Isohypse
Real worlds in contour lines, for Resolume
What it does
Two FFGL plugins for Resolume Arena and Avenue in one download. SW Isohypse is a source: a world's contour lines on black, on paper or on nothing at all. SW Isohypse Over is an effect that draws the same over your clip, or reads the clip's own brightness as the height and contours that instead.
It started with Sebastian Lague's pen plotter drawing the Moon one height at a time, from the bottom up. Here that's the sweep: one more contour whose height moves, up through the world, down, both ways or wherever you put it, with every other line lit by how recently the sweep crossed it. With Floor at 0 a Rise draws the map from the lowest ground up; turn Flood up and it's the sea coming in instead. A pass takes its own time or locks to Resolume's bars. A line keeps the same width on a cliff as on a plain, which a pen manages without thinking and a threshold doesn't.
The worlds come from the missions that measured them: Earth from NOAA's ETOPO 2022, sea floor and all, the Moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's laser altimeter, Mars from Mars Global Surveyor's, Mercury from MESSENGER, Venus from Magellan's radar, Ceres and Vesta from Dawn, and Pluto and Charon from New Horizons, whose far sides are left blank rather than made up. Twenty-two places on Earth come from the Terrarium elevation tiles, from London and Snowdon to Everest and Mount Fuji. A Generated world makes up continents, mountain ridges or craters, and can morph as it goes. Middle-earth isn't bundled, as every heightmap of it is drawn from Tolkien's maps, which are the Tolkien Estate's to share, but the Over will contour any greyscale heightmap you give it.
Four looks: Ink, white lines on black; Plotter, ink on paper, with a little wobble in the hand if you want it; Neon; and Survey, an atlas's paper and colours, with tints between the contours and hill-shading.
- A source (a world's contours) and an Over effect (a world over your clip, or your clip as the terrain) in one download
- Nine globes from their missions' height maps: Earth with its sea floor, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Ceres, Vesta, Pluto and Charon
- Twenty-two places on Earth, from London and Snowdon to Everest, Vesuvius and Mount Fuji
- A Generated world of continents, ridges or craters, with a Seed and a Morph
- A sweep that rises, falls, bounces or sits where you put it, with Trail, Floor and a Flood like a rising sea, free-running or locked to Resolume's bars
- Ink, Plotter, Neon and Survey looks, with tints, hill-shading and a hand on the pen
- Lines the same width on a cliff as on a plain, at any resolution
- Universal macOS bundles and Windows x64 DLLs
Where it stands
v0.1.0, and early days. It has been loaded into Resolume Arena 7.28.1 on macOS and driven there over Arena's REST API: both plugins register, all 38 of the source's controls change Arena's output, Sweep Bars follows Arena's tempo and stops when it's paused, and the Over at Mix 0 hands its clip back to the bit. On Windows it has been in Resolume too: both plugins load, register and render in Resolume Arena 7.27.1 on software rendering (no GPU), with every control as declared and the fleet's Arena checks passed; 34 of the source's 35 testable controls and all 38 of the Over's changed a still picture, Spin being the exception, as a turning globe never holds still. An offline harness driving the real plugin code measures the picture: a ramp crosses the right number of contours, each within 0.013 of a pixel of where the arithmetic puts it; a line is the same width, within 3%, on slopes eight times apart; every line behind the sweep is as bright as the sweep's own model says, within 0.0005; and Everest, the Mariana Trench, Olympus Mons, Hellas and Maxwell Montes sit at their heights in the data. It catches five models that are wrong on purpose and thirteen one-character sabotages of its own code, and every control changes the picture. No GPU but one Mac's has run it, and each plugin carries all 31 maps, about 40 MB. The macOS build is Developer ID-signed and notarised. There's a user guide and a browser demo, but no presets or OpenFX port. Try it in your own rig before you trust it in a show.
Watch it running
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