3D Field Flow is an exploration of invisible space, fluid flow, thermodynamics and dynamical systems. Empty space surrounds us, however is this space really empty? The space around us is governed by the rules of thermodynamics and physics and shows some interesting behavior when simulated and visualized in 3D. 3D Field Flow starts to tackle the challenge of making invisible space visible by using a 3D vector field to stimulate a cube of empty virtual space. The flow inside the empty space is made detectable by using a particle system to visualize the ever-changing values of air velocity inside the diffusing 3D field. The interactive installation allows users to brush the virtual 3D field, allowing them to directly affect invisible space. The particle system acts as the medium by which the viewers can realize their presence and affects on the invisible space.
So what exactly are we looking at here? Well, I’ve been experimenting with swarming for a while now and wanted to make a video that combines my photography and particles effects that will draw my images for me in a pointillistic fashion. (more…)
I have been playing around with particle systems for a while now. Processing is awesome, it has been my prototyping environment for my particle system class I will implement in C++/OpenGL. I can provide the source code if anyone would like to see how this was done. I started with the particle class build into Processing and expanded it quite a bit to do some interesting things, flocking being one of them 
This animation was made for a MEL Scripting class at UCSB. I had a lot of fun with this. I used the swarming expression that I developed earlier and a MEL Script to follow the birds and trace curves along their position. These curves were then extruded and animated to make the structure come alive. The materials were driven by random functions and sinusoid functions. The video demonstrates flocking, then flocking influenced by sinusoidal wind vector field, then object avoidance, and final predator avoidance with a cube boundary. All other art direction was all me, camera cuts, music, shots, etc. The music is “Poseidon” by BT.
