Final Patch Part 1

Apart from some alterations and any additional finishing touches, the patch is complete If i do make further adjustments, that will be written about in another post aptly named part 2. I have the main structure and concept working. The octagonal shapes float around and slowly change colour and rotate until the music is played. With the beatdetector and FFT in the patch, they change various parts of the shape in time with the music.

The patch contains a segment node that create the octagonal shapes. There is a HSV attached to the colour part of the node with both saturation and hue exposed. This is so I can attach a circular spread and an LFO to the hue to create the constant colour shifting effect. The saturation is controlled by one of the values produced from the FFT, increasing and decreasing the saturation through a mapped value. This is so give some intensity to parts of the music.

I have two random spreads on translate X and Y on the transform node attached to the segment node. This, plus two random nodes help generate random positions along with the beat.

In the main patch, I have the beat detector and the FFT nodes. The beat detector changing the position and creating the pulsing effect. I have sub patched what is attached to the FFT as it helps keep it tidy. Within this are all the values produced by the frequencies in music that the FFT reads. These are resampled into a spread count of 10 and then sent into a map to help get useable values I can attach to other nodes to create different effects. I then use the Getslice node to select one of the values and attach it to things like the saturation, glow amount and to control the rotation effect.

To create the rotation, I first set up a multiflipflop node. I then use the less than and greater than nodes to set the values which trigger the toggle. I then sent the outcome to a Getslice node and then through a damper to make sure the transition in rotation is smooth. This I have subpatched to keep the main patch clean.

I have given the patch an idle state. I created a switch where I have attached the value from the FFT that rotates it and an LFO with one on either input. I linked the toggle from the play button on the filestream to this switch and it turns it to the FFT data input. When the play button is pressed, it then goes back to the idle state with the LFO on the other input. Similarly, I have done the same thing with the saturation. It was slightly trickier to do the same with movement.  This so that when it is in a room, something appealing is still visual on the wall and not just dormant. I copied the random spread nodes and sent them both into a transform node. This will then go into a node switch and the play button switches between the idle one that runs on an LFO and the other than runs on the beat detector.

Patch Progession

There have been some developments with the patch but not much. The beat detector works and im able to change the scale of the shapes with the beat to create a pulsing motion. It is also working well with randomly positioning the shapes but I would still like them to act differently to different parts of the music.

I have tried some things out with the FFT node and will continue to experiment based on an example patch. This being one from the Girlpower folder titled Visualisation Equaliser Bars. This is because the bars move with different parts of the music but as one. Im still trying to work out how the patch works and how I can apply it to help my patch. 

This is the first part of the patch with music. The beat detector hits the random nodes that generate random positions for the shapes. 

This is one is once i made a switch that also connects to the beat detector that enlarges the size of the shapes.

I still feel that i have a way to go but am working on figuring out how to get music to do the things i have in mind. 

Development

I have started development on the music visualiser patch. I am having some difficulties, mainly with getting the beat detector to work but im still working on getting the node to function. Im also trying to figure out how to randomise the position of the shapes within the frame and getting them to act individually. I still have to find out other ways to get usable data from music but forums arent proving very useful.

I may explore alternative possibilities for my VVVV project. I had some initial ideas about a clock that changed with the time. So night would have a darker scene and day would be bright. This would also be the same with the weather. I would create a background image that on the far left was night and the far right was day. This would slowly pan over and back again in keeping with the time of day.
The weather could be displayed as an overlay but this would mean figuring out how to apply the weather data to something that changes. For example, if it was raining, it would get a bit darker and have rain falling in the image. The same would be with sun, snow and possibly even high wind.

This is just an initial thought while progressing with the visualiser patch.

Music Visualizer Patch Development

I started to experiment by creating a patch and just trying out different things. I made sure I got the shape I wanted using the segment node and changing it for I got the desired shape. I then set it up so that 4 of them would appear in the renderer. That’s when I added the circular spread to the hue and saturation of the segment and an LFO to simulate the colour change. I also attached this to the rotate part of the transform node to spin the shapes.

This was after I added an effect to give them a glow.

This was after playing around and adding a spread with an LFO to the rotate part of the transform node.

I need to treat each shape like its own slice in order to have it move freely around the area. I will either change the scale of the shape or position with the music.

I then need to do the same thing with the colour. Applying something we learned during a lesson, I will pre-set some values and when the value of the music falls

Blog Post 4 - Clock Follow Up

During this session, we created a functional clock that reacted with real time live data.

We started with some simple text and a background before developing and adding the time.

We then went through an added the time using the appropriate nodes.

