Lost Marbles Society

After the recent vortex spheres, I thought I'd make a version with fragment shaders for a continuous coloured surface. It's a return to my early 2D techniques, but it didn't mean it was any simpler, as I was soon reminded of a few old quirks.

The flow process stores the intermediate frames using equirectangular projection — 2D coords with longitude and latitude instead of x and y. It then needs a separate display stage. This simple operation which I've done many times turned out surprisingly messy due to draw ordering, so I switched from the 3D mesh into another 2D fragment shader. I guess such "hand-made" 3D was a nice fit for the flow part, though. It also inspired me to add some proper physics into the translucency that wouldn't happen with basic alpha blending, though it probably won't make a difference due to the texture details.

#marble #bluemarble #lostmymarbles #vortex #swirl #flowpattern #flowsimulation #fluidart #fluidflow #fragmentshader #rendertotexture #pythoncode #opengl #algorithmicart #algorist #mathart #computerart #ittaide #kuavataide #iterati

[Gordy-iosb]

Did you use differential equations for this one?