This post continues yesterday’s discussion of generating abstract imagery based on close packed circles, historically called an Apollonian Gasket. Today we’ll discuss how to use an input image stream to modulate the positioning of the close packed circles (as opposed to the random placement used in yesterday’s post).
The image gallery below shows how today’s variation of yesterday’s abstract close-packing MSG preset was constructed. Note that we only are using a single 3C Abstract7 CP processor in today’s preset. The first gallery image shows the IO (input-output) routing used for today’s preset.
Note that the 3 color input ports are attached to the GSrc image stream (1st gallery image). This is very different from yesterday’s preset, which originally set the ROut image stream to a flat gray value and then used that image stream as the input to the effect.
The output IO routing is the same as yesterday’s preset. The 3 color output ports (Out R,Out G,Out B) are attached to the 3 output image streams for the MSG preset (ROut,GOut,BOut). And the same Color Palette stream I used as the In Color Palette port connection for the processor (so the colors used in the generated imagery are created based on the individual colors in that palette (along with the associated editable parameters that determine how the color palette is used to color the abstract shapes).
As shown in the 2nd gallery image, the IP Source for the MSG preset is set to the Source image. And the source image is the high contrast image of a woman’s face as shown in the source area. The 3rd gallery image shows the editable parameter settings for the 3C Abstract7 CP processor.
In yesterday’s preset, the Background parameter was set to 0. This value for the Background parameter passes through the 3 input port image streams, and the close packed shapes are overlaid on top of the 3 input image streams. And their positioning is determined by a uniform random number generator.
As you can see in the 3rd gallery image, the Background parameter for today’s preset is set to the value 2 instead of 0. Both of the Background parameter settings or 1 and 2 use the input channels to the 3C Abstract7 CP processor to determine a probability weighting for the positioning of the close packed circles (or other shapes) generated by the processor. The output color for the image background when the Background parameter is not set to 0 is generated as a fixed flat fixed color as opposed to the input values in this particular case (very different from the bahavior of yerterday;s preset which would have allowsed for stacking of multitple overlays on top of each other by repeated application of the 3C Abstract7 CP processor).
Note how the source image luminance is modulating the positioning of the close packed circles. This changes the effect from one of pure abstract image generation to an abstraction effect based on the source image. the circles are positioned to represent the source image luminance.
The 4th gallery image above shows off mutated variants of this simple MSG preset. Note that all of the mutated variants are based on shape position modulation based on the source image. If you look closely at the Background parameter settings in the 3rd gallery image, you can see that I locked the Background value to stay locked to 2. Locking a particular parameter means that any mutated variations of it generated in the Evolution Editor will keep the original locked parameter value.
The image gallery above shows off a new variation of building a spatially modulated close packing effect using the MSG preset we built above. I started with the Sphere Multiplier image operation settings as shown in the 1st gallery image. When run, that effect setting generated the second image of a black sphere on a white background. I then edited the MSG generic Editor so that the IP Source for the effect used the Current Layer (in this case the current layer being the black sphere image).
The 4th gallery image shows off my new spatially modulated close packing effect. I designed the black sphere so that larger circles would be packed near the center of the canvas, and trail off at the edges of the canvas.
You could of course build the black sphere generation into the MSG preset itself, as opposed to using the Sphere Multiplier image operation effect. We’ll leave that exercise to the reader.
Hey John,Trying to get a handle on how the 3C Abstract7 CP Processor is working in the above examples. It seems ignore white values and map to everything that isn’t white. Is that correct?
Hey John,Trying to get a handle on how the 3C Abstract7 CP Processor is working in the above examples. It seems ignore white values and map to everything that isn’t white. Is that correct?