Digital Workshop

Hi Mack,

Thanks for the clarification.

Kind Regards,

One last tweak. Added random colour option. By default it will pick a random colour regardless of current colour. Is selected is false, it will switch between colours. IE Black will become white.

Run and switch whilst playing. It makes quite a drastic affect on the effect (is that the right way round?).

Mack

Attached is the same principle in Opus but scaled to 400 dots.

Mack

Hi Mack,

As to the Adobe Flex version, seems correct speed is with the random color off.

The IMP you sent is impressive. Makes me think that if only I could get those 6400 objects all on the page, it could work. A wish, anyway.

Not sure how to Quickbuild this and get each one properly named. Can see smoke coming out of the machine.

Kind Regards,

They don't need naming. It uses the GetChild method which accepts an index not a name.

Mack

Thanks, Mack.

That's good news.

So far, I have not been able to Quickbuild or multiple paste to create a 640X640 canvas with 6400 dots. Knew that this would be a challenge.

I wonder if the dots can first be created as 1 X 1, then the frame somehow scaled up to 8 X 8?

Probably needs a 'super-computer' to build this overwhelming number of objects (and have it run OK).

Kind Regards,

Based on the developing discussions, it seems that Opus will not have the capability to manage the few thousand objects (Stephen's 6400 points). I suppose you could cut that 'load' be 50% by maintaining a white canvas and then 'placing' 3200 black objects in some randomly distributed pattern. Then operate on the randomly selected subset of 400. The challenge would be figuring out the logic to only place and land the moved objects on white space (ie, not land on another black point).

I found an error in the script I posted above, and even though you are not likely to use it now I should correct it in the event some other reader later tries to use it or adapt it somehow. I changed one Line in the earlier post. Below code reflects that change (to the if statement). You could also move the GetState and SetState action commands to outside of the While Loop (so that points change at approximately the same time) -- use appropriate for Loop.

Hi Larry,

Yes, I have not been able to get 6400 8X8 dots into a frame, using Quickbuild or multiple copy/paste. Came close but not close enough.

I had also thought of cutting these down to 3200, keeping the background white (or other work-a-rounds, like creating smaller dots, 1X1, and scaling them up), but this will not produce the truly random pattern needed to meet the "standard" for dynamic visual noise, which is a nicely meandering animation in which the dots almost twinkle like stars.

Kind Regards,

Had a brainwave. Use the drawing function instead.

Mack

Hi Mack,

Early on, I had thought about using that (drawing function to draw the dots into a frame) but couldn't figure out a way to script it. I got stuck, when trying to devise a "proof of concept" sample script, with how to get each dot's name for storage into an array, so these could become part of the pool from which a specific number of dots could then be randomly chosen every 100 ms for changing/flipping their color.

Could you suggest a small sample script to try that out? (Then it could be extended for 6400 dots.)

Kind Regards,

The theory is quite simply really:




This will create a new array containing the 6,400 dots which are just USER objects instead of HOST objects such as buttons or frames. Start by shuffling the array, as discussed previously and then focus on the use of the drawing functions to create the noise. For example:



Would draw a square in the frame called 'Frame' at the positions defined in the USER object held in element '0' of the array myPositions. If the array is shuffled, something like:


Will create 3,200 randomly placed squares in the frame that could be used to create the initial noise effect. From then on, it's a case of just shuffling the array again and drawing 400 new squares on top over a period of 1 second.


Mack

Hi Mack,

A little complex for me to get my brain around and implement.

But very interesting possibilities!

Am stuck trying to figure out what to do next? (When I call the dot function, nothing seems to happen.)

I'll attach an IMP.

Kind Regards,

Ah. I think you might need to take several steps back and get your head around the OOP aspect. There should be various post looking at this and many starter guides on Javascript cover it - look for anything up 1.2.

I believe that if you need to build it, Opus can do this with the drawing tools.

Mack

Hi Mack,

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Kind Regards,

Sounds like a contest/giveaway -- re: 'random drawing'.

I regress here, back to the statement about limitation of Opus and so many host objects...I wonder if the following might work for your 80 x 80 grid.

Would Opus perform any better if you just created 80 vector objects, each with 80 child Polygons?
The random generation routine could use a single array of 400 length to assign the flags.
You would still operate on addressing the polygons by GetChild(), but now using nested FOR LOOPS to run through the children.
Then you simply 'flip' the polygon color (flip by fill colour, transparency, or hide/show).

Maybe a great simplification could be to take that address, AR[ ran ] = 3457 for example, which is one of the 400 selected or flagged. And convert that into a row and column index.
Implements direct addressing of children. That would eliminate any need for LOOPING through the Vectors and polygons.

The above is theory -- that is I have not verified. Would need to at least make sure the indexing is correct zero-based or not.

[Lar EDIT:] I think I assumed that one Vector object would represent an entire column (think Excel, Col C row 1 to 80)
[Lar EDIT 2] I detected a mistake in the above approach/code. I needed an integer value for an index, so var colX = 3457/80 needs to be reduced to an integer only. Use parseInt, or var colX = Math.floor( 3457/80 )
Of course, this is illustrating the example and the real code would use variable such as earlier: AR[ ran ]