Substrate

great new release --- I've been playing around with the Substrate component, and I have a few questions...

-what determines the 'density' of the line work? in the processing example (http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/substrate/) it seems to generate the lines based on a few randomly selected starting points, then the areas near these points end up with the highest density of lines. is there a way (perhaps in future versions) to set these initial points?

-the rectangle input seems to have some issues - the substrate output does not conform to the input rectangle... only generates a square substrate pattern w/ the same x&y dimensions.

anyway, great new component with a lot of potential...

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 22, 2010 at 9:35pm

Hi Evan,

I'll look into the weird clipping. This component isn't really all that serious. I've been a fan of Jared Tarbell's work for a long time so I wanted to make something in his honour. My approach to making the diagram is very different from his. He's working on the pixel-grid, slowly growing the substrate. I have to make sure it can be generated in real-time and using double precision floating point geometry instead of pixels so I cannot use his algorithm.

Basically I only grow a single line at a time, and it grows all the way from start to finish. This makes it impossible to create 'centres of high density'.

If it turns out this thing is a hit (I cannot imagine why or how), I can justify spending a lot more time on it :)

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

Permalink Reply by Khizer Ishtiaq on September 30, 2011 at 11:19am

I agree with Evan that it has great potential... To me substrate haven't caught up like voronoi and other tessellations because for substrate to be used in practical approaches, it has to have some real time input like points too.. in addition to its other existing parameters... I don't know if that is even possible to work out with the algorithm that is generating the diagram... it's just a thought, if its possible...

Permalink Reply by Emma Chris on July 28, 2013 at 4:46am

I saw you were discussing ways to control substrate. Does anybody know whether there is any way to control the density points or to create attractors for this component?

Permalink Reply by Aaron on February 9, 2012 at 3:44pm