Hypercomplex Iterations: Distance Estimation and Higher Dimensional Fractals (2002). Physically Based Rendering – A great book about ray tracing theory. Real-Time Rendering – Probably the best book about real-time graphics. What is Generative Art by Philip Galanter. GASETHJ – journal and web site for Generative Art, Science, and Technology. Hyperseeing: Journal on Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture.
The full archive of conference papers is freely available. Generative Art Conference (Milan) – The only academic conference I know of dedicated entirely to Generative Art. OpenFrameworks – openFrameworks is an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding. It is free, open-source, and cross-platform. APIs and FrameworksĬinder is a C++ library for creative applications.
– particle GLSL editor, made by Two of my attempts: Lorentz attractor, Pulsating knot. Again a WebGL GLSL editor, but more flexible, e.g.
The first real-time code environment using WebGL (I think). Impromptu – Realtime programming (Scheme based, OS X only).Ĭhuck – ” Strongly-timed, Concurrent, and On-the-fly Audio Programming Language”įluxus – “A rapid prototyping, livecoding and playing/learning environment for 3D graphics, sound and games.”. SuperCollider – A real time audio synthesis programming language Jenn3D for visualizing Coxeter polytopes. JWildFire – impressive 3D flames renderer. Subblue has some very nice Pixel Bender (GPU accelerated) fractal plugins: Fractal Explorer Plugin – Mandelbrot and Julia sets, including orbit trapping, and a Mandelbulb Plugin (a possible 3D generalization of the Mandelbrot set). Especially the 3D fractals are interesting and different from other fractal software. Incendia – is a very promising fractal generator. It contains a small IDE for writing GLSL snippets, and comes with support for animations and large resolution rendering, and several examples of 2D and 3D fractals. My own application for rendering 3D fractals (and other systems) using the GPU. Mandelbulber – similar to Mandelbulb3D, but open source. Mandelbulb3D – very powerful application for creating 3D fractals (distance estimated systems like Mandelbulbs, Mandelboxes, KIFS, and hybrid systems).
Organomorphic and MENDELicious – scripts for 3DStudio Max for creating natural structures and creatures. There is a vast number of possible customizations, and the UI is beautiful, with a very fast built-in raytracer.Īrbaro and ngPlant are apps for generating 3D models of trees and flowers. GroBoto is a commercial IDE for creating structures based on a number of templates.
K3DSurf – 3D surface generator (for a nice example check out this one by Schmiegl). Simulates all kinds of reaction-diffusion studies – both discrete and continious (OpenCL). TopMod3D – “is a free, open source, portable, platform independent topological mesh modeling system that allows users to create high genus 2-manifold meshes”.
Structure Synth – my own attempt to extend Context Free Art into three dimensions.
Context Free Art was my own first encounter with Generative Art, and I still think is a wonderful little app. It is very polished and easy to get started with. PureData a “real-time graphical dataflow programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing.” Specific SystemsĬontext Free Art – uses Context Free Design Grammars to generate 2D images. Not only video – vvvv also handles audio and static images quite well (see Eno Henze: Reality Foam. Vvvv is “a toolkit for real time video synthesis”. The new version 2.0 is finally available on Windows. “ NodeBox does less, prettier, in Python. Nodebox – A Python based alternative to Processing. There is also a JavaScript port, Processing.js (with a nice example here: Algorithm Ink). It is an “open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities”. Processing is probably the most used platform for Generative Art.
Generative Art Software General-Purpose Software The list is not meant to be exhaustive: rather, it is a list of my favorite links. Some links to Generative Art, Math & Fractals, and other creative ways of creating computional imagery.