Okay, so, “the constellations are my disciples 53″—sounds kinda epic, right? It all started when I was messing around with some new generative art software. I’ve been trying to capture the feeling of, like, vast cosmic power, you know? So, I started, as usual, by gathering my tools.
Gathering My Tools
- Software: I used Processing for this one, since it’s pretty straightforward for visual stuff.
- Libraries: Just the standard Processing libraries; nothing fancy this time.
- Inspiration: A bunch of Hubble Telescope images, some old sci-fi book covers, and a really killer ambient track I found.
I fired up Processing and started coding. My initial idea was to create a field of randomly placed, differently sized circles, to mimic stars. I started with just plain white circles on a black background. Looked pretty basic.
I coded, and there were white, randomized, circles, simulating a starfield. Pretty simple at first, it took me a few tries to get the distribution right. I didn’t want them to look like noise; I wanted, like, clusters, and empty spaces, like a real starfield.
Then, I tweaked the colors, added some gradients, and started playing with transparency. I wanted that, like, ethereal glow you see in nebulae. It took some time. Lots of fiddling with the color values.
I Added color and transparency—made it feel more “spacey.”
After that, I wanted some movement. I added a little bit of random motion to each “star,” making them kinda drift and shimmer. This was a real pain to get right. Too much movement and it looked like a chaotic mess; too little, and it was barely noticeable.
The “disciples” part came in when I thought about adding larger, brighter “stars” that seemed to influence the smaller ones around them. I made it so the smaller stars would slightly move towards the larger ones, creating this subtle sense of gravitational pull.
That’s where I messed with the animation—making stars slowly drift. I needed the feel that this was something moving and alive.
Added bigger, brighter stars and made the smaller ones move towards * was the tricky part, the interaction. I have to get the math right. It took a little while, but once I get it the effect was good.
Finally, I rendered the whole thing out as a high-res image sequence. I played around with different frame rates, and ended up picking something that felt slow, majestic, and, you know, cosmic.
Rendered it all out as a big image sequence, and, yeah, that’s pretty much it.I then, Output the final sequence.
It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there. I’m still thinking about adding some more subtle effects, maybe some lens flares or something, I have not decided yet. But for now, “the constellations are my disciples 53” is done. Or, at least, version one is.
