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