Hi there,

I'm working on a bit of code to draw lots of lines of text in a sketch, and to overlap and animate them, with alpha blending. Loaded from atext file, each line of text is a separate object with its own attribs.

Trouble is, when a relatively modest number of objects is painted (e.g., <100), the animation bogs down and becomes a bit jittery.

Anyy suggestions to optimize the code to run more smoothly would be warmly welcomed!

-B

// Code to scroll lines of poetry down the screen
// by Brock Craft, March 2008.

String [] rawtext = new String[10629]; // an array to hold each line of text
int x=0;
Fragment[] f;

void setup(){

 size(600,400,P3D);
 frameRate(30);
 fill(255);
 PFont font = loadFont("Apple-Chancery-48.vlw");
 textFont(font,22);
 textAlign(CENTER);
 String lines[] = loadStrings("a_poem.txt");
 f=new Fragment[100];// or use 10629 if we want to use the whole text file
    for (int i=0; i < 100; i++) {
   rawtext[i] = lines[i];  // rawtext is not necessary, but leftover from other kludging
   f[i]=new Fragment(rawtext[i],width/2,i*40,random(5));
 }

}

void draw(){
 background(0);
 for (int i=0;i<50;i++){
   f[i].display();
   f[i].sink();
 }  
if (mousePressed){
      for (int i=0;i<100;i++){
   f[i].reset();
   f[i].reseed();
 }
}

}

class Fragment
{
 String t; // text
 float xpos; // xposition
 float ypos; // yposition
 float weight; // "weight" or heaviness of text

   Fragment(String it, float ixp, float iyp, float iw) {
   xpos = ixp;
   ypos = iyp;
   t = it;
   weight = iw;
 }

 void sink (){
   if (ypos<height+50){
     ypos=ypos+weight;
   }
 }

 void reseed(){
   weight=random(5);
 }
 
 void reset(){
    ypos=random(10);
 }

 void display() {
   float a=weight*50;
   fill(255,255,255,a);
   text(t,xpos, ypos);
   translate(0,0,10);
 }
}

Hey thanks for your reply!

I tried it on a Newer Mac Workstation and it was a bit choppy at larger resolutions - say 1200,1600. It will be in an installation, so I want the animation to run really smoothly. I may try it on a PC that I have with a beefy graphics card. I've seen partcle systems that have thousands of objects rendering smoothly. Perhaps the fact that I'm using text is slowing things down.

This does raise the question of whether OpenGL or P3D is faster - or whether it makes any difference. I would expect OpenGL is much faster, but I am really not familiar enough with the two technologies to know the answer.

If you think of any other ways to optimize the code or have other thoughts, do post them.

Cheers!