Flocking tutorial for Cinder by Robert Hodgin

For advanced explorations outside of After Effects, check out the 5-part flocking tutorial for Cinder by Robert Hodgin that was noted by @blprnt. It contains the same logic used to make the Bait Ball video below. Cinder is a free, open source, peer-reviewed C++ library for creative coding, and the Cinder team recommends advanced Processing skills -- which is still beyond most of us.

Happily though we have Trapcode Particular; see Flocking Experiment with Trapcode Particular + new versions for renders, projects, and advice from Peder Norrby.

Bait ball from flight404 on Vimeo.

iTunes new visualizer is Magnetosphere

Venture Beat confirmed that the new visualizer in iTunes 8 is Robert Hodgin’s Magnetosphere, which was earlier postulated by Allen White, and picked up by Create Digital Music (which doesn't share all content with Create Digital Motion).

For more on Hodgin, see an earlier post Flocking with 3D Perlin noise, which was born from mistaken identity of Trapcode Klangfarbe and AlphaOmega iTunes visualizer (in Mac beta). Not coincidently Trapcode leverages Perlin Noise expertly.


Magnetosphere revisited (audio by Tosca) from flight404 on Vimeo.

Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?

Even though AEP's metaroundup 37+ data-visualization blogs isn't very old, there's more than enough action to merit another look even if there's some overlap. Just noticed is The power of Personal Informatics from Johnny Holland Magazine, Good Magazine's now bulging infographic collection on Flickr (via Flowing Data), and Fast Company's Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?

PSFK, a news site with regular notes on visualization and infographics, has their own roundups like Data Visualization Tools, and refers to good resources and external roundups like Webdesigner Depot's exhaustive 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization.

Of course visualization is a big, if spare & silent, part of what Google is doing with Search Options, Hot Trends, etc. And while you've been able to visualize user activity live on Digg Labs for 2 years or so, they have expanded their offerings too. Mashable has covered some of this in roundups of visualization tools for social media: 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools, Data Visualizations: 5 Beautiful Social Media Videos, and 6 Unique Twitter Visualizations.

Since some information is best conveyed in motion, Mashable also noted 7 Beautiful Data Visualizations (With Videos). Below is one example from Skyrails, a social network visualization system that can be used to visualize any data.

At one point the AE filter Useful Things from Profound Effects could help with data visualization, even with live data from the Internet (weather, etc.), but the technology was sold to SONY. Let's hope that Adobe's Office 2.0 Mashup isn't lost forever (unlikely given the momentum of Flash, Flex, and AIR) and that the AE team is interested in this area, even if it just means easy integration with Flash.



Update: Programmable Web News has categories for both visualization and mapping.

Update 2: SIGGRAPH 2009 is hosting an Information Aesthetics Showcase "in recognition of the increasingly prominent role that information visualization and data graphics are assuming in our digitally mediated culture."

Update 3: Keith Lang recommends Information Visualization, Second Edition: Perception for Design; you can read a mostly complete FREE sample of Information Visualization on Amazon.com.

Update 4: Check out InfoGraphic Designs: Overview, Examples and Best Practices.

Update 5: (July) see A pseudo-random collection of Information Visualization links from Generator X and Art Against Information: Case Studies in Data Practice on Fibre Culture, as well as blogs Ben Fry, Data is Nature, Jer Thorp's blprnt.com, Pete Search's Only Connect, and Robert Hodgin's Flight 404.

Update 6: (November) CNN noted the growth of visualization in A new way of looking at the world.

Flocking with 3D Perlin noise

Robert Hodgin of The Barbarian Group (makers of iTunes visualizer Magnetosphere), presented a movie (pictured left) at "Flash in the Can" in Toronto earlier this year.

He talks about the Processing environment and his use of 3D Perlin noise for flocking. Flash people were quick to experiment after an earlier presentation on Perlin noise; here's one, Animated Perlin Clouds in Papervision3D.

There's a bunch more generative processing stuff around beside the recent video by Radiohead. Toolbox is a node-based generative editor app that was featured recently on Create Digital Motion, which also features regular write ups on Processing projects. You can find demo movies of Toolbox on Vimeo, where the programmer links to Vector Field animations that do not use Perlin noise (implemented in After Effects in the Fractal Noise filter).

Processing 1.0 launched

Processing 1.0 has been launched, and promises breakthroughs in workflow efficiency for the creative process across work in print, Web, interactive, film, video and mobile:

"Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating finished professional work as well.

Processing is a free, open source alternative to proprietary software tools with expensive licenses, making it accessible to schools and individual students. Its open source status encourages the community participation and collaboration that is vital to Processing's growth. Contributors share programs, contribute code, answer questions in the discussion forum, and build libraries to extend the possibilities of the software. The Processing community has written over seventy libraries to facilitate computer vision, data visualization, music, networking, and electronics."

For more on projects using Processing, check out a previous note on a Robert Hodgin talk on Flocking with 3D Perlin noise, and Processing Blogs and Create Digital Motion.