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Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art

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Events will be covered <strong>and</strong> implemented much more in future chapters. If you’d like to<br />

play with another more elaborate interactive example now, download the Tetherball<br />

sketch from the code download area on the friends of ED website (www.friendsofed.com/).<br />

The sketch includes a fun springing effect, allowing you to drag a bouncy tetherball-like<br />

object around the screen.<br />

Summary<br />

COMPUTER GRAPHICS, THE FUN, EASY WAY<br />

If Chapter 3 was a crash course in coding, this chapter has been a crash course in graphics<br />

programming. I discussed some general theory as well as a few application areas in the<br />

dynamic field of computer graphics. Taking an image apart <strong>and</strong> looking under the hood at<br />

some low-level graphics processing, you examined the anatomy of computer images down<br />

to the pixel level, as well as some of the underlying mathematical <strong>and</strong> procedural models<br />

utilized in their creation. You tackled some of the math theory <strong>and</strong> equations commonly<br />

used in graphics programming, <strong>and</strong> hopefully you got a sense of the expressive power <strong>and</strong><br />

creative potential of some of these relatively simple equations. Finally, you learned a little<br />

about how interactivity works in Java <strong>and</strong> <strong>Processing</strong>. Most of the things covered in this<br />

chapter will be revisited throughout the book <strong>and</strong> exp<strong>and</strong>ed upon, so please don’t stress<br />

out if you found this chapter overwhelming. I designed it as a general primer, <strong>and</strong> I realize<br />

that it contains a lot of technical information—not to mention some scary math. I suspect<br />

that some readers will want to periodically come back to this chapter, especially those<br />

totally new to computer graphics; others might want to review some of the equations or<br />

code examples in Appendix B. In the next chapter, you’ll explore the <strong>Processing</strong> language<br />

<strong>and</strong> environment in detail.<br />

141<br />

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