It wasn’t too difficult to understand. Although the nodes were a bit tricky, once we went through it it made sense.

As a final task, we were to then add an icon that would change with temperature.

This finally lead to this. The image would change when the temperature number was between preset values. This was above 10 and we set images for between 0 and 10 and under 0.

For our follow up work, we were to create a clock face that functioned using a tutorial.

This was the first patch that created the rendered clock. This was a lot of fun and really got me used to how values work and using the time nodes. I found it simple thanks to the work we did in class. I did struggle to understand why dividing and adding from minutes to hours made it work but I just accepted it.

The only trouble I had with the second part was getting the slices to appear which I figured out in the end. I made sure everything was scaled but I would like to go back and tidy up the Photoshop a bit. It was a bit rushed due to thinking the patch would take a lot longer. 

Blog Post 3 - Follow up and further research

For the follow up task, we were required to follow a tutorial and create a patch that utilises sub-patches and effects. I began by creating the main patch and then planned to put it into a sub-patch.

I would have liked to have cleaned it up a bit but as I was following the tutorial, I tried to keep as close to what was being shown so I could keep up. This was a relatively simple patch and expanded on a lot of things we had done in classes. This created an effect and changing various things would have a different outcome. Then it was to add effects after turning it into a sub-patch.

The first effect I tried was dots. Remembering what was done in class, I turned the render into a texture to connect it to the filter and then another render, through a fullscreen quad.

I tried it with the tunnel filter and this was the outcome.

It was great to experiment with lots of filters and get a feel for the effect and visuals that could be created in VVVV just by creating and manipulating a shape.

For research, I started to look at existing patches that were fairly simple.

(GuiTwo, 2012)

I was able to download this patch but upon looking at it, theres a few nodes I still don’t know so I would like to learn about those in future. This is a shape that reacts to music using a beat detector. I like the geometric and simplistic design but wish it would fill the screen more.

Being a little more ambitious, I found a video of a simple music visualiser that’s being projection mapped onto shapes.

(J.P, 2016)

I feel like its important to realise that even a simple design can be used in quite a complex and effective way and that bigger isn’t always better. It can be simple yet functional.

For my project, I would like to stick to this principle. Create something that’s relatively simple, but functional and visually appealing. In a room it should complement the area and not take it over. Just a bold shape, bright colours and reactive to music.

References

GuiTwo, 2012. cubos_coloridos. [Art].

J.P, T., 2016. Music Visualisation with vvvv. [Art].

Blog Post 2 - Research and Follow up

During this session, we were taught about different types of spread and how they look in VVVV as well as the set slice node. The exercises included a mock restaurant menu that added text and values from an input box with multiple options and creating different shapes and colours with the spread nodes.

For the follow up work, one of the tasks was to create a patch with a circular spread of 15 with a bang that made the circle become bigger or smaller.

Using what we had done before, I found it relatively easy to do. I figured that it would need to switch between two inputs creating two states for the circle to switch between. This is where I added switches to width and height of the circular spread. I manually created the input numbers by right clicking and dragging till I was satisfied with the shape. Then I created the toggle node to set up the bang that would switch between these two inputs and connected them. To finish it off, I added two dampers to create a fluent motion. It would be a good idea to use an lfo to switch between them automatically if I needed to.

This was using a node to generate a random spread of 10 and use the set slice node to select the 3^rd slice. Remembering that 0 is the first slice, I wrote 2 to select the right one. 

I began to look into music visualizers and some existing examples of work.

(lecloneur, 2012)

This is just a still image that was posted but I loved the dimension within it. The variation of colours is very attractive and the idea of moving lines and shapes is appealing. It would be great to see it in action but it would look good if it seemed like the user was travelling into this design by having the shapes expand and come forward.

I then came across a video that reacted with changing levels in music. This included volume and specific parts of the sound.  The first image is with a lot of sound and the second is during the calmer parts of the music.

(DunkingMachine, 2014)

I similar idea and project is done with a group of bubbles instead. The same principle applies with the first being its resting state and the second is with music as live data, changing its form and shape. 

        (Villari, 2013)

These were projects created by VVVV as the program that controls it. For more ideas, I went to look at VJ work. This would involve manual creation of loops using various programmes and manual control.

(Boxcat, 2016)

References

Boxcat, 2015. None. [Art].

Boxcat, 2016. Red Tunnel. [Art].

DunkingMachine, 2014. Generative Project: Audio Visualization - 60 FPS. [Art].

lecloneur, 2012. Visual Music. [Art] (cloneproduction).

Villari, D., 2013. Sound Visualisation. [Art].