Romeo & Juliet: Initial Spectro Experiments #2

Since my previous post about the Spectro plug-in, I've continued to play around with it in various ways. At the time I had received some feedback about having the geometry 'transform' in some way. The experiment below does not quite represent that as I was (and still am) getting used to how the plug-in works. However, it did produce some interesting looking results.

These next few tests build on top of each other. I first worked with a sphere and some deformers that were driven by results produced by Spectro after some editing of the texture/some other nodes. After some animation on the sphere, a golf ball-like shape appears as the sphere itself shrinks down. 

The golf ball shape has similar deformers attached to it as the sphere did, so they moved very similarly. From there some diamonds begin to appear and move around the deforming golf ball. Then a more angular shape begins to break and eventually begins to deconstruct slightly (using the 'explode' feature in MASH) and so does the diamonds. 

After this I then returned to my initial Spectro experiment (the grid of reflective cubes) to see what else I can do with it. I added a color node to my MASH network after looking through some files Ethan sent me. I then animated the offset node so the cubes disappear and reveal a water-like surface. I tried for a while to get the colour on this surface to animate as well, but the node does not seem to like to work with planes. I did also try projecting the colour after re-mapping the Spectro ramp as well as using layered textures and shaders but had no luck.

So instead I added some spheres that materialise on the surface, which then change colour. I'm not super happy with the animated result as it seems to be quite harsh and 'pop' in some places, but I think it at least looks interesting.