SVERCHOK / Flower and Snake

There are two things I would like to cover today: FLOWER and SNAKE (not to be confused with Japanese retro erotica movie pink eiga with the same title!). You need to use some more brain and imagination here. Both are indeed a pretty exotic topic to go through!

Let's start with the SNAKE first. Then the FLOWER.

SNAKE ABSTRACTION

✿ Vector Noise
✿ Line
✿ UV Connect
✿ Frame Info
✿ Random Vector
✿ Range
✿ UV Connect

TRACING THE WALKER

What makes a snake? In the most abstract, it is basically a multiple points, connected by edge. It's a line really. Maybe if we extrude it, it will look more like a snake. Yes, however, before we go that far, we will explore Points and how Points can move like a snake when combined with Noise function.

This is how you do Random Walker inside Processing as taught by Daniel Shiffman:

http://natureofcode.com/book/introduction/

Below is how I think we can do it inside Sverchok. Basically, we are dealing with Time (Frame) that pushes the Point(s) through the Noise function.

You can also do this using Random function which will give a more random direction. Noise tends to give a smoother step where each steps are closer together.

With Random, we get value between 0-1, but with Noise, the value goes somewhere in between -1 and 1, sometimes with a very tiny values.

If we like the random walker to walk and trace more elegantly, we reduce the value of STEP:

NOTE: Remember that there are few options of Noise Type to choose inside Vector Noise node.

MOVING SNAKE THROUGH THE NOISE

Above, it is as if the step by step of the point is already laid out and frozen in time, line just needs to connect the dots, more or less a static tracing motion.

However, if we modify the above setup slightly, instead of "tracing" effect, you will have a moving SNAKE effect:

NOTE: In a way, this is actually a more correct "random walk" where we have points being pushed through hidden noise space.

We can further scale this effect using multiple lines like below.

Above setup is fine, but a little tedious, what if we want many more snakes, do we need to supply more Vector In?

NOTE: Unlike Random, in which we can use SEED value to change the Random stream of numbers, with noise, we kind of move it slightly in "noise space".

Turbulance or Lag?

The nice thing of being able to see it visually, is sometimes we end up with an interesting result such as below, it was totally unpredicted. I think I get some kind of lag or turbulance effect.

This might be the key to add "Layering Effect" that gives a motion of snake more exciting.

Controlling Many Snakes

By interesting accident, again, I found our snakes becoming more abstract like below:

Slight modification in number gave this result:

Ribbon Effect

If you want, we can use UV Connect that gives us this Ribbon like effect flowing through air.

But wait the minute, we are not supposed to create Ribbon! We want many snakes.

In that case, we need to take few steps back and make a little modification. Below is what I mean by multiple snakes. All we need to change is the Noise and how far apart they are in the space.

Snake also moves in a zig-zag pattern (sometimes) so, that's for you to find out!

RANDOM AND NOISE

For movement, we usually like Noise and Turbulance (layered Noise), however for the random numbers, I think Random value often has interesting characteristic about it.

Below is a movement of a Ninja swinging his sword:

FLOWER ABSTRACTION

• Circle
• Matrin In
• Matrix Deform
• Line

Flower can be very complex, but I will only touch the very basics but quite useful.

The ability to control the Number of Petals:

Parameter to open the opening and closing of the petal:

And to make a slight variations in the petal:

The setup is something like below: (thanks to Nikita example of Spider Octopus robot, I learn about this technique)

What is really interesting with the setup is the way we user Matrix Deform to control the rotation.

Motion of Millipede / Centipede Legs

By layering some SINE motion, we can get quite an intricate motion that resembles the motion of Millipede or Centipede legs.

The flower concept can be used for:
✿ Umbrella
✿ Octopus legs
✿ Spider legs animation (add random)

Suzanne Shibari Art.