Mike T. Henderson

In my previous experiments using Perlin Noise to create random movement, I played around with adjusting the rotation and the scale of each particle by taking the current pixel color number beneath each node and gathering a percentage of that by the maximum color number in the Perlin Noise.

Here I use the same numbers to create a flocking-like movement to animate the x and y coordinates. This is another experiment I've been wanting to try since watching Robert Hodgin's examples on Perlin Noise flocking at FlashBelt earlier this summer. If you haven't seen his Birds yet, or any of his stuff for that matter, you should really check it out.

Continue Reading

Since updating my FireFox to version 3.0 on Mac, I've noticed that in a few of the Flash AS3 files that I've created, they don't always display correct. Only certain parts of the file would display, others would never rendor. I tested these files in various browsers and it only seemed to be FF3. FF2 worked fine, FF2, and FF3 on Windows worked great.  Hell, even IE got it right. With the browser tests, I was also able to notice that the display issue only happened when I was using add-ons in FF3. It wasn't any particular add-on, just whenever I used any add-on.

Continue Reading

Continuing on with my previous post on scaling particles with PerlinNoise, I decided to take it a little further by playing with each particle's rotation in relation to the white and dark values in the PerlinNoise. This is another little trick I learned from Robert Hodgin's presentation at FlashBelt on how to simulate realistic motion on how objects reacted to wind.

Continue Reading

While attending FlashBelt this past June, I was left in complete awe by the presentation Robert Hodgin put together, and his ability to create life-like motion using PerlinNoise.

While Robert uses Processing over Flash, the logic is much the same. Use PerlinNoise, BitmapData, and getPixel to manipulate the way your objects move.

This is my first attempt at exploring this idea. Below is a very simple example of scaling particles using PerlinNoise. The basic idea of this experiment is that the lighter the pixel value in the PerlinNoise is, the larger the particles will scale. Then the darker the pixel data in the Noise is, the smaller the particles will scale. Use the controls to play with the parameters of the noise.

Continue Reading