Tee Roe Koids

tracing a "trochoid"

2011-01-02T02:07:00.000-08:00

generation of 2 circle trochoid from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

A "trochoid" is a sum of spinning circles. In this animation there are two circles; the green one has a frequency of 1 meaning it spins once per full clock rotation. The red circle has a frequency of 2 so it spins twice per clock rotation. The trochoid is the vector sum of the circles.

At one point the clock pauses and the circles switch places to show how order doesn't matter (property of addition/vector sum). This traced curve is in the cardiod family

More More More Trochoid Doodling

2010-09-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

all my vimeo videos

e^x

2010-06-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

Trochoid doodling 2 from Lazarus Plath

Half hour of doodling sped up 6 times to make a 5 minute playback; plus 1 minute of rendered animation.

Javascript browser app: http://home.comcast.net/~trochoid/WebTro1.html
(tested in Safari and FireFox)

More Trochoid Scribbles from Lazarus Plath

dodecahedron (first trace experiments)

2009-12-29T13:55:00.000-08:00

dodecahedron tests

egg

2009-11-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

host page

high contrast smooth curves chunkified on vimeo

2009-10-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes vimeos recompression of a trochoid movie is somewhat chunky, but the strobe movie is really really bad. This shows a frame grab from the original movie and one from about the same place in vimeos streamed content. Is there a trick to getting unnatural, high contrast, crispy animations to look similar on vimeo?

hips

2009-10-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Made these motions by swinging a radius in a dampened sine wave. In my app it takes 4 circles to effect a single circles radius moving in this way, and finding the right parameters is almost happenstance. The first graph represents radius over time, with about 10 waves over the animation. The other graphs shows all waves down to 1 which is used in the strobe clip.

hips2 from Lazarus Plath weeee... it's a swing

strobe

...dingleberry...

shark2

It's In Our Hands (Björky)

2009-08-23T02:51:00.001-07:00

It's In Our Hands (unfinished) from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

This is an old experiment to compose trochoid animations with music. I worked organically, starting at the beginning of the song and making shapes for the sounds. These shape animations were composed in a video editing app and I incrementally worked my way through the song, well, I intended to but only made 30 seconds. I was having trouble finding something for the snare at the end of this so I ended there, but the experiment was to test this setup for creating more complex animations, and it was pretty cumbersome. Worse is that the video editing app would show a nice, crisp image in the editor but I could never get it to export a clear movie. I finally found a way to get a quality movie out of this video editing app; made a program that sends it -> keystrokes (advances frame) then saves a screen grab. All those screen grabs are crisp and they were used to make a movie (using QT). It's Nice to finally see a full quality movie of this work. My Vimeo account doesn't have downloads of originals so this is Vimeos recompression which probably looks about the same as the crude exports I got from that video app. It's not really that spectacular, I'm just elated at finally finding a way to get a full quality movie out of that app!!!!

Oh yeah, the music is from Björks single of It's In Our Hands, the Arcade Mix one.

The Dress

2009-08-23T02:50:00.000-07:00

The Dress from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

Shot maybe around 2005 with the video feature of a still camera. Not sure what sense it's supposed to make.

funnel

2009-04-23T21:07:00.001-07:00

funnel from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

...the download from vimeo is the original movie which is much less pixelated.

ribbertime

2009-03-26T02:03:00.001-07:00

ribbertime from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

nubble 0

2009-03-24T23:59:00.001-07:00

nubble 0 from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

tem0

2009-03-17T16:27:00.001-07:00

bigs

2009-03-02T03:38:00.000-08:00

springs 5a from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

interference jewels from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

kSpin from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

Funny OTR

2009-03-01T19:03:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to some Old Time Radio from the 30's, 40's and 50's. Some of the episode names for suspense and thriller shows are funny...

Doctor Prescribed Death
Case Of The Man Who Invented Death
Murder Calls The Undertaker
Murder Ain't Minor
Betrayal In Bumpass Hell
Death Is The Judge
The Accusing Corpse

show names...
You Can't Do Business With Hitler
I Was A Communist For FBI
The Strange Dr. Weird

Dizzy Swoops

2009-02-10T06:25:00.000-08:00

Dizzy Swoops from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

Image is crisper in downloaded file.

more IFS play...

2009-02-03T05:31:00.000-08:00

Made with japhine, a quirky half-finished online java IFS fractal app.

