Well, you have to manage a cube instead of a rectangle...
Just do a triple loop, adding z to the mix.

don't necessarily need a cube - a rectangle 256 high by 65536 wide would do, or 4096 x 4096. what it'll look like is anyone's guess (but the colour graduations won't be smooth)

you'll end up with a 16MegaPixel image either way. is that really what you want?

i take it you've seen this in the examples:

http://processing.org/learning/3d/rgbcube.html

probably not what you want as you can't access colours that aren't on the surface.

thanks phil.ho and Kooogy.

I tried the triple loop

1. for (int x=0;x<255;x++){
2.       for (int y=0;y<255;y++){
3.           for (int z=0;z<255;z++){
   
4.             color c = color(x,y,z);
5.               }
   
6.       }
   
7. }

The issue is that you can only store 2d data one layer at a time. What I may have to do is create a sketch which renders to a quicktime movie, thus giving me all the possible colours and then stitch each frame to an image.

1. int _x,_y,_z;
2. void draw(){
3. _z++;
4. if (_z>255){
5. _z=0;
6. _y++;
7. }
   
8. if(_y>255){
9. _x++;
10. _y=0; }
11. if(_x>255){
12. //save quicktime movie
13. mm.finish();
    
14. exit(); }
15. color c= color (_x,_y,_z);
    
16. background(c);
    
17. mm.addframe();
18. }

Something like the algorithm above.

Kooogy, I thought about the RGB cube too, instead of mapping it to a cube I could map it straight across the single z-axis like a sheet of paper. I will try that but I would like to see how far I get with the algorithm.

Thanks again guys.

>> The issue is that you can only store 2d data one layer at a time.

quicktime movie bad idea imo - it's lossy so there's no guarantee colours will be preserved. plus it's a sledgehammer and you're cracking quite a small nut, albeit one that's 16M pixels.

Well then...

don't necessarily need a cube - a rectangle 256 high by 65536 wide would do, or 4096 x 4096. what it'll look like is anyone's guess (but the colour graduations won't be smooth)

So i'm kinda bored and saw this thread and thought i'd create a program the generates both of those images. (spoiler alert: the color graduations aren't smooth just like kooogy said)

here's the 255*65536 code:

1. void setup(){
2.   PGraphics p = createGraphics(256*256,256,JAVA2D);
3.   p.beginDraw();
4.   for (int y=0;y<256;y++){
5.     println(y);
6.     for (int x=0;x<256*256;x++){
7.       int tempx = x%6;
8.       int tempz = (x-tempx)/256;
9.       p.stroke(tempx,y,tempz);
10.       p.point(x,y);
11.     }
12.   }
13.   p.endDraw();
14.   p.save("test.png");
15. }

and here's the 4096*4096 - updated:

1. something went wrong scroll down for the updated post - also wtf
   

@owaunandrew why would you want to create an image with every conceivable color anyways?

bjordal i am glad you asked.

Processing's core power I believe is it's pixel array manipulation techniques. You can do stuff with the pixel array in Processing so easily that takes so much work with other programming languages it's scary. What I basically do is use pixels to store universal layers of data. Each pixel has four possible values (r-Red g-Green b-Blue a-Alpha) with this basic setup I create sketches. I can then take an image and move it sketch to sketch seamlessly.

Processing has its .pde extension but I am a fan of real-time pixel manipulation. I hate having to close a sketch and edit code and hitting the play button and copying multiple tabs of sketches and then installing libraries to run sketches I find online.

I just want one file that can contain audio, video, motion , code and whatever else I want to store. I use this for all of my sketches. All processing code is basically a text file fill with a series of letters from the 26-letter alphabet punctuated by
curly and square brackets { }  []
periods and semi-colons .  ;
and capitalization where applicable    - void keyPressed()

What I am using this one for is to read any image that has a spectrum colours in it (for example the colour wheel in Microsoft Excel) and then use it generate a 3d image without knowing the co-ordinates before hand.

