Bézier Clock | Hacker News Reader

Bézier Clock

jackf.net

810 pointsfrigaardj69 comments

Excellent.

It looks like it uses linear interpolation between the different glyphs, which makes it look a bit jerky. The author might want to try a sinusoidal interpolation so that velocity reaches zero at the key frames and the whole thing thus spends more time dwelling on the legible parts of the animation and looks smoother.

One trick I've noticed to make animations/transitions "snappier" and more natural is to use quadratic/square (power of 2) scaling. For fun I did it on this clock just saving it locally - you can do it by modifying line 140 of `bezier_clock.pde` to square the ratio instead of simply assign it:

    animationRatio = ratio * ratio;  // can also replace with sqrt(ratio)

Again, just makes it a little bit 'snappier' (remember you have to hit spacebar to turn on continual animation), and scales it so you can determine the numbers a bit more clear earlier in the cycle because of the scaling on (0.0, 1.0]. This is certainly a fun piece of code to play with.

I've updated it with quad, cubic and sinusoidal modes. They all look good. Only problem is that because it's no longer linear, the various points can change at different rates and thus create 'kinks' in the curve. When it's linear, the 'line points' and the associated 'control points' are always in a line locally tangential to the curve (don't know the proper terminology but hopefully you understand).

That shouldn't happen if you do the motion transform uniformly on all axes. It should just be equivalent to changing the speed of time, rather than actually changing the trajectories.

There are many interesting easing functions to play with, primarily due to Robert Penner:

http://www.robertpenner.com/easing/

Cool. That's actually fun to try out. http://plnkr.co/edit/JybIMrHpUzGyr39cV5oz?p=preview

Where did you find bezier_clock.pde to modify? I would like to try a few things as well.

http://jackf.net/bezier-clock/bezier_clock.pde

ah right ... my webprogramming is a bit lacking

edit: thanks

Or, y'know, a cubic Bezier interpolation.

Hi all, I'm the author. Thanks for all the feedback - really good to hear you like the clock. I've added some more animation easings as per your suggestions. To clarify: when continual animation is off, each digit only animates for a specified amount of time. I set this at 20 seconds for all but the 'seconds' digits, which animate continually. I thought this looked cooler and they're inessential to reading the time. I'll try and port it to Apple watch / Android wear when they release their proper watch face SDKs.

My crappy addition to clocks: http://myoldclock.appspot.com/

Did it in about 12 hours for a Google I/O competition 3 years ago. It's a countdown clock instead of a normal clock, but similar idea.

Another entry in the "weird clocks" thread: http://sandbox.mikepurvis.com/js/clock/

Really nice.

I'll throw mine in too then – an "analog" clock drawn by 64 fast-moving LEDs: http://www.thisissurreal.com/shai/hologram/hologram.html (clock is at the bottom)

I liked it! You should convert it to clock.

This is very mesmerizing

Wow, that's awesome. Reminds me of Timely Alarm Clock[1] which I use every day and still tout as probably the single most beautiful Android app ever.

However, for this Bézier clock, it would be more practical if the animation was finished before it had to change again, so that we could read the numbers.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.bitspin.tim...

I _love_ timely. It's the first app I install if I ever need to reinstall my Android OS.

So pretty.

Looks awesome, but tens of seconds need to morph faster. By the time 4 is clearly formed and visible seconds read 48. While continuous motion is aesthetic, it is hard to tell time.

The 4 actually becomes its true form at 40 (read the text below the clock), so what you were seeing was not 48 but rather 38.

Yes. Perhaps hitting the optimum form at 45 would be ideal. So 4 would start becoming clearer at 40 and then start degenerating after 45.

Or change the motion curve so that it stays in the recognizable state for longer, like 90% of the time.

I'd suggest capping the animation duration. 90% of 10 hours still leaves an hour for the animation.

If you've got an extended clock (days, months, years, centuries, millennia), morphing could take a while.

Currently the animations all last at most 20 seconds, irrespective of the transition duration.

Came here to say this. The "pure" version of each digit should come in the middle, rather than at the beginning, of its interval.

I propose a new sport: Bezier clock golf, in which we try to construct a readable clock using the fewest number of control points. Current par is 5.

cool challenge, but how do you do less than 5 bezier points for the numeral 8?

Actually you just need 2 for creating an 8 if it's a closed spline. 3 If open.

