Unity3D Resources

Turbulent Planet Textures

One of the images above is from the amazing photos of Jupiter that have been captured by the Juno mission. The other is from a presentation by Stephen M. Cameron, about procedurally generating textures for gas giants that look appropriately swirly.

This effect is tough to replicate with some of the common texturing approaches. And it’s not just for Jovian planets: Earth’s clouds look wrong without it, and there’s a whole host of smaller-scale texturing (like water or flames) that looks better with it.

Perlin noise is a common basis for a lot of texturing, but despite looking a bit like puffy clouds it isn’t all that great for representing textures that are swirling or turbulent. Especially on a large scale, the swirls and flows form complex patterns that are beautiful and appear information-dense. Having a way to replicate that opens up another class of texturing options.

Stephen’s presentation (which he developed as part of his open-source game Space Nerds in Space) and this Junkship dev blog post about texturing planets looks like a good starting point for using a flow map created with curl noise via procedural fluid flow to create the swirling textures.

No doubt there are other methods out there, but I’m mentioning this one to point out a couple of things:

First, the common procedural generation tools (Perlin noise, in this case) aren’t always the best choice. There’s still lots and lots of new techniques that can be discovered.

Second, try combining processes and information (in the technical sense) from other sources: use flow fields and slime mold growth and plate tectonics and earthquake data and traffic noise into your generators.

a strange voyage

This is one of my favorite new Twitter bots: @str_voyage, by @joebaxterwebb. It tells the story of a sea-going community, and what they encounter.

What impresses me the most here is the effectiveness of the storytelling. Entries seldom feel robot: the repetition that is there feels like the rhythms of the voyage rather than the tick of the machine. Characters emerge as if from a fog and recede again: elders telling stories, children playing pretend. Strange sailors, deserted towns, lost islands. The cry of a sea-bird.

I think that one reason why it works is the sheer variety of different things to talk about: each message is unique among its neighbors. It also uses cycles and events to give a sense of time, as sunset is followed by the stars emerging, or a storm engulfs the ship. Though the most important aspect may be the framing: a voyage brings a narrative along with it, and even brief entries can be evocative and in-character.

The bot feels like Earthsea, like The Quiet Year, like one of  Marshall Miller’s Dungeon World starters: community, poetic vignettes, and the sea.

Encyclopedia of Generativity

Kate Compton’s latest zine is a super-practical encyclopedia of generative methods.

It talks about subtractive methods, constraint solving, fractals, distribution, parametric generation, interpretive generation, making an artist-in-a-box, and techniques to improve any generativity.

There’s a ton of great advice in this super-dense zine. If you’re stumped for ideas for your next project, picking any one idea from this and exploring it will keep you busy for weeks.

Finally I’ve released the first version of Skinner. Emit tons of particles and trails from a skinned char.

My First Game Jam Winter 2017 will run from January 7th through January 21st!

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