Geospheres
Geospheres, which sounds a lot cooler than Christmas Balls, is a Core Image script created to test some of the new filters we've been implementing. The spherical depth is actually an illusion created with a radial gradient mask, a bump distortion and lighting. The actual sphere pattern is generated with a kaleidoscope and a triangle tile.
Aside from the uncertain aesthetic value of the results it's wonderful to see how fast you can develop pixel scripts with Core Image and then apply them to a lot of random images or with a lot of random parameters - and still have all the output in the same visual "style".
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Adding more effects produces even weirder results. Below is a series that starts out from a geosphere and then continues to add a copy of the sphere on top, while zoomblurring the original below. Looks like an alien spaceship to me.
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Finally, here's some curious kind of insect or Aztec god produced by adding a twirl filter and mirroring the composition. Most people see the big eyes but there's also the mouselike head above and in the middle of the eyes.
Here are some other experiments with layer.pixels(). That part of Core Image needs some updates as well. In the examples below I'm trying to grow some hair on the geospheres. For each pixel, a curve is drawn with the same brightness, angling away from the center of the sphere. Curves in the lower half sometimes twine down to form some kind of a stem.
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The script is included as an example in the latest Core Image library download.
Created by Tom De Smedt
