00. Project Brief

This is a processing project. The goal is to stimulate and visualize the trace and movement of different fluids in its environment. We aimed to achieved two goals:

• Energy-Liquid interaction

  • To test how the liquid environment will be affected when an energy source is added in it. We expected to visualize different liquid characters by various behaviors of the same energy source.

• Energy-Energy interaction

  • When more and more energy sources are added, how would they perform when they have inter-influence on each other. We are expecting to visualize the interaction between various energy sources by presenting how the energy particles interact based on swarm system.

01. Introduction

We started with a common physical phenomenon: fluid system. First, we would like to test how to influence and interact with fluids. Second, we wanted to create different energy inputs to reshape fluids.

Figure 1: Interacting Fluid

Figure 2: Fluid

In this model, inputting energy are "forces" with different values and directions. For example, a raindrop is a type of input energy adding "forces" to its surrounding, and the "forces" reshapes the fluid.
This demonstration helps us build our model focused on forces. We aimed to create various inputs forces, both static and dynamic. By designing forces and controlling the input system, we hope fluids can be interactive in various ways.

02. Testing

Testing could be divided into e parts:
1. Visualization energy; 2. Energy Input Development; 3. Systematize Inputs

Visualization energy
We designed the energy to be an input force, and we wanted the energy to spray out every few seconds as a way to control it. In addition to it, we added more energy inputs and tried to design the way the energy spread out.
As shown in the image, we know inputs can have different directions. However, we needed to make sure that  different direction of forces do not interfere with each other. As a solution, we moved the force points towards the force direction a little bit.

Energy Input Development
By using trigonometric functions, we made the inputs rotate. With noise function in processing, the inputs began to move frame by frame. Moving and rotating inputs also solved the problem of inputs forces teleconferencing with each other.

Systematize Inputs
Logic needs to be applied to control the inputs forces. We decided to add another force, separation, to interact with existing force. When two inputs are too close to each other, with the minimum distance set, separation force would function to move the inputs away from each other. We used Gaussian function to optimize the data.

03. Conclusion

Our final project proved our two hypotheses. The energy sources are put into different liquid environment, where they have an influence on the fluids. The framed input resources would have mutual interference with each other: when they move within certain distance, they would be compelled away, vice versa.

Collaborator: Ao Liu
References:
Memo Akte. MSA library and source material.
http://memo.tv/archive/msafluid_for_processing_v1_3
Software:
‍Processing
Ben Fry and Casey Reas
“Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts.”
http://processing.org/about/