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  • Gradients and the magic they can do

    published on 1/6/2011 7:31 PM

    I have spent a lot of time working on the visualizer the past few months so the next release is going to be a big one. Quite a lot of new nodes and scenes are going to be included. One of the new nodes that is going to be in the next release is a gradient node. A gradient in itself isn't the most interesting thing in the world but it can act as a component in a lot of interesting effects. For example if you combine a yellow and red gradient with a noise effect you have yourself a fire effect. Combine a gradient with mostly black and a spike of color in it, apply it to a turbulence noise effect and you have yourself a energy beam.

    Gradient noise

    The gradient node handles linear, radial, conical and square gradients that can have a custom center point and it can also rotate the gradient to any angle. This makes for a very flexible gradient setup that should cater for most needs.

    Here is an example of the gradient types applied to a cube Gradient

    The project has been growing quite a bit now. It wasn't long ago it past 110000 lines of code. If you wonder what those lines looks like here is an example to still your curiosity {code:c++} star->m_StartCol = startColMin + ((startColMax-startColMin) * CRGBARand()); star->m_EndCol = endColMin + ((endColMax-endColMin) * CRGBARand()); {code:c++}

    The winamp page has another nice big number the project crossed over. Since the visualizer has now been downloaded over 300000 times from [url:winamps web page|http://www.winamp.com/visualization/plane9/222089)!