Flow Fields

The basis for these experiments is 2d Perlin noise that drives flow fields with dotted lines. Either starting with a regular set of starting points, e.g., equidistant on one diagonal, or a random set, lines are generated by following both directions from the starting points where the angle is given by the values of the Perlin noise at the underlying point. Here, to achieve that lines essentially run from left to right, the possible directions for this line segment are restricted to a limiting angular section.

Lines consist of dots with spacing different more or less from fixed distance (with a gaussian noise addition). Similarly, the coloring of these dots varies in a random fashion but within limits.

Two types of lines, with potentially different color selection, dot spacing and sizes are used, alternating regularly or randomly between different starting points.

All parameters, number and selection of starting points, color space and randomization, dot size and randomization, dot distances and randomization, angular sector are chosen randomly (within some restricting intervals). Generating many images shows that the resulting visual potential is quite large, here a selection of some more interesting images is shown.

In the animated versions, the 3rd dimension of Perlin noise is used to gradually change the effective 2d noise generating the flow directions. Due to the different extent of the lines when changing the noise field, it is crucial to keep random seeds per line to keep the randomizations within the line (in dot size, color and distances) stable during the changes.