Sophie Deick
Ian McKnight
Naomi Stanton


Polar Ice is a modification of the example program Firecube. Three synchronized 3-dimensional “stars” rotate over a blue field of ice, all exuding a misty blue frost. Occasional drifting particles trace curved paths over the scene.

The color scheme was modified from exclusively red tones to blue. The single cube represented in Firecube was made into three geometric forms by modifying the width function in the “add pixels” code. The single cube is replaced by three boxes, placed in the X, Y, and Z planes to form a “star”. A simple ellipse, by virtue of oversized dimensions, provides a snowflake-and-rain effect; adding a Z rotation makes the effect seem more random. The scale was slightly modified to make the “stars” smaller, so as not to overlap one another, and a lower rotational angle slows the rotation down a bit. Finally, the “fire” function used to determine which pixels are mapped to the next frame was modified from red to blue, and the value lowered so that fewer “lit” pixels pass to the next frame, with the effect that the “frost” is less opaque.

Source code: Polar_Ice

Built with Processing