20,000 particle trails through a simplex curl field
This “look” is probably nothing new to most Generative Art veterans, but I find the patterns to be quite mesmerising. It was also a good way to introduce myself to some of the “standard toolkit” techniques I hadn’t played with yet.
The approach is roughly as follows:
Generate a bunch of randomly placed particles within a circle centred on the canvas to initialise.
Give each particle a color by linear interpolation between a start and an end color, using Perlin or Simplex noise at those co-ordinates to decide the interpolation point
Move each particle per time period using the curl noise at the current point. Curl noise is based on some underlying texture - for that, you can use an octaved Perlin or Simplex noise
Draw lines of the particles movement using the particle’s color
Make the odd numbered particles move the opposite way (“backwards” in some sense) - this avoids the edge of the circle being visible at points where the direction is generally travelling into the circle