Trochoid Mix 1

2008-10-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

Trochoid Sampler Mix 1 from Lazarus Plath on Vimeo.

my other vimeo videos here
this video and others on youtube here

o

2008-10-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

circa web super alpha

2008-10-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

circa web test 0 for fiddling

Spatial Trochoids (almost)

2008-09-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

In my extra time I've been developing a processing like IDE for graphic apps using the HTML Canvas element and javascript. It's not quite finished, but I've been using it to code several experiments as I learn javascript. Below is a link to my latest play, 3D spline curves built on a pseudo trochoid. The shapes are usually a mess because it's not really a trochoid (which always has a symmetry). While fiddling with this though I think I figured a way to generate true 3D trochoids. I just need to brush up on my quaternions and matrices then I'll have a symmetric version of this app. Anyways, here's the app...

• • run kilter • •

I need to put the app on a separate page because my current javascript uses global variables. I could put the app here in the blog post but if I wanted to put another the variables would conflict. I'm working on making the apps fully self contained so you could put them wherever, that'll be nice.

browser trochoids

2008-08-22T05:58:00.000-07:00

• • see my test • •

Trochoid app for a browser? I've tried java and flash which worked well but didn't excite. Now I discover this newish html thing called a Canvas that javascript can draw into. I like it. This is my first test of the Canvas to see how fast it can draw.

laser spins

2008-05-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

the setup...

...swing it about and record a time lapse photo of the light trace. Experimented with weights in various positions along the string, swing style and exposure lengths from 8 to 64 seconds. Conclusion: traces seem pretty random, I was hoping for more of a basin of attraction. Will continue search.

traced over styrofoam shape...

symmetry

2008-04-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

symmetric

pseudo symmetry

Trochoid Apps for download

2008-04-15T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've made 3 trochoid based apps, they are: Trochoid, TroTorted and circa. These are mac apps and should run on intel or powerpc. Should run on 10.5, I'm running 10.4 and they may run as far back as OS9 with InterfaceLib and CarbonLib installed!

These are the apps I use to create all the spirography images here. The apps are freeware. Trochoid was initially shareware and water marks movies and restricts rendered image sizes until registered. To unlock that goto Trochoid Preferences...->Enter Registration->put "wuve-khmn-ooru" into the code field and press enter.

Documentation is lacking for all the apps. Lacking as in there is none. Years ago I made some unfinished documentation that I'll try to find and repost. For now my intentions for more and complete documentation is to make videos. The video below is my first. It doesn't explain much but shows the general path from start to finish of making a trochoid movie.

Download TrochoidApps.zip 6MB

what you get...
The downloaded file 'TrochoidApps.zip' expands to the folder 'Trochoid Apps (raw)'. (raw means there are no sample files :( yet) Inside you'll find Trochoid, circa and a folder for TroTorted.

TroTorted is in it's own folder because it needs to be next to the Quesa file. Quesa is a 3D engine. If TroTorted can't find Quesa it'll crash while trying to start. (circa uses Quesa too, but I was able to package it inside the app)

Trochoid
Build, animate, texture and render. The most complex of the 3. The interface is non-standard and I don't know how intuitive it is. Most in need of documentation/how-to's.

circa
Build curves. The main feature of this app is that the curve is 'live'. You can adjust the rotation speed while it's in motion. In Trochoid you can't change the parameters while the animation preview is running. This app has no color and texturing is very limited. It was designed primarily to explore curve motion.

TroTorted
2D trochoid curves are wiggled in the third dimension by a sine wave. 3D mesh models can be output as DXF or for POV-RAY.

Again, I need documentation and sample files. That will be my next post. Enjoy :)

Trochoidal Videos

2008-04-10T02:43:00.000-07:00

This first video shows the process of making a rendered movie. About 40 minutes of computer time is compressed to 2 minutes.

These next 3 videos repeat the same animation 4 times to simulate some looping.

The last video is available in this MUCH higher quality file: springs3z.mov.
640x480, 29.97fps, ~12 seconds, looping, quicktime, 8.7mb

lim

2007-12-20T02:12:00.000-08:00

ifs+

2007-09-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

epistomoes

2007-08-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

caps

2007-06-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

sometimes I find my screen so pretty I take a picture...

The desktop image is raytraced mirrors. shiny!

