The Incredible String Thing!

[hummingwolf]

Am too tired for many words, so how about pictures? If you've ever wondered what the weird stringlike object in my icon looks like from other angles, now's your chance to find out! You may notice a bit of wobbliness in the strings as they move. This is likely due to the fact that I forgot every bit of calculus I ever learned, and so used an undoubtedly unnecessarily clumsy trigonometric approximation for the z-coordinates.

If you're afraid of math, don't worry. All you have to do is look at the pretty moving pictures!

To begin with, we have a perspective view of the same scene you see in the icon, viewed from overhead.



Next, we have an orthographic view of three identical strings turned in different ways. Basically, you see flattened views of what a string looks like from the front, top, and side.



And then we have some more perspective views of identical strings sitting next to each other.






Why do I do these things? Mostly, it's because I can.

Comments

[moomlyn.livejournal.com]

I'm confused

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Really? What's confusing you?

[windsparrow.livejournal.com]

Kinda relaxing to watch. You could market them as meditation aids.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

:-)

[coffeegrace.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. I like the last one (far right) of the first set of three best. Well, I also really like the last one of the last set. Neat! :-)

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to see how different things look from different angles. I think they're all fun to watch. :-)

[helen99.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind driving a bit, the Covanta Transfer Station has mulch that really is free. They have silly similar to the one you went to, though, so check when they're open. I believe they're open half a day on Saturday.

16101 Frederick Rd, Rockville, MD 301/590-1032

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Hi there. I think you meant to post this on a different entry, probably an entry by a different person. At least that's what I'm thinking, considering I can't drive and don't have any use for mulch at the moment!

[helen99.livejournal.com]

That's weird. How did I end up here, when I could have sworn I was in thewronghands journal. Wellp, anyway, if anyone you know wants mulch, the transfer station has mountains of it, free...

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

though I do wish I had any use for mulch. Too bad the yard isn't under my control here.

[noam-rion.livejournal.com]

What is the object?

And what's it doing in the animations (besides rotating). It looks like the end of the string is moving; is it a finite-length piece of string tracing out a path? But I can't see the tail end...

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

In POV-Ray (a freeware raytracing program), the kind of object is called a sphere sweep. The program documentation says:

A Sphere Sweep is the envelope of a moving sphere with varying radius, or, in other words, the space a sphere occupies during its movement along a spline.
Sphere Sweeps are modeled by specifying a list of single spheres which are then interpolated.

The sphere sweep object I made for these animations is one where the single spheres used for modeling change position with the value of the clock. In other words, it's a finite-length piece of string that changes shape over time. The reason that only one end is visible in the animations above is that, with the way I defined the object, the first few spheres were always close to the center of the object, thus being hidden from view. Here's a version using a shorter piece of string: