Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of your next trip

(collidingscopes.github.io)

166 points | by getToTheChopin 113 days ago

26 comments

  • evanjrowley 110 days ago
    IMO the most realistic generated psychedelic images were made by Google's Deep Dream 10 years ago. It seems like it's been mostly forgotten about after the advent of DALL-E, Midjourney, etc.
    • yojo 110 days ago
      Agreed, it made some seriously wild stuff. Assuming you’re talking about this: https://research.google/blog/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-...

      Here’s an example I generated in 2015:

      https://www.wandereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/drea...

      Source image: https://www.wandereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/mars...

      • mock-possum 110 days ago
        Eh a lot of that ‘deep dreamy’ stuff ends up looking so same-same - I don’t need to look at endless various of ‘dog faces and insect body parts and glittering gemstones’ you know? I want to see actual weird stuff, bizarre genometry, a sense of space that’s mind-bending. Maximalism is not the be all end all of trippy visuals.
        • brokenmachine 109 days ago
          Check this one out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGuBpKqtHdY

          And this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd3ZQOzyquo&t=385s

          The AI generated ones are getting really good nowadays.

          • jstanley 109 days ago
            It would be cool to have something like the first one, except generated in realtime and you get to "steer".

            If it works by zooming in slightly each frame and then asking the AI to refine the image to better match the prompt or whatever, we could steer through the world by changing the centre of zoom.

            If generating frames is fast enough it could feel like flying a spaceship through a psychedelic environment.

          • DrSiemer 109 days ago
            Deforum stuff is cool, but also a bit of a flash in the pan because of the disconnected nature of the generated frames.

            Pure video generation is getting better, but like all generative AI it lacks imagination and cannot really create new things, making it less qualified for truly mindblowing psychedelic visuals in its current state.

        • evanjrowley 109 days ago
          I understand your point. There's "trippy visuals" and then there's "that's what I saw when the DMT hit" - My comment was really leaning towards the latter.
        • duskwuff 110 days ago
          I believe this music video (Röyksopp - Impossible) was created with something along those lines:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljnxZypkjn0

    • bongodongobob 109 days ago
      Eh, it's close but misses the mark if we're specifically trying to match psychedelic visuals. If it were more fractally and geometric sure, but the dogs and fish and shit just isn't it.

      This is pretty bang on for a high dose - https://www.instagram.com/share/reel/BALFNVBS20

      Or this: https://www.instagram.com/share/reel/BBumGiQdP6

      • N2yhWNXQN3k9 109 days ago
        Seems closer to representing the experience, but probably less interesting for enhancing the experience.
    • ddmf 100 days ago
      made me wonder if the brain works in a similar way converting the incoming eye information into what the brain "sees" - it's just pattern matching based on what has been seen before and showing the best fit - psychadelics disrupt that.
    • muzani 109 days ago
      I kind of miss the early AI days, where the AI felt closer to my subconscious than me.
  • taopai 109 days ago
    I recall experiencing an incredibly fast hallucination with my eyes closed—like tiny dots moving at an extreme speed.

    Faster than anything I had ever seen, almost like an intense vibration, beyond the refresh rate of the eye. It was both intimidating and exhilarating.

    Perhaps screens are unable to replicate this type of hallucination.

    The animations on this website are impressive. However, in my experience, closed-eye visuals tend to have a central focal point, along with folding or tunnel-like movements and recurring patterns.

    I feel deeply grateful for having had some psychedelic experiences, even though hallucinations are the least interesting aspect of them. For me, they acted as a magnifying glass for my overall state of being—allowing me to step outside myself and honestly assess how I feel. They also foster a deeper appreciation for nature.

    It would be fascinating to have this discussion within this community. These substances are often demonized due to a lack of understanding, yet they can have a profound impact. For instance, after taking a small dose of LSD, I completely lost interest in alcohol. In the past six months, I’ve only had three nights of drinking, lost a significant amount of weight, and feel fantastic.

    • kermit___ 109 days ago
      Like any mind-altering substance, I would suggest caution. Bad decisions are made and dangerous thoughts are had. Relationships can end, lives can be ruined, and people can die. It’s not a hallucinagen-specific problem, but here be dragons.
      • taopai 101 days ago
        Like driving a car.
  • mgraczyk 109 days ago
    Very cool animations, but they don't strike me as "psychedelic". A bit too smooth and unstructured.
  • evo_9 109 days ago
    Very similar to my favorite trip toy of the 90s… rock ‘star’ Todd Rundgren’s Flowfazer. Quite mesmerizing for toddlers, too.

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flowfazer/id507935335

  • newobj 109 days ago
    I've heard this music somewhere before.... Telefon Tel Aviv I think? why isn't it credited?
    • getToTheChopin 109 days ago
      Sorry about that -- yes it was an oversight on my part.

      I had included this small credit in the commentary on the website: "The song used is Fahrenheit Fair Enough by Telefon Tel Aviv."

      This isn't enough -- I've pushed a changed showing a song credit at the bottom-left of the canvas that appears when you first load the page.

      I also added a song credit in the github readme.

      Telefon Tel Aviv is one of my favourite bands, I hope they get more listeners!

    • garbagewoman 109 days ago
      Looks to be a demo of the repo, the visualisation along with “Telefon Tel Aviv” isn’t the product - in that light it probably isn’t credited due to a minor oversight
    • locusofself 109 days ago
      such an amazing track though, I use this to test every new speaker / headphones I've had for like 20 years running.
  • typeofhuman 109 days ago
    Cool. But this literally crashed my phone. I've never seen anything like it. Was impressed really. Little nervous. But it locked my Brave browser first then it locked my entire phone. System UI and Android crashed. It recovered but wow. What a trip.
  • sixstring982 110 days ago
    Very nice! Reminds me of something I built on Shadertoy a while back: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttGRf
    • OracB7 110 days ago
      Nice! Where does one learn how to do this kind of thing (aside from the fractals)?
      • WASDx 109 days ago
        https://iquilezles.org/ is a legend, see the articles and video tutorials.

