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MIDI-Piano - advanced version

Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:00 pm
by TKS
I like Magics included "MIDI-Piano" example a lot, so I decided to use it as base for a more realistic piano visualization.

I wanted to visualize all 4 instruments groups, so right/left are the drums, top is the bass, and the piano is of course the playing piano itself.
I didn't find anything usable for the vocals, so I decided to use a human face.
Looks kinda weird, but it's just a prove of concept that my idea actually works. Some more fine-tuning is needed obviously.
Expect more of this in the future :mrgreen:


Re: MIDI-Piano - advanced version

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 12:55 pm
by skarabee
Nice one. I suspect some DAZ here :)
Did you use an animated model or a previously rendered video file for the vocal?

Re: MIDI-Piano - advanced version

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 1:40 pm
by TKS
skarabee wrote:Nice one. I suspect some DAZ here :)
Yep :P
Did you use an animated model or a previously rendered video file for the vocal?
Neither (I first did it with a rendered video file, though...).

How it was done:
- use a standard DAZ model (Victoria here) and apply makeup to taste
- position it to the camera the way you need/like
- create an animation:
  • - select suitable length (1 sec aka 30 frames here)
    - change mouth shape via "Posing" so it opens during those 30 frames. First frame is mouth fully closed, last one is mouth fully opened.
    - render animation, but chose "Image Series" instead of "Movie". A fast GPU helps here...
- you'll end up with 30 numbered .jpg images which you can add to Magic via the JpegFolder module
- make the index of the JpegFolder module dependent to the loudness of the vocals and tune Scale and Smooth and Hold until it looks halfway right

Using single image files gives you much more control over the animation than a video file. The hard thing was to figure out the basics, once you have the main problems solved via trial and error the rest is actually quite simple.

Next step for me will be different mouth-shapes to represent the different "Aah", "Ouh" and whatever vowels. And show the complete head of the singer (needs way more rendering time).

But that'll be a future project...