Coincedently when you guys mentioned that the transitions are not smooth; there is a reason for that. We can only store 2d data one layer at a time.

Example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/RGBR.png/256px-RGBR.png

(255, 255, 255) is white (255, 0, 0) is red (0, 255, 0) is green (0, 0, 255) is blue (255, 255, 0) is yellow (0, 255, 255) is cyan (255, 0, 255) is magenta	yellow (255,255,0)	green (0,255,0)	cyan (0,255,255)
	red (255,0,0)		blue (0,0,255)
		red (255,0,0)	magenta (255,0,255)

Once you imagine colour values as co-ordinates you realize how easily it can be used to generate a 3d image from pre-existing colours we see everyday but take them for granted.
For example the above image results in a the following 3d image

 As you can see from the image above. You can see the image as the background , I just made changed the empty space to black which is zero and not white which is 255.
 
Then you just call beginShape(QUADS) and then use the pixels to control the vertex(x,y,z) the x-axis is red . the y-axis is green and the z-axis is blue

I will post the images from your algorithm bjordal.

Anyone desiring to see the code, you can email me at owuanz@gmail.com or post your email address here.

tried the 4096 x 4096 code and got a big blue square, like you were channelling klein. looking at the number the blue value quickly goes above 256 and stays there. so i think something's wrong.

anyway, wrote this, which is clearer

1. void setup(){
2.   PGraphics p = createGraphics(4096,4096,JAVA2D);
3.   p.beginDraw();
4.   for (int i = 0 ; i < 256 * 256 * 256 ; i++) {
5.     int r = i >> 16 & 0xff;
6.     int g = i >> 8 & 0xff;
7.     int b = i & 0xff;
8.     p.stroke(r, g, b);
9.     p.point(i / 4096, i % 4096);
10.   }
11.   p.endDraw();
12.   p.save("test.png");
13. }

This is something like what I want to achieve but with one large image. bjordal your code is spot on!!!

I don't know what I have to do taking your code  which is something like this

to get it looking like the code below

1. public int w = 255;
   public int h = 255;
   void setup(){
     size(w,h,P3D);
     frameRate(3000);
   
   }
   void mouseReleased(){
     rmode++;
   }
   public color c;
   void draw(){
   
     if(rmode>9)rmode=0;
     //0 1 2 4 5 7
     for (int x= 0;x<w;x++){
       for (int y=0;y<h;y++){
         if (rmode==0)c=color(h-y,y,w-x);
         if (rmode==1)c=color(h-x,y,w-y);
         if (rmode==2)c=color(h-y,y,x-y);
         if (rmode==3)c=color(h-y,h-x,y);//yyy
         if (rmode==4)c=color(h-x,y,x);//xxx
         if (rmode==5)c=color(h-y,y,x);
         if (rmode==6)c=color(w-x,x,y);
         if (rmode==7)c=color(h-x,y,h-y);
         if (rmode==8)c=color(h-x,w-y,y);
         if (rmode==9)c=color(h-x,y,x-y);
   
   
   
         set (x,y,c);
       }
     }
   
   }
   
   public int rmode=0;
   
   void keyPressed(){
   
     if (key=='0')rmode=0;
     if (key=='1')rmode=1;
     if (key=='2')rmode=2;
     if (key=='3')rmode=3;
     if (key=='4')rmode=4;
     if (key=='5')rmode=5;
     if (key=='6')rmode=6;
     if (key=='7')rmode=7;
     if (key=='8')rmode=8;
     if (key=='9')rmode=9;
   
   
   
   }
   
   void mousePressed(){
     print(red(get(mouseX,mouseY)));
     print(",");
     print(green(get(mouseX,mouseY) ));
     print(",");
     print(blue(get(mouseX,mouseY)));
     println("");
   
   }
   

now we're talking yelele_brother!

Are they any other websites with images like these ?

I don't know

Here is a quick movie I did of a 3d box using a color sphere. The image in the background is all the data used to create this image