Webcam Fluid Dynamics

Conferences, installations and playing with AS3 (more on that soon) have been keeping me pretty darn busy lately, so there haven’t been many quality updates to Gallery Incomplet lately. Hopefully I get some time to post more experiments soon, but in the meantime I’ve posted a video of one of my new favourites: Webcam Fluid Dynamics.

This experiment lets you interact via the webcam with particles that behave similar to fluids. They flow downhill, get caught in bowl shapes, and are generally a lot of fun. Check it out here. I’m definitely going to play with this idea some more soon. I’m interested in tying in some kinematics to allow me to chain particles together.

Ideas abound. Time, unfortunately, does not.


Grant Skinner

The "g" in gskinner. Also the "skinner".

@gskinner

14 Comments

  1. Holy f’ing crap, that’s cool! It’d be neat if you could somehow project that onto a wall and have a life-sized environment you could influence.

  2. Thanks Geoff. I just finished adding this experiment to Installation Incomplet, which debuted at FitC (see my last blog post for pictures) will hopefully be touring a few of the upcoming confererences

  3. This is amazing! love it! Congrats on the FitC award / nominations as well! Do you have a version of the Fluid dynamics that works for viewers? like the flame cam?

  4. Dude! wow

    Yeah man keen to have a play on my web cam, when can we play huh huh huh :o)

  5. This have been done, along with flame and more effects, years ago using web cam and computer vision.

    http://www.setpixel.com

  6. vrd,

    I harbour no illusions that my work is wildly revolutionary. It isn’t. It is new in Flash, and it comes from my own imagination, not copying others’ work, but I’m sure much of it has been done (better) in other technologies.

    That said, I have never seen anything that bears a really close comparison to most of my pieces. Unless I’m missing an archive somewhere, setPixel does not have any projects similar to any of my work, with the possible exception of the magic coloring wall.

    What have you built that is new or original lately? I don’t seek to insult, but when disparaging others’ work, you should be able to demonstrate why you are in a position to judge.

  7. nice work Grant,

    nice to see this stuff is now possible in flash

    have a look at http://www.mine-control.com/

  8. Very nice. I would suggest you using a wavemap and light-refraction as force. This works also very well.

    But I am more interested in the particles. How did you create that nice trails? Are all particles on a seperate bitmap using a ColorTransform to damp the color?

  9. Too sweet Grant! I always look forward to seeing your next experiment. Thanks for sharing!

  10. Grant, really amazing stuff. Thanks for the inspiration.

  11. Grant, inspiring as always!

  12. Interesting technology…..maybe the E-learning world will be using this to answer questions in the future. Please funnel the shooting stars towards the correct answer?

  13. Hey Dude ^^” ! That’s so Amazing !

    But the “hick” it’s that 80% of your work isn’t avalaibale to be “played” we just have a video ^^” !

    I’m very impatient to experiment you’re BubleGum Game and the Fluid Dynamic too , so try to get some time to do it 😉

    See you’

  14. yeah amazing!!!

    it’ s realy great^^ there is really lot of thing very amazing on the gallery…

    And i have you have gibt the code of “gOOify Mike Chambers” so can you give the code of “fluiddynamics”???

    If yes that’ s a gret thing

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