MAJ: Looking Outwards #3
Admiration: Stardust
Stardust is a series of generative portraits by Sergio Albiac. According to Albiac, Stardust is an experiment based around the idea of modeling artistic decisions into software. Over 15,000 portraits were created as a result of this project.
I think Albiac was incredibly successful in creating an system that outputs distinctive and aesthetically pleasing content. I’d be interested to know how the program takes samples from space photos, as well as the logic behind the circle size and placement, which seems to be using some sort of face detection algorithm to specify the size and density of circles.
More information about Sergio Albiac can be found here. For more Stardust photos, click here.
Surprise: Elevated
Elevated is a PC 4k demo by RGBA and TBC, which was entered at Breakpoint 2009.
Iñigo Quílez, one of the coders for this project, and has a general presentation of how Elevated was constructed here.
As someone with an incredibly basic knowledge of shaders and absolutely no experience coding them, I was pleasantly surprised with Quilez’s ability to explain how he built a complex program from relatively simple components. It helps that Elevated looks pretty darn cool in motion.
Additionally, Quilez breaks down his terminology even more in his 2008 presentation regarding the project Slisesix, which can be found here.
What May Soon Be But Is Not Yet: Future Unfolding
Future Unfolding is an upcoming game from Spaces of Play, a small game studio based in Berlin. While the project is still in its alpha stages, the premise is that the player is given a procedurally generated forest to explore and solve puzzles in. Many elements of the world will be randomly generated for each play-through, such as the behavior, appearance, and hostility of the various virtual creatures populating the forest.
I’m all for what Future Unfolding promises to be. However, I can’t completely get behind it until I see more of the game’s core idea, random generation, expressed through its documentation. Again, the game is in its early stages, so I have high hopes for the variety of visuals and experiences that Future Unfolding promises to generate.
To see more art assets from Future Unfolding, click here.