A GH Script to Recreate Flowfazer Screensaver Curves?

[xavier.bury]

I think it’s more of a bitwise operation between bitmaps for an ultimate moire effect. How would you do this?
Dont get me started on the variations…

Flowfazer 1.0.6 Free Download

Seriously, I kind of find the effect screen wise with many 3D renders (or using the cnc step option on curvers - very nice effects)

These patterns haunt me since the times of the Mac 2 when this screensaver was invented! It’s a legend…Still maintained!

Sometimes i get there…

very early prototype of a project… wrong cnc tool (square instead of ball mill type) but the program - whatever it was then did some moires in 3D!.. Not sure when i get to program this again…

[Volker_Rakow]

The Flowfazer link does not work.

Looking up on the internet, which of the many effects do you mean exactly? They seem like field lines in a vector field. Or the isocurves of a metaball.

[xavier.bury]

The link does work and has examples… I didn’t want to copy them here.

[Birk_Binnard]

It is a 3D printed surface of revolution or Loft surface. Either one is easy to make. The printer was set to change filaments at specific heights. Or someone just stopped it at the desired height and changed filaments.

[xavier.bury]

This is not 3D printed. it’s a screensaver. and it definitely looks like pole attractors.

[Eef_Weenink]

my 2 cents,
looking closely, I see some spots what seems to be “leftovers” of milling.
So my guess. sandwiched plates on top of eachother + milling.
And that is the way you could build them in gh

looks like micarta

[Volker_Rakow]

I have tried numerous times now. It does not work for me in either Firefox or Edge. Can you provide at least one image, so that I can confirm that what I am thinking of and what it is are the same?

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Something like this?:

[Volker_Rakow]

That is Xavier’s own attempt. Not the thing he is after.

[xavier.bury]

I kind had some success here in the middle of CNC operations

Here is the smooth finish…

What im looking for is how to achieve that graphical quality in Flowfazer. I did try some attractor lines but never got to this result.

[Volker_Rakow]

Yeah, it’s going to be difficult to get closed curves from field lines, which is why I suggested MetaBall, but MetaBall only allows for positive charges in the vector field.

Nautilus has alot of field components, but I am very weak in math and understanding vector fields.

[Volker_Rakow]

@xavier.bury Heteroptera has a Field Contour component, that creates “MetaBall-like” contours out of the scalar values of a field. That sounds like exactly the thing you need.

[Artstep]

Interesting - apparently there used to be a Java version running on David Levine’s website that’s now gone, there’s still an old “groklet” binary floating around

It looks a bit like he’s cycling colours and then applying a Mobius transformation maybe?

This python library has something curious ( GitHub - AndrewHazelden/mobius: Editing spherical images/video using Möbius transformations · GitHub )

And there’s a good implementation here in Java:

https://gist.github.com/adamjmurray/621594

I see lots of moire effects when I’m playing with sine waves - the asymptotic curves appear when you use squared values for x and y. Factor k is used to control the wave period.

i.e. color = Sin(x^2 *k)*Cos(y^2 *k)

How this comes together to make flowfazer though is another question…

edit: color = Sin((x*y)^2)*Cos((x*y)^2)

[seg]

This looks like layered colored wood. You can apply it to a mesh using vertical mapping.

multilayers_wood.gh (11.6 KB)

[xavier.bury]

Getting close. Yes, the moire is part of it…

[xavier.bury]

Wow, thanks, I’ve been looking for this technique - im usually creating layers of wood slabs that i later subtract (not always right rejoining the pieces

[Artstep]

Looks like applying a mobius tranformation to a loxodrome gets a pretty similar result - "Loxodrome" ? Oder nicht ? – GeoGebra

Very curious about the multi-polar one though - I wonder whether it is created from a sphere or a more complex topological “doughnut” of some kind