Seems like open is a requirement, since not all the numerals are closed and I'm not sure how one would morph between open and closed spines. Playing around here (http://www.victoriakirst.com/beziertool/ anyone know a similar tool that has bookmarkable results so we can share work?) I'm thinking three control points should be achievable (haven't found a way to make a nice looking 4 yet, but most other numerals aren't that hard to pull off).

Here is a quick upload of all the numbers (0-9) built with only 3 points. Sorry about not animating them... didn't have time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yddpzyQoy_0&feature=youtu.be

Nice. Seems unlikely we could get it down to 2 points as numerals like 3 seem to require two distinct curves, but perhaps someone will try?

Hello!! I created something extremely similar and fully scriptable/configurable several years ago:

http://www.animaclock.com/

http://www.animaclock.com/viewfont?font=anifont4_bez&clean=1...

http://www.animaclock.com/viewfont?font=mrcl_kk_ghost&clean=...

Nice animation. Something similar is JWZ's dali clock: http://www.jwz.org/xdaliclock/

I sure do remember that being a lot more awesome at the time.

Oh man. I still use my Palm Vx, and I'm going to put this on there as soon as I get home. Thank you so much!

I think that is the first time I've seen Palm OS and Pebble Smart Watch in the same list

Fun. I'd say you should have every number at x/60 or whatever of the way between first and next state, including hour and such, but that would probably just result in a bunch of unrecognizable squiggles.

edit: oops, RTFM devin

Seems like you can toggle that by hitting space.

Edit: oops, three of us got here at the same time

How do you do that on an iPhone?

Use it to buy a laptop.

That is already there, press space.

Try hitting the spacebar.

Doesn't work unless cookies / local storage is enabled:

Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from 'Window': Access is denied for this document. processing.js:9503

Not sure why processing.js needs local storage to work.

Processing is absolutely wonderful. Be sure to check out p5.js as well [1], which has hooks into various HTML5 APIs including video and sound.

[1]: http://p5js.org/

The graphics are excellent.

I'm curious about the code organization: it seems that processing.js contains both the application code for the clock as well as the libraries for interpreting the Processing code. Is that true? Is that the best organization? Would it not be better to have have a processing.js which is the interpreter/libraries and a bezier_clock.js?

Per the Processing.js site, you include the processing.js file and then set an attribute on the canvas showing where to get the PDE file (your code). In this case they set it to: data-processing-sources="bezier_clock.pde"

Making the sources to the clock available here: http://jackf.net/bezier-clock/bezier_clock.pde

Ah! I see now. Thank you very much for explaining that.

Right now jwz is slapping his own forehead going "bezier curves! Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

Cute, but I would prefer if the tweening were adjusted to dwell longer on the numbers when less distorted.

Pretty Cool! I wonder if it's possible / how hard it would be to port to Pebble.

probably not that hard, but the resolution is pretty low.

Reminds me of the animation on the numbers in Timely[0]

[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.bitspin.tim...

It would be fun to have it on phones. Can you make an Android app? ;-)

You could do it! Wrap an HTML file into a WebView Activity. The Android portion is pretty much:

    public class MyWebViewActivity extends Activity {
      @Override
      protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        WebView webView = new WebView(this);
        setContentView(webView);
        webView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
        webView.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/index.html");
      }
    }

I'm not entirely sure why this is being downvoted. It would make a pretty cool clock widget.

I image you would become used to reading the interpolated states eventually. That would be a pretty nice way to write fractions.

I wonder what it would look like with interpolation pathways that minimize the amount of bending

Why does this need a cookie to function? I block cookies by default and I get annoyed every time some site requires a cookie for something mundane like displaying the time or playing a game that doesn't even preserve state across browser sessions (like 2048)

edit: 2048 does indeed restore the game, but it should still work without a cookie.

I'm not sure, but it's a line in Processing.js that breaks everything if removed. Not something easily fixable.

Very nice and elegant way, for me this would be the first reason to get an Apple Watch

Great idea!

But why is the site blocking the Ctrl+D keystroke? Don't they want to be bookmarked?

Ahh, it was so satisfying to watch it right as 59:59 ticked over to 00:00.

Too bad, doesn't work without cookies/localstorage enabled.

Finally, Dali Clock arrives on the web!

Gives me a headache

I love it!

hello

Apple Watch.

'nuf said.

Fine, naysayers. I'll port it thereto. A Bezier clock is briefly amusing on a web page, but will make a delightful functional showpiece on a watch.

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