Weather and Ledgers two generators, our own code

Cumulus

A cloud and paint engine for weather. A cloud is a tree of lobes, lit by marching toward the light; brushes lay grain, wet paint and smudge over it. The letters above are a cloud grown along the skeleton of the word.

Star cloud. Masses nested into lobes and curls, lit from the opening, with a silver lining, found edges toward the light and lost ones in the dark.

01The brush

Paint the weather

draw here
brush
ink

The surface is float, in linear light, so glazes never band. Export re-paints every stroke at 2880 by 3840 px instead of enlarging the screen.

volume
wash
dither
halftone

One cloud file, four readings. The same description feeds the engine's raymarcher; the tests hold the outline to an IoU of 0.9 against a volumetric reference.

02The grid

Ledger

Each entry is one prism. Its length is the value, its direction the change: up and right when the series rose, down and right when it fell. Ink comes from the value's rank, side faces print as halftone, and the largest values carry a key ink set a little off register.

The series here is the 49 shot lengths of a brand film measured in this study, on a log scale, so the grid writes out that film's edit rhythm, entry by entry.

The word tallies itself: its series is the ink in each of its own columns, and every prism stays inside its letters.