Remember this? ;-)

>> What I can't figure out is
>> how some of the effects that Milkdrop generates are mathematically
>> possible.
>
> OK, you're going to have give me an example... give it over! Pick a
> preset from Milkdrop's standard distribution that epitomizes this
> nearly-impossible effect, and I'll tell you how I *think* it's done.
> Maybe other, more knowledgeable people will join in as well, and we can
> get to the bottom of this thing ;)

Milkdrop has several presets where the screen seems to be covered in 
"ink" that somehow "bleeds" in an apparently three-dimensional mannar.

For example, the first attachment. Quite apart from the emboss effect 
(which is presumably simple post-processing), different patches of ink 
flow down the screen independently, at different rates and in different 
directions. And patches somehow *occlude* each other. It's nothing 
unusual for newly rendered stuff to occlude existing imagery, but this 
preset is doing something altogether more clever.

And then there's the second attachment. It defies my comprehension that 
it is somehow possible to do this in realtime. Seemingly thousands of 
tiny fingers of colour, all moving and rotating in full 3D. Clearly it's 
impossible to hold such a complex structure in memory, so this must be 
some kind of 2D trickery with pixel shaders or some such. But I have 
absolutely no idea how it's possible. And it looks utterly fantastic, by 
the way. It's arguably THE BEST preset in the entire system.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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