        Aside from shadertoy I use https://glslsandbox.com/ (for some reason it has https errors now). It's the same concept and it has a lot of submissions that are more basic than shardertoy where you can easily change lines and see what happens.

        My intuition for these kind of shaders: They are just pure functions mapping an x,y coordinate to a color (optionally making use of time and cursor position). From this you can derive anything, like drawing a circle by choosing black or white depending on the distance from the center. There is a lot of intuition to gain and it's fun playing around, because as long as it compiles you will see something and you are likely to be surprised about what you accidentally made. Very rewarding.

  • Distilitron 110 days ago
    Telefon tel aviv is nice, gfx is crap
  • nimzoLarsen 113 days ago
    This is so beautiful! The outputs are trippy and the music fits well.

    Nice work

  • qwertox 110 days ago
    I think AI tools like Stable Diffusion have a big potential.

    Something along the lines of what Nexxus 604 is doing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6m3OvB819s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s_Dtl1U9wU

    • CamperBob2 109 days ago
      That is freaking awesome. Why isn't it better known?
    • spot 109 days ago
      couldn't agree more :) he is not alone :)
  • talles 110 days ago
    I miss Winamp
    • DrSiemer 110 days ago
      It will never as glorious as it was back in the day, but Milkdrop 3 was released in 2023 and works on any audio on your system.
      • 01100011 110 days ago
        Is it cross platform?

        Best thing about milkdrop was that you could use a microphone. We brought a projector and screen to a music festival (HSMF) in '04 and had a jam circle in our camp where the visualizations would respond to the music we were making. Definitely a hit way back when before that sort of stuff became boring.

      • ferociouskite56 110 days ago
        On Android the free ProjectM app hasn't been updated since 2022. Does anyone know how to install Milkdrop 3 on Kodi for Raspberry Pi or in F-Droid? Kodi is also on Android.
    • protocolture 109 days ago
      So many llama's with unwhipped asses.
    • rtuin 109 days ago
      This reminds me of Winamp too.

      As a teenager I used to fiddle with the visualization editor for hours. Good fun!

  • w_for_wumbo 109 days ago
    I love these projects, I've been really passionate about including our own sensory inputs into the experience, whether it's voice, webcam input or (in the future health metrics) in order to tailor the experience to the experiencers' desires.
  • int_19h 109 days ago
    Long-running fractal zooms are really good for this purpose, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cgp2WNNKmQ
  • adzm 110 days ago
    I really do appreciate the 90s, Video Toaster-esque[1] aesthetics

    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster

  • madmonk 110 days ago
    Thank you for reminding me about Telefon Tel Aviv.
  • deadbabe 110 days ago
    this gave me an overwhelming sense of melancholy
    • locusofself 109 days ago
      The music is Telefon Tel Aviv , first track from their first album, Fahrenheit Fair Enough. Absolute masterpiece of electronic music.
    • bowsamic 110 days ago
      Why?
      • deadbabe 109 days ago
        The pattern and music I got felt like waking up on a groggy Saturday morning, as a very young child in the 90s, with not a care in the world and in a world where things were generally going pretty good. Any moment you expect your youthful mom to call you down for breakfast, to eat colorful cereal with siblings and watch bright funny cartoons, before going outside to act out adventures in the yard, and wow it feels like so much time goes by but then it’s just 10 AM, the day seems to take forever.
      • bomewish 110 days ago
        Presumably nostalgia —- I’m certainly feeling it!
  • dalemhurley 109 days ago
    I love it, it would be awesome if the controls could slowly and randomly adjust themselves so over time the images transition.
  • DrSiemer 110 days ago
    Any way to lerp transitions like Milkdrop does?
    • getToTheChopin 109 days ago
      Not right now unfortunately, but I'll try to add this
  • j_san 110 days ago
    Is there a way to make it loop? (So that one only needs to record e.g. 20 seconds, after which it loops to save space)
    • getToTheChopin 109 days ago
      You can't do a loop right now, but I'll try to add that. Would be very cool
  • newman8r 109 days ago
    So cool! Would love to be able to easily make it full screen (maybe I'm missing the button for that)

    Bookmarked

    • getToTheChopin 109 days ago
      Thank you! Right now you can open the controls at the top-right and then adjust the width / height of the canvas.

      I'll try to make it easier with a single click

  • nosmokewhereiam 109 days ago
    "...90's techno / Rave Posters..."

    This project speaks to me, thank you thank you thank you!

  • andyjohnson0 110 days ago
    This is really nicely done. Kudos.
  • dole 110 days ago
    been tumbling down the old Cthugha and Milkdrop visualization rabbit hole recently, nice gfx and aesthetics on yours and it's always nice to see a fresh take on code
  • grahamj 110 days ago
    ah this takes me back. Thanks ;)
  • brcmthrowaway 110 days ago
    Do not take drugs! its bad for you
    • lscdjlsdkf 109 days ago
      this is not true. Drugs can help
  • lscdjlsdkf 109 days ago
    Personally, i don't like them at all. This grainy feel with a lot of dark/black colors etc. i would not use this while tripping.
    • lscdjlsdkf 109 days ago
      Why does a personal opinion gets downvoted?

      I would not use this visualization when i trip. If the OP is interested in a more indepth i would provide it but otherwise, its a product which is directly correlated to a personal experience.