Currently I'm editing the book on hydra-book.glitch.me so if you are looking at hydra-book.naotohieda.com, the content may be a bit old. Also I found strange issues specifically on ubuntu + firefox like sidebar doesn't load, so please try opening on Chrome if you find any issues (if it doesn't fix, please open an issue).
Hydra is an analog-synth-like coding environment for real-time visuals. It is created by Olivia Jack and is open-source. You can simply open Hydra editor to start coding. There are a few resources besides this book:
- The official documentation is a good resource to get started,
- Hydra Functions is an interactive webpage to see functions and its usages,
- Function list covers all the functions available in Hydra,
- and Hydra Patterns on Twitter is a way to get inspirations from other artists.
This article is a work-in-progress online book to collect Hydra snippets. Thanks to its live-coding nature, simply improvising by chaining different functions may lead to an unexpected pattern; nevertheless, studying Hydra in a rather systematic way can reveal its potential. Thus, the goal is not only to accumulate frequently-used techniques to make coding easier but also to research the theory of Hydra to discover new images.
If you are new to Hydra, I recommend you to skim through the book and find patterns you like, and try the code by pressing "open in editor" link. You can change some parameters and press ctrl+shift+enter to refresh the sketch.
If you are already familiar with Hydra, I hope reading this book gives you some insight not only about "how" to make a pattern but also "why" a pattern emerges.
- Textures
- Modulation
- Colors
- Arithmetic
- Motions
- Feedback
- Custom GLSL
- JavaScript Tips
- Performing with Hydra
As described in LICENSE, this repository is under public domain, meaning that all the contents including code snippets can be used freely without any restrictions. Nevertheless, I appreciate it if you cite this book or simply let me know when you write about any ideas developed from this book!