One sentence summary: This app generates a simple physics simulation, then processes it into a black and white dithered movie. Cool part: retro-looking physics. Uncool part: low frame rate.

As I was going through the ofxaddons, I saw an addon that takes an image file and returns a dithered version of it. The addon includes a few different dithering algorithms. I was intrigued by the aesthetic quality of the dithered images, and I wanted to see what the addon would do with motion content.

I originally connected the addon to the video camera on my computer, and I toyed with connecting the dithering to some kind of openCV processing, but ofxOpenCV is an included addon. I found an addon that wrapped Box2d with openFrameworks. So I thought I’d create a basic physics simulation, then dither it.

Setting up box2d was simple using the openFrameworks project generator. The dithering didn’t work with the generator so I played with the files and finally got the two projects running in the same app. The final piece was figuring out how to get the dithering to apply to the physics simulation. I used openFrameworks buffers to store an image of the simulation, then processed the buffer and drew the dithered image.

Click on the image below to see a full-resolution screenshot:

Github Link: https://github.com/SciutoAlex/iacd-ofxaddons