Controlling color with webcam ASCII code

Processing Libraries
1

Hey All!
Recently I’ve been experimenting with Ascii code and my webcam with the hopes I’d be able to control certain areas with colors of my choosing. since I’m sort of new to processing and very new to hard coding, Ive been Ascii code example that comes with the Video library designed by the processing foundation. My goal is too figure out how to alter the colors of the ascii with colors of my choosing, may this be with a key press or serial information from Arduino . As of now the demo (I believe) takes the brightness of each pixel and translates the brightness as an RGB Value, making the ascii code translate the color seen on the webcam as an approximate RGB value for each character:

<
pushMatrix();
for (int x = 0; x < video.width; x++) {

  int pixelColor = video.pixels[index];
  // Faster method of calculating r, g, b than red(), green(), blue() 
  int r = (pixelColor >> 16) & 0xff;
  int g = (pixelColor >> 8) & 0xff;
  int b = pixelColor & 0xff;


  int pixelBright = max(r, g, b);

 
 float diff = pixelBright - bright[index];
  bright[index] += diff * 0.1;

fill (pixelColor);

  int num = int(bright[index]);
  text(letters[num], 0, 0);
  
  // Move to the next pixel
  index++;

  // Move over for next character
  translate(1.0 / fontSize, 0);
}
popMatrix();

}
popMatrix();

Ive tried playing around with this but I’m unsure what the steps are, The entire code is listed below:

<
import processing.video.*;

Capture video;
boolean cheatScreen;

// All ASCII characters, sorted according to their visual density
String letterOrder =
" .`-_':,;^=+/"|)\<>)iv%xclrs nT#JCwfy325FA&8U$@KHDBWNMR0Q";

char letters;
color pink = color(255, 102, 204);

float bright;
char chars;

PFont font;
float fontSize = 1.5;

void setup() {
size(640, 480);

// This the default video input, see the GettingStartedCapture
// example if it creates an error
video = new Capture(this, 160, 120);

// Start capturing the images from the camera
video.start();

int count = video.width * video.height;
println(count);

font = loadFont(“Mont-HeavyDEMO-48.vlw”);
//CUSTOM FONT = createFont(“test-for-processing.tff”, 100);
// LOAD FONT = loadFont(“Mont-HeavyDEMO-48.vlw”);

// for the 256 levels of brightness, distribute the letters across
// the an array of 256 elements to use for the lookup
letters = new char[256];
for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++) {
int index = int(map(i, 0, 256, 0, letterOrder.length()));
letters[i] = letterOrder.charAt(index);
}

// current characters for each position in the video
chars = new char[count];

// current brightness for each point
bright = new float[count];
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
// set each brightness at the midpoint to start
bright[i] = 128;
}
}

void captureEvent(Capture c) {
c.read();
}

void draw() {
background (0);

pushMatrix();

float hgap = width / float(video.width);
float vgap = height / float(video.height);

scale(max(hgap, vgap) * fontSize);
textFont(font, fontSize);

int index = 0;
video.loadPixels();
for (int y = 1; y < video.height; y++) {

// Move down for next line
translate(0,  1.0 / fontSize);

pushMatrix();
for (int x = 0; x < video.width; x++) { 
 
  int pixelColor = video.pixels[index];
  // Faster method of calculating r, g, b than red(), green(), blue() 
  int r = (pixelColor >> 16) & 0xff;
  int g = (pixelColor >> 8) & 0xff;
  int b = pixelColor & 0xff;


  int pixelBright = max(r, g, b);

 
 float diff = pixelBright - bright[index];
  bright[index] += diff * 0.1;

fill (pixelColor);

// fill (color(23,253,29));
int num = int(bright[index]);
text(letters[num], 0, 0);

  // Move to the next pixel
  index++;

  // Move over for next character
  translate(1.0 / fontSize, 0);
}
popMatrix();

}
popMatrix();

if (cheatScreen) {
image(video, 0, height - video.height);
// set() is faster than image() when drawing untransformed images
set(0, height - video.height, video);
}
}

/**

  • Handle key presses:
  • ‘c’ toggles the cheat screen that shows the original image in the corner
  • ‘g’ grabs an image and saves the frame to a tiff image
  • ‘f’ and ‘F’ increase and decrease the font size
    */
    void keyPressed() {
    switch (key) {
    case ‘g’: saveFrame(); break;
    case ‘c’: cheatScreen = !cheatScreen; break;
    case ‘f’: fontSize *= 1.1; break;
    case ‘F’: fontSize *= 0.9; break;

}
}