Xeno

Xeno is a journey into the unseen worlds of distant star systems. Breathtaking and colorful, dark and frightening. Extraterrestrial landscapes and natural phenomena, traces of extraterrestrial life and minerals, mountains and coastlines, sunsets and sunrises. And all of the palettes have been titled according to the names of the nearest star systems.

This piece began eleven months ago, in early 2023. I created a custom library for one of the Genuary challenges, which led to the first Xeno prototype. Over the next few months, while coding from my phone, I made about ten different versions of this algorithm, leading to some pretty interesting results. As I prepared for this show, I switched to working on my laptop; and the final piece is combination of the best parts from each of my experiments from over the last year.

Most of the work is done on the fragment shader with the occasional use of simplex noise. This is one of the most complex shaders I've done so far — tackling some things that are quite hard to control — so I'm very happy with the result.

CLICK on image to turn on an animation mode (requires modern GPU to run).

Please enjoy!

https://strangerintheq.art/xeno