Book Image

Multimedia Programming with Pure Data

By : Bryan, Wai-ching CHUNG
Book Image

Multimedia Programming with Pure Data

By: Bryan, Wai-ching CHUNG

Overview of this book

Preparing interactive displays, creating computer games, and conducting audio-visual performance are now achievable without typing lines of code. With Pure Data, a graphical programming environment, creating interactive multimedia applications is just visually connecting graphical icons together. It is straightforward, intuitive, and effective. "Multimedia Programming with Pure Data" will show you how to create interactive multimedia applications. You will learn how to author various digital media, such as images, animations, audio, and videos together to form a coherent title. From simple to sophisticated interaction techniques, you will learn to apply these techniques in your practical multimedia projects. You start from making 2D and 3D computer graphics and proceed to animation, multimedia presentation, interface design, and more sophisticated computer vision applications with interactivity. With Pure Data and GEM, you will learn to produce animations with 2D digital imagery, 3D modelling, and particle systems. You can also design graphical interfaces, and use live video for motion tracking applications. Furthermore, you will learn Audio signal processing, which forms the key aspect to multimedia content creation. Last but not least, Network programming using Pure Data extension libraries explores applications to other portable devices.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Multimedia Programming with Pure Data
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding a particle system


In 1983, William T. Reeves from Lucasfilm Ltd published a paper: Particle Systems – A Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects. It described the fire simulation effects applied in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Modeling clouds, smoke, and fire is difficult, they do not have rigid primitive surface elements that define their boundaries. They only have a fuzzy volume of particles. Their forms also change over time. Their shapes and forms are recognizable but not accurately predictable.

To model a piece of fire, for example, with particle system, we have the following questions:

  • How new particles are generated. Is it by birth?

  • What types of visual and physical properties the new particles have?

  • How existing particles disappear over time. Is it by death?

  • How do the visual and physical properties of the existing particles change over time?

  • How can we render the group of particles in each frame?

By answering these questions, we can define a particle system...