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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Today I was working on a video player in AS3 that I wanted to be able to play any video on initial load by passing a variable through the query string. I had done this before in AS2 using the ExternalInterface class but wasn't sure if it was still valid in AS3. After a little quick research, I found that this is one thing that they left alone between the two versions.

So after a few minor AS2 to AS3 migrating, I now have an AS3 version of my QueryString class. The following app allows you to search through a query string for a value of a specified variable. To test, add a query string to the url and play.

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In honor of the third annual CSS Naked Day, I have commented out my stylesheets for the day.

Using the same logic from my wave machine, I reworked the code to make an AS3 version. What I learned is that there isn't really any difference with the perlinNoise method from AS2 to AS3.

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Inspired by Lee Brimelow's tutorial on PaperVision 2.0 interactivity, I finally got my hands dirty playing with the 2.0 GreatWhite branch today.

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This is a simple little drawing app class I call draw.Pencil. It allows full custom ability to define the stroke width, alpha, color, cap, scaleMode, and the ability to clear on each mouse press. Right now it only allows said parameters to be defined when the instance is created. The next version will allow for change in parameters to be made on the fly.

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With version 2 of my draw.Circle class, I've included gradient control as well as more control on the stroke by adding parameters for pixelHinting, and scaleMode.

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