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Snowflake generator (Read 1755 times)

snorlax45

Snowflake generator
Dec 7^th, 2009, 1:48am

Hi Guys,

I've made a little snowflake generator as a Christmas card project.

http://www.art-tek-ltd.co.uk/snowflake/

It is based on Shiffmans recursive branching tree demo and uses PhiLHo's image save class.

You can see the source at the bottom of the page

I've used a
Quote:

if (focused) {}

inside the draw loop so that when users have focus on another window it doesn't take 20% of their CPU redrawing. If this a bad thing to do?

Is starting a new thread for each image save a good idea?
Quote:

void startsave(){
  if (!saving){
    ImageSaver saver = new ImageSaver();
    saver.start();
  }
  else{
    println("wait");
    pleasewait = true;
    pleasewaitcount = 0;
  }
}

I have tried to quit the new thread with
Quote:

running = false; // Setting running to false ends the loop in run()
interrupt(); // in case the thread is waiting. . .

But I have noticed that after saving a few times the memory the applet takes grows by 2-3mb each time and does not ever drop back down.

koogy

Re: Snowflake generator
Reply #1 - Dec 7^th, 2009, 4:12am

am all for not chewing up the processor when the image isn't moving. but wouldn't it be easier and more efficient to only redraw if the mouse is moving inside the window?

try setting your image saver to null when you've finished with it to allow the garbage collector to free up the memory.

also, snowflakes have 6-fold symmetry. not 5, not 7, not 12. 6. personal bugbear 8)

snorlax45

Re: Snowflake generator
Reply #2 - Dec 7^th, 2009, 5:07am

Thanks for your comments Koogy

Less redraw-
So would that work by putting the draw animation in a mouseMoved() function or by enclosing the draw in something that checks last mousex/mousey sort of thing. Is that the right logic?

Garbage collector -
using
Quote:

ImageSaver saver = null;
System.gc();

Seemed to work perfectly thank you

And "snowflakes" with other than 6 sides are just because they look pretty and it is nearly Christmas!

Edit: Plus you can get 12 and 3 sided flakes!
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16170-snowflakes/10

koogy

Re: Snowflake generator
Reply #3 - Dec 7^th, 2009, 6:05am

i can't remember how i did mine. i think i made it noLoop and then just had a mouseMoved method with a redraw() in it.

yes:

void mouseMoved() {
// restrict this to 4 times a second
float now = millis();
if (now > then + 250) {
then = now;
redraw();
} else {
//println("Too Soon");
}
}

oh, that has a restriction in it so that it doesn't draw *every* time the mouse as moved because my draw() was actually quite slow.

"Such snowflakes are quite rare." 8)

i wrote a little something to generate snowflake wrapping paper for last christmas. chose deliberately simple flakes. turned out nice.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31962137@N00/3112302023/

snorlax45 YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 9	Re: Snowflake generator Reply #4 - Dec 9^th, 2009, 7:22am Thanks very much - it is much smoother now, just added redraw to mouseMoved and keyPressed I love your snowflake wallpaper, both how it looks and the code for how it works!

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