HN Explorer

Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of your next trip (collidingscopes.github.io)

166 points by getToTheChopin ↗ HN
Sharing an open source project for creating psychadelic art -- using liquid motion, distorted shapes, shadows and light. This tool works in real-time in the browser using webgl shaders.

This project was inspired by drum & bass / acid techno music, and 90s rave posters.

Use this to create art for a music video, concert posters, stylized animations in creative projects, or simply to enjoy alongside some fine music.

Use the detailed control menu (top-right) to set a custom canvas size, adjust animation speed, control pattern and colours, etc...

You can export your creation as an image or video afterwards.

How this works: this tool uses WebGL shaders to create a real-time animation (with a trippy liquid / shadow / blur aesthetic).

The animation is created using a random seed position and mixes in random noise (fractal brownian motion, 3D simplex noise), so each time you re-run it you're creating a unique piece of art.

Github repo: https://github.com/collidingScopes/liquid-shape-distortions

-----

I hope you enjoy the visuals. I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestions.

61 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] thread
nimzoLarsen
This is so beautiful! The outputs are trippy and the music fits well.

Nice work

evanjrowley
IMO the most realistic generated psychedelic images were made by Google's Deep Dream 10 years ago. It seems like it's been mostly forgotten about after the advent of DALL-E, Midjourney, etc.
yojo
Agreed, it made some seriously wild stuff. Assuming you’re talking about this: https://research.google/blog/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-...

Here’s an example I generated in 2015:

https://www.wandereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/drea...

Source image: https://www.wandereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/mars...

mock-possum
Eh a lot of that ‘deep dreamy’ stuff ends up looking so same-same - I don’t need to look at endless various of ‘dog faces and insect body parts and glittering gemstones’ you know? I want to see actual weird stuff, bizarre genometry, a sense of space that’s mind-bending. Maximalism is not the be all end all of trippy visuals.
brokenmachine
Check this one out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGuBpKqtHdY

And this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd3ZQOzyquo&t=385s

The AI generated ones are getting really good nowadays.

DrSiemer
Deforum stuff is cool, but also a bit of a flash in the pan because of the disconnected nature of the generated frames.

Pure video generation is getting better, but like all generative AI it lacks imagination and cannot really create new things, making it less qualified for truly mindblowing psychedelic visuals in its current state.

jstanley
It would be cool to have something like the first one, except generated in realtime and you get to "steer".

If it works by zooming in slightly each frame and then asking the AI to refine the image to better match the prompt or whatever, we could steer through the world by changing the centre of zoom.

If generating frames is fast enough it could feel like flying a spaceship through a psychedelic environment.

evanjrowley
I understand your point. There's "trippy visuals" and then there's "that's what I saw when the DMT hit" - My comment was really leaning towards the latter.
muzani
I kind of miss the early AI days, where the AI felt closer to my subconscious than me.
ddmf
made me wonder if the brain works in a similar way converting the incoming eye information into what the brain "sees" - it's just pattern matching based on what has been seen before and showing the best fit - psychadelics disrupt that.
DrSiemer
Any way to lerp transitions like Milkdrop does?
getToTheChopin
Not right now unfortunately, but I'll try to add this
talles
I miss Winamp
DrSiemer
It will never as glorious as it was back in the day, but Milkdrop 3 was released in 2023 and works on any audio on your system.
01100011
Is it cross platform?

Best thing about milkdrop was that you could use a microphone. We brought a projector and screen to a music festival (HSMF) in '04 and had a jam circle in our camp where the visualizations would respond to the music we were making. Definitely a hit way back when before that sort of stuff became boring.

ferociouskite56
On Android the free ProjectM app hasn't been updated since 2022. Does anyone know how to install Milkdrop 3 on Kodi for Raspberry Pi or in F-Droid? Kodi is also on Android.
rtuin
This reminds me of Winamp too.

As a teenager I used to fiddle with the visualization editor for hours. Good fun!

sixstring982
Very nice! Reminds me of something I built on Shadertoy a while back: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttGRf
OracB7
Nice! Where does one learn how to do this kind of thing (aside from the fractals)?
WASDx
https://iquilezles.org/ is a legend, see the articles and video tutorials.

Aside from shadertoy I use https://glslsandbox.com/ (for some reason it has https errors now). It's the same concept and it has a lot of submissions that are more basic than shardertoy where you can easily change lines and see what happens.

