Originally by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv, I was able to run “Text Rain” in Processing. It was my first time back to Processing in a while, but I was able to figure it out after some help and practice. I simple indexed the camera’s pixels and went about it the brightness() way. Fairly reliable and quite a lot of fun getting it going. I think a performance of my lip-singing my favorite song is in order for a finished piece.

Text Rain – Re Do from Nathan Trevino on Vimeo.

My code is here.

//Nathan Trevino 2013
//Text Rain re-do. Original by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv 1999
//Processing 2.0b7 by Nathan Trevino
//Special thanks to the processing example codes (website) as well as Golan Levin

//=============================================
import processing.video.*;
Capture camera;

float fallGravity = 1;
float fallStart = 0;

int threshold = 100;
Rain WordLetters[];
int myLetters;


//==============================================

void setup() {

  //going with a larger size but am giving up speed.
  size(640, 480);



  camera = new Capture(this, width, height);
  camera.start();     



  String wordString = "For all the things he could lose he lost them all";

  myLetters = wordString.length();
  WordLetters = new Rain[myLetters];
  for (int i = 0; i < myLetters; i++) {
    char a = wordString.charAt(i);
    float x = width * ((float)(i+1)/(myLetters+1));
    float y = fallStart;
    WordLetters[i] = new Rain(a, x, y);
  }

}

//==============================================


void draw() {
  if (camera.available() == true) {
    camera.read();
    camera.loadPixels();

    //Puts the video where it should be... top left corner beginning.
    image(camera, 0, 0);

    for (int i = 0; i < myLetters; i++) {
      WordLetters[i].update();
      WordLetters[i].draw();
    }
  }
}

//===================================
//simple key pressed fuction to start over the Rain

void keyPressed()
{
  if (key == CODED) {
    if (keyCode == ' ') {
      for (int i=0; i < myLetters; i++) {
        WordLetters[i].reset();
      }
    }
  }
}


//=============================================
class Rain {
  // This conains a single letter of the words of the entire string poem
  // They fall as "individuals" and have their own position (x,y) and character (char)

  char a;
  float x;
  float y;

  Rain (char aa, float xx, float yy)
  {
    a = aa;
    x = xx;
    y = yy;
  }

  //=============================================
  void update() {
    
    //IMPORTANT NOTE!
    // THE TEXT RAIN WORKS WITH A WHITE BACKGROUND AND THE DARK AREAS 
    // MOVE THE TEXT

    // Updates the paramaters of Rain
    // had some problems here for the pixel index, but a peek at Golan's code helped

    int index = width*(int)y;
    index = constrain (index, 0, width*height-1);

    // Grayscale starts here. Range is defined here.
    int thresholdGive = 4;
    int thresholdUpper = threshold + thresholdGive;
    int thresholdBottom = threshold - thresholdGive;


    //find pixel colors and make it into brighness (much like alpha channeling video
    // or images in Adobe photoshop or AE)

    float pBright = brightness(camera.pixels[index]);

    if (pBright > thresholdUpper) {
      y += fallGravity;
    } 
    else {
      while ( (y > fallStart) && (pBright < thresholdBottom)) {
        y -= fallGravity;
        index = width*(int)y + (int)x;
        index = constrain (index, 0, width*height-1);
        pBright = brightness(camera.pixels[index]);
      }
    }

    if ((y >= height) || (y < fallStart)) {
      y = fallStart;
    }
  }

  //============================
  void reset() {
    y = fallStart;
  }

  //=======================================

  void draw() {

    // Here I also couldn't really see my letters that well so I
    // used Golan's "drop shadow" idea and some crazy random colors for funzies

    fill (random(255), random(255), random(255));
    text (""+a, x+1, y+1);
    text (""+a, x-1, y+1); 
    text (""+a, x+1, y-1); 
    text (""+a, x-1, y-1); 
    fill(255, 255, 255);
    text (""+a, x, y);
  }
}