My Data Art Project takes data from my Steam Library and displays it as a solar system. The goal of the piece is to visualize my preference of games in a cute abstract style. Each planet is a genre of game and you can tell by which color it uses: Adventure is blue, Action is red, Casual is green, First Person is pink, Third Person is purple, Singleplayer is deep purple, Multiplayer is deep blue, and Puzzle is the toned red. Each planet’s size is related to the amount of games I own in that genre (conversion is 193 games to 1.93 scale). A planet gets a ring if there is a game in that genre I have over a hundred hours in (I converted by removing the “hundred” value and moving the decimal back by 1, 109.5 = .95). In the center of the solar system is a yellow cube, that when clicked, turns into a opencube. This is to represent the literal box I am confined to when it comes to the games I like. My subjective perception of game genres keeps me trapped in a box, unless I decide to open myself to new possibilities. The rings are yellow as well, as it makes logical sense to believe that my opinion on a game would have some correlation to how many hours I put into such a game. As a science fiction enjoyer, I chose to represent the model as a solar system, as I had received the idea while playing No Man’s Sky. Now the model has each of the rings rotating on each planet as the center rotates out of sync.
Warren’s Steam Library: https://steamcommunity.com/id/LambdaPyro/
No Man’s Sky: https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/
Does anyone have an idea how I can make the objects rotate in an orbit around the cube? Also is there a way I can tie an object to another object?
I have an opinion on the animation of your piece. Maybe if the planets were moving in a less synchronized manner when they flip, it would grab viewers’ attention even more? Them moving in different directions could help with that aspect 🙂
I agree, it would definitely help. Currently it reminds me of a video game loading screen, which is fine for me, but I can definitely see how separating the motion can make it stand out more.
What was your thought process behind choosing which colors represented which genre?
Honestly, the colors were placed in ways that I felt fit. Adventure being blue is because of how adventure games remind me of worlds like earth and such. Casual games green because a casual player could be “green” to video games. Stuff like that helped me with the initial planets, and then later colors, especially ones with darker tones were chosen just to stand out.
I have a permissioned opinion — I love how the “planets” look rotating as if they were actual planets. I think it would be cool if they all did not just rotate opposite of the rings, and instead all had unique rotations. (I know planets usually rotate around the axis perpendicular to the rings, but that would make it look static without texture.)
No I totally get what you mean. I feel as if everything is too in sync. My goal wasn’t to make it accurate to an actual solar system obviously, but changing the rotation of rings I feel would make the piece a lot better.
I have an opinion, I like the motion you have now but I feel like having the planets rotate around the cube would be cool to see and emulate the solar system feel, or perhaps adding texture to the planets?
I don’t have a solid answer to your question, but if you find that making the planets rotate around the cube isn’t possible, having them slowly float towards and away from the center may also capture the feeling you’re going for.
Is there a significance to the planets moving in sync?
As an observation, I did not notice the interactive component of the closed cube turning into an open cube, until I read it within the description.
Seeing this piece I can see planets but something else I could see were disks that is where games used to be stored before steam. I do not know why I see that but I thought that it was an interesting connection I made in my mind.
There is an option to use parenting in openGL. I would have to look further into it, but you could also use a sine wave or other functions to create an orbiting effect. Either works, but I will warn you the sine wave will make the code a bit messy as I’ve found with my metronome system.