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Posted by u/getToTheChopin 9 months ago
Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of your next tripcollidingscopes.github.io...
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

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I hope you enjoy the visuals. I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions.

evanjrowley · 9 months ago
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 · 9 months ago
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 · 9 months ago
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.
bongodongobob · 9 months ago
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

N2yhWNXQN3k9 · 9 months ago
Seems closer to representing the experience, but probably less interesting for enhancing the experience.
ddmf · 9 months ago
made me wonder if the brain works in a similar way converting the incoming eye information into what the brain "sees" - it's just pattern matching based on what has been seen before and showing the best fit - psychadelics disrupt that.
muzani · 9 months ago
I kind of miss the early AI days, where the AI felt closer to my subconscious than me.
taopai · 9 months ago
I recall experiencing an incredibly fast hallucination with my eyes closed—like tiny dots moving at an extreme speed.

Faster than anything I had ever seen, almost like an intense vibration, beyond the refresh rate of the eye. It was both intimidating and exhilarating.

Perhaps screens are unable to replicate this type of hallucination.

The animations on this website are impressive. However, in my experience, closed-eye visuals tend to have a central focal point, along with folding or tunnel-like movements and recurring patterns.

I feel deeply grateful for having had some psychedelic experiences, even though hallucinations are the least interesting aspect of them. For me, they acted as a magnifying glass for my overall state of being—allowing me to step outside myself and honestly assess how I feel. They also foster a deeper appreciation for nature.

It would be fascinating to have this discussion within this community. These substances are often demonized due to a lack of understanding, yet they can have a profound impact. For instance, after taking a small dose of LSD, I completely lost interest in alcohol. In the past six months, I’ve only had three nights of drinking, lost a significant amount of weight, and feel fantastic.

kermit___ · 9 months ago
Like any mind-altering substance, I would suggest caution. Bad decisions are made and dangerous thoughts are had. Relationships can end, lives can be ruined, and people can die. It’s not a hallucinagen-specific problem, but here be dragons.
taopai · 9 months ago
Like driving a car.
mgraczyk · 9 months ago
Very cool animations, but they don't strike me as "psychedelic". A bit too smooth and unstructured.
evo_9 · 9 months ago
Very similar to my favorite trip toy of the 90s… rock ‘star’ Todd Rundgren’s Flowfazer. Quite mesmerizing for toddlers, too.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flowfazer/id507935335

newobj · 9 months ago
I've heard this music somewhere before.... Telefon Tel Aviv I think? why isn't it credited?
getToTheChopin · 9 months ago
Sorry about that -- yes it was an oversight on my part.

I had included this small credit in the commentary on the website: "The song used is Fahrenheit Fair Enough by Telefon Tel Aviv."

This isn't enough -- I've pushed a changed showing a song credit at the bottom-left of the canvas that appears when you first load the page.

I also added a song credit in the github readme.

Telefon Tel Aviv is one of my favourite bands, I hope they get more listeners!

garbagewoman · 9 months ago
Looks to be a demo of the repo, the visualisation along with “Telefon Tel Aviv” isn’t the product - in that light it probably isn’t credited due to a minor oversight
locusofself · 9 months ago
such an amazing track though, I use this to test every new speaker / headphones I've had for like 20 years running.
typeofhuman · 9 months ago
Cool. But this literally crashed my phone. I've never seen anything like it. Was impressed really. Little nervous. But it locked my Brave browser first then it locked my entire phone. System UI and Android crashed. It recovered but wow. What a trip.
sixstring982 · 9 months ago
Very nice! Reminds me of something I built on Shadertoy a while back: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttGRf
OracB7 · 9 months ago
Nice! Where does one learn how to do this kind of thing (aside from the fractals)?
WASDx · 9 months ago
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.

Distilitron · 9 months ago
Telefon tel aviv is nice, gfx is crap