I recently used Processing to both design a physical topographic map and projection-map it with generative visuals. Here’s a short making-of video that explains how we made it:
Would be glad to get feedback on the video / project as a whole.
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Just watched the video. This is honestly really cool. I especially enjoyed seeing your process.
Can I ask how you got here? Like, what’s your background? Is this just a hobby or what you do for a living?
Lovely work and great collaboration. I’m seriously impressed by how you were able to precisely project on top of the stacked contours. I know from experience how digitally fabricated contours can sometimes have a slight difference from the drawing due to tolerance issues. I noticed you mentioned something about custom mapping software (seeing a warp transform). Can you elaborate more on that? Did you have to manually reconstruct the curves from the physical model in situ?
The project is really well done and it is pleasing to see the process in the video… But now I want more 
Wow, your project is awesome! I specially love the way you took different algorithms from old magazines and publications and insert it in your Processing code. The process video is also very interesting.
Congratulations again!
It’s really cool that you’ve built up tools for all of your projects - e.g. terrain generators. Are they opensourced? Also, can you elaborate on how you discovered these really interesting algorithms? What workflow do you have to discover new techniques? As I am new to this field, I am interested to know 
@alexmiller wow! wow! wow! This is an excellent example to demonstrate the applications and possibilities of computer programming 2 beginner students. I think this could probably be utilized in the fashion industry. I am definitely going to share. Can I ask what IDE were you using in the screenshot around the 1:14 mark in the video with the drag and drop blocks? It resembled scratch or some derivative of it.
Excellent work, hope to see more
Can I ask how you got here? Like, what’s your background? Is this just a hobby or what you do for a living?
I’m a programmer by trade, but I’ve always been interested in creative coding. I recently quit my programming job to pursue installation art full time. I started hanging around a local makerspace and learning how to use the tools there.
I noticed you mentioned something about custom mapping software (seeing a warp transform). Can you elaborate more on that? Did you have to manually reconstruct the curves from the physical model in situ?
The same vector file that’s used to cut the wood is also used to begin the mapping process. I wrote a program that allows you to warp each individual curve to make it fit perfectly. If you saw the installation in person, you’d realize that the fit isn’t perfect — in the future I’d love to use something like Lightform to get a really tight fit.
It’s really cool that you’ve built up tools for all of your projects - e.g. terrain generators. Are they opensourced?
All the code I write is on Github, but there it’s all pretty messy and undocumented.
Also, can you elaborate on how you discovered these really interesting algorithms? What workflow do you have to discover new techniques?
I specifically sought out the contours algorithm after seeing a contour map somewhere. The metaballs algorithm is pretty ubiquitous… I forget exactly where I learned about that one. And the bird flocking algorithm I learned about from Daniel Shiffman’s Nature of Code book (sorry, the forum isn’t letting me put a link to it).
Can I ask what IDE were you using in the screenshot around the 1:14 mark in the video with the drag and drop blocks?
It’s not an IDE, it’s a Processing program I wrote to produce designs for the installation.
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