Project Summary
What is it? What’s it’s purpose?
-3000 snowflakes is a generative particle system that attempts to mimic snow falling from the sky. The idea is a direct response to an RFP for “Winter” themed content for the newly launched Nigh Lights Denver Project, a permanent projection mapping project on the Daniel & Fishers Tower.
What problem(s) are you solving?
How can you make a rigid and exact language, code in this case, mimic and resemble the randomness and spontaneity of nature?
What will it do?
Quite literally, it is going to snow on the D & F tower.
How will it work?
-Processing will serve as the base for the majority of the coding. The script will generate a snow particle that will fall in a way similar to nature. The flakes will vary in size, rate of descent, and also have some horizontal movement, as snow doesn’t fall straight down. The animation will then be exported as a video file and manipulated to fit the RFP specs for the projector array.
RFP Sketch in P5.JS
What challenges do you anticipate?
Making the snowflakes seem natural and lifelike in both size and the way they fall
Writing the particle system in such a way that it doesn’t’ take forever to render. The animation needs to be ~1000 x ~3000 pixels, which is pretty massive.
Rendering the video, it has been a long time since I’ve worked with Premiere.
In what ways does it or will it relate to your other work in Entrepreneurial Design, Design Leadership, and/or UX?
It doesn’t.
Key components of your project
What resources, skills, and technologies are needed to realize it?
- -P5.JS for the RFP and proof of concept
- -Processing for the actual particle system
- –Video Export Library for generating the animation as a video file
- -Illustrator for editing the video mask
What kind of fidelity do you want to achieve?
Since this is a commissioned public artwork, the fidelity should be 100% finished quality, at a professional video and artistic level.
What “materials” do you need to use? Wood, Metal, Plastics, 3d models, CAD, 3d Printing, Electronics, Arduino, Sensors/Devices, Processing, Mobile Devices, etc
100% pure code in Processing.
What research have you done and/or still need to do?
I’ve researched particle systems and rain/snow patterns. I’ve researched video export from Processing. The remaining research will be limited to troubleshooting as I encounter issues.
Cover Photo by Jessica Fadel on Unsplash.