My intuition for these kind of shaders: They are just pure functions mapping an x,y coordinate to a color (optionally making use of time and cursor position). From this you can derive anything, like drawing a circle by choosing black or white depending on the distance from the center. There is a lot of intuition to gain and it's fun playing around, because as long as it compiles you will see something and you are likely to be surprised about what you accidentally made. Very rewarding.

deadbabe
this gave me an overwhelming sense of melancholy
bowsamic
Why?
bomewish
Presumably nostalgia —- I’m certainly feeling it!
deadbabe
The pattern and music I got felt like waking up on a groggy Saturday morning, as a very young child in the 90s, with not a care in the world and in a world where things were generally going pretty good. Any moment you expect your youthful mom to call you down for breakfast, to eat colorful cereal with siblings and watch bright funny cartoons, before going outside to act out adventures in the yard, and wow it feels like so much time goes by but then it’s just 10 AM, the day seems to take forever.
locusofself
The music is Telefon Tel Aviv , first track from their first album, Fahrenheit Fair Enough. Absolute masterpiece of electronic music.
madmonk
Thank you for reminding me about Telefon Tel Aviv.
j_san
Is there a way to make it loop? (So that one only needs to record e.g. 20 seconds, after which it loops to save space)
getToTheChopin
You can't do a loop right now, but I'll try to add that. Would be very cool
dole
been tumbling down the old Cthugha and Milkdrop visualization rabbit hole recently, nice gfx and aesthetics on yours and it's always nice to see a fresh take on code
grahamj
ah this takes me back. Thanks ;)
newman8r
So cool! Would love to be able to easily make it full screen (maybe I'm missing the button for that)

Bookmarked

getToTheChopin
Thank you! Right now you can open the controls at the top-right and then adjust the width / height of the canvas.

I'll try to make it easier with a single click

w_for_wumbo
I love these projects, I've been really passionate about including our own sensory inputs into the experience, whether it's voice, webcam input or (in the future health metrics) in order to tailor the experience to the experiencers' desires.
dalemhurley
I love it, it would be awesome if the controls could slowly and randomly adjust themselves so over time the images transition.
mgraczyk
Very cool animations, but they don't strike me as "psychedelic". A bit too smooth and unstructured.
typeofhuman
Cool. But this literally crashed my phone. I've never seen anything like it. Was impressed really. Little nervous. But it locked my Brave browser first then it locked my entire phone. System UI and Android crashed. It recovered but wow. What a trip.
newobj
I've heard this music somewhere before.... Telefon Tel Aviv I think? why isn't it credited?
garbagewoman
Looks to be a demo of the repo, the visualisation along with “Telefon Tel Aviv” isn’t the product - in that light it probably isn’t credited due to a minor oversight
locusofself
such an amazing track though, I use this to test every new speaker / headphones I've had for like 20 years running.
getToTheChopin
Sorry about that -- yes it was an oversight on my part.

I had included this small credit in the commentary on the website: "The song used is Fahrenheit Fair Enough by Telefon Tel Aviv."

This isn't enough -- I've pushed a changed showing a song credit at the bottom-left of the canvas that appears when you first load the page.

I also added a song credit in the github readme.

Telefon Tel Aviv is one of my favourite bands, I hope they get more listeners!

nosmokewhereiam
"...90's techno / Rave Posters..."

This project speaks to me, thank you thank you thank you!

taopai
I recall experiencing an incredibly fast hallucination with my eyes closed—like tiny dots moving at an extreme speed.

Faster than anything I had ever seen, almost like an intense vibration, beyond the refresh rate of the eye. It was both intimidating and exhilarating.

Perhaps screens are unable to replicate this type of hallucination.

The animations on this website are impressive. However, in my experience, closed-eye visuals tend to have a central focal point, along with folding or tunnel-like movements and recurring patterns.

I feel deeply grateful for having had some psychedelic experiences, even though hallucinations are the least interesting aspect of them. For me, they acted as a magnifying glass for my overall state of being—allowing me to step outside myself and honestly assess how I feel. They also foster a deeper appreciation for nature.

It would be fascinating to have this discussion within this community. These substances are often demonized due to a lack of understanding, yet they can have a profound impact. For instance, after taking a small dose of LSD, I completely lost interest in alcohol. In the past six months, I’ve only had three nights of drinking, lost a significant amount of weight, and feel fantastic.

kermit___
Like any mind-altering substance, I would suggest caution. Bad decisions are made and dangerous thoughts are had. Relationships can end, lives can be ruined, and people can die. It’s not a hallucinagen-specific problem, but here be dragons.