Creating Procedural Artworks with Processing: A Holistic Guide

480 Pages·2017·15.9 MB·English

by  Dr Penny de Byl

Creating Procedural Artworks
with Processing
A Holistic Guide
By Penny de Byl
This book is independently published by Penny and Daniel de Byl. While we've
taken much pride in it's writing and code development we've bound to have
missed the odd typo. If you find something a miss in your reading please let us
know at [email protected] and we will add it to the errata list.
Penny de Byl is a Professor of interactive multimedia and games at Bond
University in Australia. An award-winning teacher, Penny has researched and
taught computer science, computer graphics, game development and procedural
art at top ranked universities for over 20 years.
Copyright 2017 by Penny de Byl
This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly considered sources. Every effort has
been made to publish reliable information, however the author cannot assume responsibility for the validity
of all materials or the consequences of their use.
Except as permitted under Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted,
or utilised in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without written permission from the publishers. For permission to photocopy or use material electronically
from this work, please contact Penny de Byl at holistic3d.com/contact.
Visit the Holistic3d.com for ancillary materials and information relating to this text.
(ver 1)

Preface
This book is written for those seeking to learn computer programming from
basics to more advanced concepts. It uses the Processing language to visualise
the concepts through the production of computer graphics that illustrate the
coding principles while being artworks in their own right. This book started as a
set of tutorials written for my university level multimedia students to introduce
them to computer programming through the development of artworks. It’s
therefore presented in a non-threatening way that will ease the reader into
programming.
In my opinion, Processing is the perfect language to start learning
programming. It has a very simple interface, provides the programmer with
sufficient power to explore all avenues of programming from algorithm
development to computer graphics. The simple elegant interface allows those
learning programming, from scratch, to focus on the programming without the
need to learn a complex piece of software. Having said this, Processing is very
powerful and used not only by novices but well seasoned computer artists to
produce amazing works of art. Check out openprocessing.org if you don’t
believe me. It’s also free – which is a bonus – and runs on both Windows and
Mac computers. The structure of the code is not unlike C, C#, JavaScript and
many others.
I have always said and continue to say that once you’ve learnt one programming
language it's easy to pick up and use another. All computers are constructed the
same way and the most important thing you can learn about them, regardless of
the language being used, is that they are logical machines that work through a
series of on and off switches. Once you learn and master Boolean Algebra you
will have a deep understand of what a computer is and how to communicate
with it.
Although technology is changing at break neck speed, very little changes with
respect to programming. The knowledge that you acquire throughout this book
will always be relevant and stand you in good stead throughout your life.
How This Book is Organised
This book has been written for absolute beginners who want to learn to
program. It approaches coding through a unique combination of teaching
programming while keeping in mind the principles of design and mathematics.
All these elements are essential in a global economy filled with electronic
interactive experiences and virtual reality.
The chapters are organised to weave together programming functionality and
design principles presenting one concept at a time:
Chapter 1
To Know Thy Computer, explains why computers function the way they do. It
presents the fundamental constructs of bits, bytes and binary, and demonstrates
how computer memory is built and how it is manipulated through code.
Chapter 2
Getting in Shape, examines all the visual components of art from points and
lines through to complex shapes by presenting and demonstrating their
mathematical basis and teaching the reader to draw these elements on the screen
with code.
Chapter 3
Elementary My Dear Watson, returns to the programming side of the content to
take a deeper look at logic and demonstrates how it is one of the most important
things a programmer should understand if they are to truly harness the power of
the computer.
Chapter 4
Colour My World, investigates colour by holistic means, examining its science,
visuality and coding. Colour spaces will be discussed along with the methods
for setting colours on the screen. More colour will be included in the Processing
drawings by demonstrating how external images can be brought into the
program and manipulated for interesting effects.
Chapter 5
Power to the Programmer, introduces higher level programming concepts that
show off the power of coding and demonstrates how with less lines of code the
real power of computer processing can be exploited for repetitive tasks. In
addition, the reader will learn how to write simple code to draw shapes that can
be repetitively drawn and manipulated with small tweaks to create a plethora of
images that through randomness never draws the same thing twice.
Chapter 6
Transform My World, examines how the drawing canvas and shapes can be
manipulated by moving, scaling and rotating. These concepts allow you to draw
the same shape over and over again in different locations and ultimately assist
you in creating live animated artworks. Transformations are a powerful concept
and the foundation of creating fractals.
Chapter 7
Curves, introduces the drawing and mathematics of curves. As not all objects in
the world are constructed with straight lines, this chapter demonstrates how
smooth continuous surfaces can be drawn to increase your drawing object
palette to include natural structures such as leaves and flowers.
Chapter 8
Fractals, presents the structure of nature and reveals the true beauty of
mathematics. Through iteration of transformations and the drawing of shapes it
will be revealed how complex geometrical shapes can be generated as well as
natural objects that seemingly defy a fixed mathematical formula such as
clouds, landscapes and plants.
Chapter 9
Patterns, demonstrates how repetition can be applied to designs to form
complex drawings that use the same shape or drawing over and over. Objects
such as honeycomb and snowflakes will be examined and broken down into
their elementary components to demonstrate how transformations and repetition
can be used to construct larger repeating images.
Chapter 10
Images and Text, introduces added functionality available in Processing for the
reading in of external files to add interesting features to artworks such as images
and text. The use of fonts and text will be explained and their use will feature in
several projects including a practical example of producing ASCII art.

1. To Know Thy Computer
By the end of this chapter you be able to:
write and run a simple program in Processing;
explain why numbers associated with computing come in powers of two;
convert binary numbers into decimal numbers;
define the terms bit and byte;
demonstrate the differences between data types;
perform arithmetic operations in a program; and,
control the drawing canvas and create simple shapes.