Cloud Seeds: Growing Cumulus Clouds

tinrocket

I haven't used Processing in years, but I was excited to see Processing 2.0 a couple of weeks ago, so I revisited an old sketch and updated it for animated output. Enjoy:

boye4600

Very nice. Can you share the code?

tinrocket

@boye4600 Thanks! Sorry, I do not have plans to release the source code for this.

blahblab

nice. I remember looking at clouds on the Nintendo Gamecube. One thing i noticed was that clouds have a lot of self similarity. As such i would take a very very simple boxy 3D cloud shape (built using some real cloud shape) and then at random points on it's surface i would draw another instance of the fist cloud but scaled down to 0.75 and a little random xyz local scale. Then at each of those little clouds i would pick a random point on the surface and do the same. Down to maybe 4-5 passes. As i remember this made pretty good clouds. pretty.

blyk

I had tried generating effect like yours but it is not as good as yours ... :D

    ArrayList poop = new ArrayList();
    int bg=0;
    Cloud c;
    void setup() {
      size(600, 400);

      for (int i=0;i<100;i++) {
        Cloud c = new Cloud((int)random(width/2-50, width/2+50), (int)random(height/2-50, height/2+50), random(0, 2*PI)); 
        poop.add(c);
      }
    }
    int i=0;
    void draw() {
      background(bg);
      if (i==15) { 
        bg = (color) random(#000000);
        i=0;
      }
      for (int i=0;i<poop.size();i++) {
        Cloud c = (Cloud) poop.get(i);
        c.display();
        c.run();
      }
      i++;
      println(i);
    }


    class Cloud {
      int x, y;
      PVector loc, center, increment;
      float t, esize, angle, SIZE, acc= 0.98;
      Cloud(int _x, int _y, float _angle) {
        x = _x;
        y = _y;
        loc = new PVector(x, y);
        center = new PVector(x, y);
        esize = random(2, 80);
        SIZE = random(150);
        angle = _angle;
        t = random(PI);
        int xp = (int)random(-5, 5);
        int yp = (int)random(-5, 5);
        increment = new PVector(xp, yp);
      }

      void display() {
        pushMatrix();
        translate(loc.x, loc.y);
        rotate(angle);
        noFill();
        stroke(-1, 80);
        strokeWeight(2);
        arc(0, 0, esize, esize, t+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI);
        noStroke();
        fill(-1, 50);
        ellipse(0, 0, esize, esize);
        popMatrix();
        fill(-1,10);
        ellipse(x, y, 100, 100);
      }
      void run() {
        if (loc.dist(center)<random(150)-esize/2 && 100<loc.y && loc.y<height-100) {
          loc.add(increment);
          //loc.mult(1.08);
        }

        if (esize < SIZE )esize = esize+1;
      }
    }