Trotorted UVs

2007-05-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

While working on my maze programming homework... one thing led to another and I figured out how to specify UV coordinates properly (UVs map a 2D image to a 3D mesh). I dug into the TroTorted code and added this which was wonderfully easy (I'm finally writing clean extensible code). What this means is that models exported from TroTorted can be textured without a seam. While I was at it I added a sine wave to the tube thickness which you can see in the last picture. I'll post this updated TroTorted after more testing. (Models made in TroTorted, textured and rendered in blender)

Bio Cells Video

2007-05-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Some Biological Cells
by qqazxxsw

...About 5 different microscopic critters in motion. There's a hydra and some kind of paramecium (I think), don't know what the others are. Quality is pretty low for this first attempt; and the eye piece pointer is in every shot (I've since taken it out of the scope). I captured the video by simply holding the camera onto the eye piece with my left hand and controlling the stage, focus and lighting with my right, that's tricky.
This video at host if embed doesn't work...

biological cells

2007-05-06T03:23:00.000-07:00

walkway paint in santa cruz

2007-05-06T03:15:00.000-07:00

A raccoon outside my apartment window; it seemed to be humping the fence.

mazes

2007-04-23T03:13:00.000-07:00

Homework for data structures class is to make mazes; just make.
A "maze" is a grid of hex values, to look at it you can't tell if it's a valid maze. To make sure my program was outputing good stuff I drew it, and drew and drew more...

Using Circa Sample

2007-04-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a movie of circa being played with. I sped it up about 3 times. The movie is ~2 minutes, 4.5MB and shows a rendered version at the end. Sorry about the crude quality, the data went through several pipes...
CircaTwiddling.mp4
I think people might be confused on how to use circa, I'm trying to show how I use it. Dis a first attempt at a video tutorial.

graph drawing experiments

2007-03-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

So, I'm in a "computer data structures" class and it's graphs and trees, trees and graphs... These are screengrabs from a java app to draw graphs. I wanted to do it myself first, but I've found two graphing libraries I may be able to switch to (GINY and JUNG).

This is the "Explore" window in the Trochoid app. Notice the center pattern is garbage compared to the others. The pattern in the center is where all the circles of the trochoid cancel out, putting the entire curve into the point <0,0>. In this window the drawing function tries to scale the pattern to fit it's place, but in the case of a point the scale becomes infinity and all the numbers go wack.

Trochoid ScreenSaver

2007-02-26T21:22:00.000-08:00

Posted a trochoid based screensaver for OS X at the "Apps and Movies" link. (link in Blog Banner). Note: I think there's a problem with the 3App zip file upload (post below). I'll remark here when fixed. (I hope this screensaver upload works). Here's a screen grab after running for 10 seconds.

jint

2006-10-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

stills

2006-09-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

paleolith

2006-07-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

IFS sequence... invertable

2006-07-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

Found the code for IFS trochoids and it still compiles! Made this 9 pic progression...

found IFS

2006-07-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Here's some more IFS trochoids I found while meandering through 80 gigabytes of unorganized backup data; including the Sierpinksi like one.

Iterated Function System

2006-07-17T01:46:00.000-07:00

There is a type of fractal called an iterated function system (IFS) that applies a 'function' to your 'system' then applies the function again and again to the output (iterates). I tried this for trochoids and below is one of the creations. In this case the system is the sequence of circles comprising the trochoid (a circle being 2 numbers, radius and frequency). The function is a list of simple functions. The simple functions...well, I'll show how it works sometime, it's difficult to explain.

As I was hoping, the trochoids are somewhat fractalish in being self similar. I couldn't find my favorite example though; it looked just like a (slightly bulged) Sierpinski Triangle. I should be able to remake it sometime....

utilities

2006-02-04T23:22:00.000-08:00

Knowing how to write a program is great when your computer doesn't work exactly how you like, such as iTunes not showing an estimated time remaining for a podcast download. Luckily I knew the trick to making a transparent window and a plugin that can take pictures of the screen. Armed with these I can put the window over the iTunes progress bar, take a picture of that area it defines and make an algorithm that scans the image and figures out how far along it is, keep track of time and that's all I need to estimate remaining time. It does all this each second. This is what it looks like...

As with many of my utility apps I expect my "iTunes image recognition progress meter" to be outdated in the next iTunes update (ie iTunes will show remaining time), but it was fun to make:) I've tried image recognition programs before but this is my first success.

pre artichoke

2006-01-30T22:46:00.000-08:00

surface

2006-01-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

Trying to visualize the set of the raise operation, it's a tricky one

circa preview

2006-01-06T00:52:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a program named circa that I would like to share, but I don't have a good place to post it yet. When I find a place I'll link to it from this blog, along with the others I used to have out there; Trochoid, TroTorted and the Laser Scanners. These are some screen grabs on circa as I worked on it. It's in no way finished but it's fun and works for the most part.

some trochoid desktop renders

2005-12-30T18:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I render a trochoid to use as a desktop picture, which for me is 1024x768, so that's how big all these pics are.

wireframes one

2005-12-27T23:06:00.000-08:00

wireframes zero

2005-12-25T22:04:00.000-08:00

word