For my processing drawing machine, I wanted to utilize the power of randomness and noise. I was really fascinated by how you can create different landscapes and patterns using noise and I thought to make this random would increase the complexity of random more. Although it can be messy if left for long, the randomness was really fast and apparent because it’s shifting so much in a more Grid-like landscape. In the code, you can see I used Quad strips as my shape using the begin and end shape functions to create this landscape/mountain feel. As you can see in the screenshots I have also added color by pressing the mouse to create a more appealing look to the grid.

My Code:

 

//Grid Format
int columns;
int rows;

//Enter any width or heigth here you want your landscape to be presented as!
int mjWidth = 850;
int mjHeight = 800;

int growthFactor = 15; //how much to scale our QUAD STRIPS

//Here we create our grid to view our random landscape in a 2D Array format
float[][] gridView;

void setup() {
size(800, 800, P3D); //use P3D to show 3D objects

//set the grid height and width to be changed depending on the scale
columns = mjWidth / growthFactor;
rows = mjHeight / growthFactor;

//set our grid view parameters/boundaries to be equal to our set columns and rows
gridView = new float[columns][rows];

}

void draw() {

//utlize a nested for loop to create noise in our landscape (Perlin Noise Effect)

for (int j = 0; j < rows; j++) {
for (int i= 0; i< columns; i++) {
gridView[i][j] = map(noise(random(0,0.5),random(0,0.5) ), 0, 1, -100, 250);
}
}

if(mousePressed) {
stroke(random(0,255), random(0,255) ,random(0,255));
background(random(0,255), random(0,255),random(0,255));
}

//shift the grid view into frame
translate(width/2, height/2);
rotateX(PI/5); //rotate x-axis to get a x-aligned to see more of 3D objects
translate(-width/2, -height/2); //translate again to get the full view of the landscape
for (int j = 0; j < rows-1; j++) {
beginShape(QUAD_STRIP); //the quads strip adds our landscape and view point
for (int i= 0; i< columns; i++) {
//use verteies in shape fromat to increase elevation and create given quad strip shape
vertex(i*growthFactor, j*growthFactor, gridView[i][j]);
vertex((i+1)*growthFactor, j*growthFactor, gridView[i][j]); //creates elevation on the x bounds
vertex(i*growthFactor, (j+1)*growthFactor, gridView[i][j+1]); //creates elevation on the y bounds
}
endShape();
}
}