designs.

Is there anything that you want to improve in your next project?
Set yourself a goal and make a plan how you could achieve this goal.

In my next project I will try to improve the overall design quality of my work by adding extra elements to the code. To achieve this I think I have to ask more people for their opinion on my work.

Project 1 Submit.

Here are the 4 final submissions. Each link to their OpenProcessing sketch.

Gradient template

Here is a template that will give

explained examples of how do gradients easily.

Gradient template

Hey all, this is my first post showing some of what i've done in the first processing tutorial:

Curved

Circled

Triangled

You can also find there and all my other sketches On my OpenProcessing account.