Iron Man UI: complete!!!!!

The Iron Man UI inspired visualization is complete!  You can check out the complete video above which is accompanied by my latest single, Renewal, which is available on CDBaby, Amazon, and iTunes!

Now to talk about some of the movement of the visualization through space.  All of the different visual elements are linked to a master node which can move the complete structure through space.  You'll notice this motion occurs for the first time around the 0:30 mark.

I put different dampening ratios on all the different parts so everything moves to a new location but not all at the same time.  This was mainly to create more visual interest in the movement.

You'll notice in the image above I've circled in red the two dials which control how or when a global motion will occur. This is one area I'm looking to explore much further in future visualizations but I'll describe that in just a bit.  For this, a threshold and timer determine when the entire structure moves and both of these variables are determined by audio parameters.  Putting controls in place allows you to override or help make this event happen to some extent. 

The image above shows the controls I've put in place for this visualization.  I've elected to keep them very simple on this one.  Some visualizations I create have very complex controls with lots of presets.  It often depends on the client and the performance as to how much flexibility they would like.  Here is an example of a more complex setup.

Each visual element I create often has numerous components that can be scripted to the UI control in Max/MSP.  I typically create presets which allow you to quickly move through lots of complex settings.  This is very similar to lighting and audio control boards you would find in live performance venues.  Technicians will dial in lighting and sound settings, create cues or presets, and build all of the events during rehearsals.  When the big performance happens, it's a much simpler process of moving through presets or cues at the correct timings.  My system mimics this procedure.  All of these controls/presets can also be further simplified for a mobile interface.  You can sit in the audience and run the entire visualization from your smartphone if you wanted to.

Back to the Iron Man UI controls, I have a hue shifter so you can shift the hue on all of the visuals from red to green or blue.  Bloom intensity lets you control how much bloom is applied.  There is a subtle adjustment on this which reacts to the amplitude of the audio.  This control allows for larger changes with the effect.  Height controls how much up and down motion the entire structure will move.  Setting this to 0 keeps everything at the default height.  Increasing this will expose the entire structure to an audio parameter which moves everything up or down.

As mentioned in previous postings, everything is driven by the audio.  The additional controls just allow for greater motions or an overarching control on some of these audio driven systems.  The computer handles all the minute analysis details and movement while you get to make the broad sweeping changes.

I noted earlier about future explorations in my visualizations and where I'm looking to go next.  Music has lots of patterns, themes, and motifs that often build on each other and develop.  I want to explore these further within the realm of video game combos.  Lots of video games utilize a system of combos.  Typically someone might button mash or go through a sequence of buttons a bunch of times to create a 25 hit combo for example in a fighting game.  RPG's, platformers, and other genres of video games have utilized similar concepts as well. Now what if musical structures could create their own combos within a music visualization system? That exploration could easily take another 2 years and another Master's degree to investigate.  In my next project, I'll at least begin to scratch the surface of combining those principals and we'll see what happens.

This is also my last time working with Unity 3.5.  Going forward, I will be migrating all work to Unity 5.0.  Stay tuned for the next visualization.  I also have some small tangential explorations from this visualization I'll post about too!  Can't wait to share my next developments.  For now, I hope you enjoyed this one.

Iron Man UI: Almost there.... plus a new song called "Renewal"

It's been a couple weeks since I last posted anything about this project.  It's almost done.  I have a bunch of additions.  Last time I mentioned the need for one big unifying piece to help tie all the separate elements.  Here is a quick image of what that looks like:

This consists of a bulls eye element in the middle which can rotate independently from the rest of the parts.  Since there is so much other movement going on in the visualization, I elected to keep this element completely static.  To represent the music, it has a texture ring which emanates outwards exposing parts of the complete design.   The tutorial in my previous post demonstrates how to do this effect.

Finally, I added a few arcs that rise and sink around the central column.

There are a few more finishing touches like showing how this whole thing moves through space which I'll get to in my next post.

I got a bit side tracked because I had to compose a new piece of music for this animation. The piece of music is all finished and should go live later this week.  For now, you can check out a snippet of it in this video.  It's called "Renewal"

Much more awesomeness to come so stay tuned....

Ironman UI: Big updates with lots of new stuff!!!

I've got a bunch of new work to show for my Iron Man inspired music visualization HUD.  95% of the elements are place.  Here's a breakdown of what's new including a video showing everything in action.

Frequency meters now change in brightness based on their channel's amplitude.  Its much easier to see this animated, but here is a quick image showing what I mean.

Notice how the bands in the 300 range are brighter than the bands in the 100 or 600 range.  This is a nice indication of that the amplitude is greater for that particular frequency range.  You'll notice not all the bands are animating.  Right now I have each channel visualizing a different frequency range.  In a live setting with various microphones, the effect will look more like this.

This would be 8 frequency ranges per channel.

In the center, I've got a few standard equalizer bars.  Each one representing a different frequency range or microphone.

The outer ring that consists of many small slivers is a really cool part to all of this.  I wanted to take the traditional equalizer bar graphs that are typically associated with music visualizations and combine them with particle trails which are another common staple.  The beauty of particles and particle trails is that they show history.  As the particle ages, it fades away, changes color, flies off in some direction based on turbulence fields or some other particle system effector.  This outer ring combines both of these elements into one.

