Generative alphabet

Hi !

I just discover Nodebox community and system and follow some tutos. I have a project in mind but I don't know how to realize it with Nodebox. I try to generate an alphabet with new forms of letters (abstract forms). For now, I create 26 nodes (=26 letters) joined by combine nodes. Then the idea, is to scatter (or wiggle or resample) each letter then transform each point in line, etc. (=testing many forms). But to do that, I think I have to put a random node or a frame node. The idea is to have animation which shows, letter by letter, the result after scatter. I send you a screenshot of my nodes. The problem for now is that the animation shows some letter 3 times or twice or the idea is to see the 26 letters just once (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz...26th frame and then abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy)

Hope someone can help me, thank you very much !

PS : sorry for this terrible english..

go back to his trials

Hi, welcome to the community!

Whenever you're making this many nodes, it's probably a sign that you should stop :-) The reason is that NodeBox was made to automate this work for you. Probably, when you're making a system like this, you have some process, some algorithm that you want to describe in NodeBox. The idea is to describe this algorithm once, then let NodeBox do the repetitive work of repeating this operation for each letter in the sentence.

In NodeBox, the best way to do this is to create a subnetwork that does your specific operation, then have an input string that gets split (using a "make strings" node with an empty separator).

The documentation on subnetworks might be helpful.

If you do it correctly, you will have all the shapes on top of each other. You can then use a stack node in the main network to put them all side by side.

I have created an example in NodeBox Live, our almost-ready-for-beta-release online version (ask me if you want an invite). Not all nodes have the same names, but it shows the basic system, I hope.

https://nodebox.live/fdb/generativetype

Also, your English is fine, don't worry! :-)

Hi Frederik!

Thank you for your quick answer, it's very useful (I will try to follow your advises and automate my operation). Do I have to put the make strings node in the subnetwork and then publish it?

Yes of course for the invite than you very much (this sounds really helpful) !

No, makeStrings goes outside of the network, just like in the example. We want the operation to apply for each letter in the word.