[HN Gopher] Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of your next trip
        
       Sharing an open source project for creating psychadelic art --
       using liquid motion, distorted shapes, shadows and light. This tool
       works in real-time in the browser using webgl shaders.  This
       project was inspired by drum & bass / acid techno music, and 90s
       rave posters.  Use this to create art for a music video, concert
       posters, stylized animations in creative projects, or simply to
       enjoy alongside some fine music.  Use the detailed control menu
       (top-right) to set a custom canvas size, adjust animation speed,
       control pattern and colours, etc...  You can export your creation
       as an image or video afterwards.  How this works: this tool uses
       WebGL shaders to create a real-time animation (with a trippy liquid
       / shadow / blur aesthetic).  The animation is created using a
       random seed position and mixes in random noise (fractal brownian
       motion, 3D simplex noise), so each time you re-run it you're
       creating a unique piece of art.  Github repo:
       https://github.com/collidingScopes/liquid-shape-distortions  -----
       I hope you enjoy the visuals. I'd love to hear any feedback or
       suggestions.
        
       Author : getToTheChopin
       Score  : 67 points
       Date   : 2025-03-13 23:26 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (collidingscopes.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (collidingscopes.github.io)
        
       | nimzoLarsen wrote:
       | This is so beautiful! The outputs are trippy and the music fits
       | well.
       | 
       | Nice work
        
       | Distilitron wrote:
       | Telefon tel aviv is nice, gfx is crap
        
       | evanjrowley wrote:
       | IMO the most realistic generated psychedelic images were made by
       | Google's Deep Dream 10 years ago. It seems like it's been mostly
       | forgotten about after the advent of DALL-E, Midjourney, etc.
        
         | yojo wrote:
         | Agreed, it made some seriously wild stuff. Assuming you're
         | talking about this: https://research.google/blog/inceptionism-
         | going-deeper-into-...
         | 
         | Here's an example I generated in 2015:
         | 
         | https://www.wandereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/drea...
         | 
         | Source image: https://www.wandereurope.com/wp-
         | content/uploads/2015/07/mars...
        
           | mock-possum wrote:
           | Eh a lot of that 'deep dreamy' stuff ends up looking so same-
           | same - I don't need to look at endless various of 'dog faces
           | and insect body parts and glittering gemstones' you know? I
           | want to see actual weird stuff, bizarre genometry, a sense of
           | space that's mind-bending. Maximalism is not the be all end
           | all of trippy visuals.
        
             | duskwuff wrote:
             | I believe this music video (Royksopp - _Impossible_ ) was
             | created with something along those lines:
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljnxZypkjn0
        
             | brokenmachine wrote:
             | Check this one out
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGuBpKqtHdY
             | 
             | And this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd3ZQOzyquo&t=385s
             | 
             | The AI generated ones are getting really good nowadays.
        
         | bongodongobob wrote:
         | Eh, it's close but misses the mark if we're specifically trying
         | to match psychedelic visuals. If it were more fractally and
         | geometric sure, but the dogs and fish and shit just isn't it.
         | 
         | This is pretty bang on for a high dose -
         | https://www.instagram.com/share/reel/BALFNVBS20
         | 
         | Or this: https://www.instagram.com/share/reel/BBumGiQdP6
        
       | DrSiemer wrote:
       | Any way to lerp transitions like Milkdrop does?
        
       | talles wrote:
       | I miss Winamp
        
         | DrSiemer wrote:
         | It will never as glorious as it was back in the day, but
         | Milkdrop 3 was released in 2023 and works on any audio on your
         | system.
        
           | 01100011 wrote:
           | Is it cross platform?
           | 
           | Best thing about milkdrop was that you could use a
           | microphone. We brought a projector and screen to a music
           | festival (HSMF) in '04 and had a jam circle in our camp where
           | the visualizations would respond to the music we were making.
           | Definitely a hit way back when before that sort of stuff
           | became boring.
        
           | ferociouskite56 wrote:
           | On Android the free ProjectM app hasn't been updated since
           | 2022. Does anyone know how to install Milkdrop 3 on Kodi for
           | Raspberry Pi or in F-Droid? Kodi is also on Android.
        
         | rtuin wrote:
         | This reminds me of Winamp too.
         | 
         | As a teenager I used to fiddle with the visualization editor
         | for hours. Good fun!
        
       | andyjohnson0 wrote:
       | This is really nicely done. Kudos.
        
       | adzm wrote:
       | I really do appreciate the 90s, Video Toaster-esque[1] aesthetics
       | 
       | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster
        
       | sixstring982 wrote:
       | Very nice! Reminds me of something I built on Shadertoy a while
       | back: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttGRf
        
         | OracB7 wrote:
         | Nice! Where does one learn how to do this kind of thing (aside
         | from the fractals)?
        
           | WASDx wrote:
           | https://iquilezles.org/ is a legend, see the articles and
           | video tutorials.
           | 
           | Aside from shadertoy I use https://glslsandbox.com/ (for some
           | reason it has https errors now). It's the same concept and it
           | has a lot of submissions that are more basic than shardertoy
           | where you can easily change lines and see what happens.
           | 
           | My intuition for these kind of shaders: They are just pure
           | functions mapping an x,y coordinate to a color (optionally
           | making use of time and cursor position). From this you can
           | derive anything, like drawing a circle by choosing black or
           | white depending on the distance from the center. There is a
           | lot of intuition to gain and it's fun playing around, because
           | as long as it compiles you will see _something_ and you are
           | likely to be surprised about what you accidentally made. Very
           | rewarding.
        
       | deadbabe wrote:
       | this gave me an overwhelming sense of melancholy
        
         | bowsamic wrote:
         | Why?
        
           | bomewish wrote:
           | Presumably nostalgia --- I'm certainly feeling it!
        
       | madmonk wrote:
       | Thank you for reminding me about Telefon Tel Aviv.
        
       | j_san wrote:
       | Is there a way to make it loop? (So that one only needs to record
       | e.g. 20 seconds, after which it loops to save space)
        
       | dole wrote:
       | been tumbling down the old Cthugha and Milkdrop visualization
       | rabbit hole recently, nice gfx and aesthetics on yours and it's
       | always nice to see a fresh take on code
        
       | grahamj wrote:
       | ah this takes me back. Thanks ;)
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | I think AI tools like Stable Diffusion have a big potential.
       | 
       | Something along the lines of what Nexxus 604 is doing.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6m3OvB819s
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s_Dtl1U9wU
        
       | brcmthrowaway wrote:
       | Do not take drugs! its bad for you
        
       | newman8r wrote:
       | So cool! Would love to be able to easily make it full screen
       | (maybe I'm missing the button for that)
       | 
       | Bookmarked
        
       | w_for_wumbo wrote:
       | I love these projects, I've been really passionate about
       | including our own sensory inputs into the experience, whether
       | it's voice, webcam input or (in the future health metrics) in
       | order to tailor the experience to the experiencers' desires.
        
       | dalemhurley wrote:
       | I love it, it would be awesome if the controls could slowly and
       | randomly adjust themselves so over time the images transition.
        
       | mgraczyk wrote:
       | Very cool animations, but they don't strike me as "psychedelic".
       | A bit too smooth and unstructured.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-03-17 23:00 UTC)