In this image, the light starts on the far left and moves in an arc to the right.  It's currently tied to highest frequency range so only high pitched singing or cymbal hits will affect it.  As the left side reacts to the music, each subsequent segment responds to the segment preceding it.  This sets up a really cool chain reaction where you can watch the history of high-pitched cymbal hits. It takes about 6 seconds before this history vanishes.  All of this is procedurally generated so you can control which objects get copied, how many, their overall position in the space, scale variation, color.....well the list goes on.  Here is close up of that arc band.

All of these different elements are actually constructed/scripted in such a way that they can be easily modified or made to look different from their original intentions.  I try to build in this flexibility so I can repurpose some parts in other visualizations or reuse them in this visualizatio.

To conclude all this, I've got a short video here.  Not sure why I'm on a jazz kick lately but the visuals are reacting to another composition I've started working on today.  Enjoy!

We're getting into the home stretch now.  I need to balance all of these elements a bit better, separate them some more on the Y-axis and get a background in place.  Also there is one big unifying piece that needs to be put into place.  Looking to wrap this up in the next week. Stay tuned...

Iron Man UI: First video is up!

So I know its been a bit longer than expected since my last update but I finally have a video to show some work in progress!!!  Check it out here on Youtube:

There are a lot of things going on here and a lot that still needs work.  I'll go over a bunch of the parts right now.

Elements in place right now:
- 64 band frequency analyzer.  There are pics of this in my previous post.  8 different channels with each denoted by the 100 series numbers and each channel with 8 different frequency bands
- On the opposite side, there is a large meter and a colored triangle.  This represents the overall amplitude of all 8 channels combined.  The triangle gets brighter and goes from green to red based on the amp.
-  Moving towards the center, I'm still playing around with different concepts here.  I have three small rings that spin around when a large enough change happens on the amplitude.  Each ring represents a different frequency bin.  In this example, they are tied to the 3 highest bins, so only cymbal hits or high pitches will really cause them to light up and spin.
- There are three larger rings that don't spin but light up to varying degrees.  I'm not as keen on these right now.  They still need some work.  Here's a pic showing the two types of rings side-by-side

Finally, all meters have a brightness control that adjusts to the amplitude of its respective channel.  You can really see this effect at the beginning and end of the song.  Greater dynamic variation in the music will cause this to be more pronounced.  Live microphone audio usually helps too.

On top of all this, each element can be re-mapped on the fly to different frequency bins, or they can be driven by different microphone inputs.  Here's the control interface:

You can even have a particular element driven by multiple different frequency bins or microphone inputs.  The grid/board in my UI allows you to pick any input with a click of the corresponding square. You can add, subtract, and remap 8 audio inputs to 8 unique channels.

There's still a lot more to come.  All of these elements currently sit around the same space in the Y-axis.  They are offset a bit but there is much more to explore here.  Also, I need to get the central blocks moving and reacting to the music.  After all that is complete, we'll get a background in there and start moving this entire structure around.  Lots more to come.

Iron Man UI: visualization structure - a fine balance

I want to start out with this really great clip and give a shout out to Stefan Surmabojov for putting together these awesome After Effects tutorials.  These have been invaluable in helping deconstruct this work and helping me formulate a system that will work to visualize music in this type of thematic style. 

http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/iron-man-interface-battle-widget-parts-3-4-and-5--ae-21545

What's great about the video above is that you can see all the unique parts that make up this HUD.   There is often a fine balance that I have to strike when building music visualizations.  I strive to have everything or as many elements as possible react to the audio.  Some visuals react more abruptly while others may react more subtly.  The goal being that the sum of all the parts will unite and create one awesome looking visualization!  You may not notice the fine details on all the different parts, but for me, that just gives the visualization more depth.  When someone watches it again some day, they may notice something new or some other element reacting to the music they hadn't seen before.  A good painting can draw you into a new world and keep you exploring and discovering new parts or details in the background.  I'm striving for that very same goal in my music visualizations.  The challenge is to strike a balance between all of these elements to make sure I don't just create visual noise or overload the viewer with too many different components competing for the viewer's attention.  

I haven't finalized my structural intent, but I have begun to narrow down some thoughts including using rings stacked on top of each other similar to how all the Iron Man HUD components stack on top of each other to create depth for a 3D effect.  Larger panels/elements will react to lower frequencies while finer, more intricate components will react to higher frequencies.  One element I really liked was the outward projecting meters indicated here:

 

I've started my own pass on these here although they are bit larger.  There are 64 bands/meters currently in my version.  8 audio channels and 8 frequency bins per channel.  I've got a couple screen shots from Unity below. 

I will probably bring these in closer to the center stack indicated by the other rings in the lower left corners of the images.   I'll try to get some early videos of how all this looks in the next day or two.

I've got a sketch of some ideas I've started playing around with including how the entire stack will move.  I'll go into a bit more of this concept in a later posting but there is a cool way to build a visualization and then use a global movement on all the parts to indicate large changes in music.  These changes can be themes, motifs, the chorus or refrain in a song for example.  More to come on all this soon!

Pike & Rose Audio Visual Arts (PRAVA) Festival

Went to PRAVA this weekend to check out their audio/visual installations and performances.  Really great stuff.  It was an excellent venue and the works on display were really cool.  I've got some images and a link for more info.  http://www.pravafest.org/