Creating a random psychedelic movie

[Blasphemous]

Hi there! I have been trying to figure out how to make a psychedelic movie for quite some time now, but can't figure it out. What I'm trying to create is kinda like what you'd see on the screen at a Grateful Dead show. You know, with all the wierd trippy colors moving and changing shape. I have no idea where to beging with this. Any help would be great! I'd like to make it randomly change. Thanks in advance =)

[jbum]

This kind of thing (Op Art) happens to be a speciality of mine.

Check out the movies in my bestiary (link below) for a few examples - in particular the various 'kaleidoscopes' in the mandala section, and the 'phyllotaxy' movie in the natural phenomena section.

There's a lot of different kinds of effects they use at those shows, such as colored oil, bubbles and so on. If there's a specific one you want to try to reproduce (and you can describe it accurately), I can provide more assistance. (Of course, being able to describe it accurately is what programming is all about.)

- jim

[Blasphemous]

Thank you for the help! I'll be spending a lot of time on your site. What I am looking to make is kind of like your Photo Kaleidescope, but possibly with the overall objects going from regular color to negative colors. I'm really stumped on how to do this.

[Blasphemous]

I'm not stumped on how to make them change colors :P I'm stumped on how to make them randomly change like that. I'm just trying to make a really wierd, trippy movie. Thanks again for the help.

[jbum]

Although the movies in the BASICs chapter don't contain the effects you want, I recommend studying them, as they illustrate simpler uses of random numbers to control motion and color.

Random numbers are something I've been playing with for a long time - they're pretty cool, and there's a lot you can do with them.

Probably the most useful mathematical tool for these kinds of movies is the concept of 'normalization' - or getting things to fall into the range of 0-1,
and the reverse: taking things that go from 0-1 and making them do what you want.

You'll notice that the Math.random() value returns a value from 0-1. This is for a reason - because it tends to make the math simpler. For example, if you want the red component of a color to go from 0-255, you can multiply

Math.random() * 256

to get it to spread across that range.

If you want something to appear at a random position on the screen, you can set it's _x coordinate to

Math.random() * Stage.width.

If you want it to travel across for a period of 5 seconds, normalization comes into play. You convert it's position within that 5-second window to a ratio (r) which falls between 0-1 and then you can multiply r by the range you want it to move.

In general if you want to convert a value x which falls between a and b, to a value y which falls between c and d, the math is as follows:

a >= x <= b

c >= y <= d

y = c + (d-c)*(x-a)/(b-a)

or

scale = (d-c)/(b-a)
y = c + scale*(x-a)


Sorry to bore you to tears

- jim

[tezatoo]

Jbum please repost details of your website i also want to make trippy movies