Complete newbie

Monkey

As a part of an art project I want to create a program that'll generate a series of patterns based on binary code. I want the program to generate grids of squares where black squares stand for 1 and white squares for 0 and to display them in sequence like a slide-show or animation.

I have no programming experience. How would I go about learning how to do this?

Sorry about my ignorance. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

secret_squirrel

My first suggestion would be to write the code that just takes a series of 1 and 0's and displays them on the screen in the square pattern you want. it should be very easy to do this in something like visual basic. Whilst doing that you can start exploring forms and see how to go about replacing the 0's and 1's with white and black squares.

Monkey

I don't want to create images myself for a couple of reasons. 1) There's going to be an awful lot of them and 2) I want to create a program that can do this and then if it is possible I want to use the binary code from that program as the source for the images so it's kind of like the prgram is making a self-portrait.

hostyle

What operating system are you using? Windows? *nix? Mac OSX? Is there a particular language you would like to learn? Or if you prefer, there are scriptable graphics programs available - Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, the GIMP.

str8_away

display them in sequence like a slide-show or animation

the qustion is how would you like to display them?

If you want to display them in a GIF then you could use Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro to generate animate GIF.
or you can create a flash to disply them on web page.
or use Java, C++ or VB to create a program to display them in an application.

Monkey

Originally posted by str8_away
or use Java, C++ or VB to create a program to display them in an application.

I want to do this but I'd also be interested in putting the sequence onto a DVD.

secret_squirrel

Loads a ways to do this. I assume your'e talking about a pc dvd? If so then then you could just get a screen capture program that will capture a stream of images from the screen, and save it.

The easy but longwinded way would be to use paint shop pro, and convert the images to an animated gif.

Flash would prolly be the best way to do it imo. (I know almost nothing about flash Im just guessing)

If you wanted it readable on a normal dvd player then you are going to have to code in a format like mpeg2. You might be able to get a screen capture utility that will do this for you - you might not.

zoro

The Java Media Framework (JMF) has an awful lot of handy tools for audio/video capture and creation.

If this program is being done in java, you maybe able to create jpegs of the file's black/white design in say, a 512x512 image and output each image as a frame of an mpeg or gif.

I'm not sure if this is entirely possible, but it's an idea that you could look into.

I'm heading into 4th year next year and have been racking my head for a 4th year project. ... this sounds like it could be interesting! You never know, the patterns could spell out some horrific insult on someone's mother if looked at from a certain angle while hanging upside down in a pink jacket

*edit*
And, what is even more interesting, is that this newly created file would be an excellent way to transfer executables / any file at all, to another person - Imagine running this program and getting an animated gif of what is basically tv-static, compressing it, encrypting it, and then possibly doing it again.
Bloody horrible to crack I'd say!
*runs off to patent office*

zoro

And I've literally just spent no more than 30 minutes doing a program that reads in from a file and outputs it's binary representation. Yeah I know it took a while, but I spent most of that on the API cause I haven't used any programming for about 3 months

sceptre

Originally posted by zoro
*runs off to patent office*

Wouldn't bother I'm afraid - there are a few programs that do this for the truly paranoid and so on. Came across one about three or four years ago.

zoro

I was only kidding

Really? I've never heard of anyhting like it before! I'd imagine it's absolutely horrid to crack

Monkey

Originally posted by zoro
And I've literally just spent no more than 30 minutes doing a program that reads in from a file and outputs it's binary representation. Yeah I know it took a while, but I spent most of that on the API cause I haven't used any programming for about 3 months

Care to share it?

zoro

Originally posted by Monkey
Care to share it?

"Do my homework"
"Do my project"


Only kidding

Sure no problem, I hope it helps you out!
It's in java by the way, but I'm sure it'd be easy to convert it to another language.

import java.io.*;

public class Bitwise
{
   // ^2 values in a byte (8 bits)
   //  ie: 00110001 == 49 :: 32 + 16 + 1
   private static final int []vals = {128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1};

   public static void main(String [] args)
   {
      if(args.length != 1)
      {
         System.out.println("Usage: java Bitwise <filename>");
         System.exit(1);
      }
      try
      {
         BufferedInputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(args[0]));

         while (in.available() > 0)
         {
            byte b = 0;
            int position = 0;
            if((b = new Integer(in.read()).byteValue()) >= 0)
            {
               int thisByte[] = new int[8];
               while (position < vals.length)
               {
                  if((b & vals[position]) == vals[position])
                     thisByte[position] = 1;
                  else
                     thisByte[position] = 0;
                  position++;
               }
               for (int i = 0; i < thisByte.length; i++)
               {
                  /*  This is where you can output the black / white
				      section of the image to a file
                   */
                  System.out.print(thisByte[i]);
               }
               System.out.println();
            }
         }
         in.close();
      }
      catch(Exception e){e.printStackTrace();}
   }
}

And I'm aware that there's probably a better way of doing this

zoro

Hmmm ... maybe I'm going about it the wrong way ... it definitely works right, but I think I'm using extrememly time consuming methods of doing it ...

I modified the program to output black / white pixels to a PNG image, and so long as it's < 250k it's fast enough, but up at 5 megs as I was testing last night, 1%, 2%, 3%, ........ 4% ........................................5% ...

Hmmm I wonder what's making it take up so much time. I'm gonna have to optimize it if it's going to work with real files.

*edit*
well one fix would be changing:

while (position < vals.length)
{
   if((b & vals[position]) == vals[position])
      thisByte[position] = 1;
   else
      thisByte[position] = 0;
   position++;
}
for (int i = 0; i < thisByte.length; i++)
{
   /*  This is where you can output the black / white
      section of the image to a file
   */
   System.out.print(thisByte[i]);
}

- to -

while (position < vals.length)
{
   if((b & vals[position]) == vals[position])
      System.out.print("w");//white
   else
      System.out.print("b");//black
   position++;
}