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NORTH

Live performances or exported movies created with Magic.
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artnik
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Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:33 pm

NORTH

Post by artnik »

My first full visualization piece. The tune is "Golden" by LITTLE GLASS MEN, available on http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Little_Glass_Men/

Visuals are a combination of procedural, audio reactive and hand-painted elements, and uses two ISF modules "Black Cherry Cosmos" and "Fireflies" available on http://www.interactiveshaderformat.com/
Magic
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Re: NORTH

Post by Magic »

Excellent! :)
Terry Payman
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Re: NORTH

Post by Terry Payman »

Hi Nik,
Thanks for the Vimeo 'Follow'. I think you should link here to your cool Vimeo VRLens videos as well. I find them inspiring.

I love your work - it's the first time I have seen Magic videos that strike me as Art rather than VJ Visualisations. They have the same appeal as a visit to an Abstract Art gallery. Mine are like a lightshow to accompany a DJ (I have a secret ambition to be a VJ)

Some thoughts on "North", IMHO

- Inspiring. Beautifully imagined and realised.

- I love the idea of using waveforms as horizon and sky. I have mainly used waveforms as abstract shapes - now I'm inspired to try sculptural, architectual and landscape applications too.

- The scene changes at 1'04'' and 2'14'' are awesome - by far the best I have seen I have seen in their dramatic impact.

- Largely I experienced an attractive and effective illusion of reflections in the water, which is my perception of your artistic objective.

However, there were two cases where I felt the illiusion was significantly impared. The beautifully stylised "startrail" sky is not reflected below the waterline as it must be to preserve the illusion. The same reflection is needed for the yellow starfield fading in at 1'25'' (and ideally some fading or softening of the reflections). I think feeding in one of your drawn images - such as a comet - to the Magic Starfield would fit better within the style of the scene than a simple circle. I'm inspired to try some such ideas myself.

Apologies if I have mis-read your intentions. I'm inspired by your work, and would welcome any of your observations or suggestions regarding mine.

Regards,
Terry
artnik
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Re: NORTH

Post by artnik »

Thanks Terry! I literally just got back from a conversation at the cafe about how impossible it is to ever actually get decent critical feedback on artwork. I appreciate you proving me wrong. :-)

I hear you on the reflections. Part of the problem I was having is that my rig isn't all that beefy (2011 iMac), and I was getting some frame rate drops. I was targeting a minimum of 30 FPS, but since the transitions are handled via the playlist, some of those were dropping to 15FPS in the cross fades. It was also a tradeoff in balancing the abstraction with realism. It's as much about hinting as depicting.

I've just started in with MAGIC about 2 months ago, and this is the first thing I felt was good enough to share. I originally picked it up for a mirror box kaleidoscope project I have on the go – looking for a way to use video to drive the mirror boxes. How long have you been using the app?

I really appreciated your entry into the contest. The final scene showing the waveforms was really helpful in learning and a very clever way of showcasing the functionality.

At the start of "Tomorrow Never Comes" did you use the Starfield to mask out another layer to texture the stars? I dig it.

Cheers,
nik
Terry Payman
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Re: NORTH

Post by Terry Payman »

Glad my comments were appreciated Nik - the timing of your cafe conversation is spooky - I think we are somehow linked, or there's a Divine suggestion that we would both benefit greatly if we were.

I hear you on FPS - I'm often at the limit because for real-time projects I tend to refine my scenes until FPS just holds up.

However, if you don't need real-time interaction, as when making a video to accompany a pre-recorded track, Magic's frame rate does not matter.

Magic records the video slowly, a frame at a time, taking as long as it needs for each frame. It's like a stop-frame animation.
The video will play at full speed on adequate equipment (perhaps not on the machine that made it!). You could even render a UHD video that plays at 60 FPS with your present machine - but it might take all night for a three-minute run time!

When designing the video you can usefully work at a lower resolution than you want for final rendered output, and get a much higher framerate. I tend to stick to 1280x720 during design, then render the final version at 1920x1080.
For complex scenes I sometimes drop to 640x360 during design to maintain FPS. More often I just power-off certain elements of the scene so those I'm actively adjusting run at full speed.

Work at the frame rate you wish to use for display. 60 FPS is great, and looks much smoother on an adequate monitor. Changing frame rate fundamentally affects any module like Trails that uses a frame buffer, so keep frame rate the same during design as you want for final output.

Note - An additional limitation to final resolution is GPU memory, and this also limits the size of project that can be pre-loaded to guarantee smooth transitions between scenes when playing in real-time.

re "Tomorrow Never Comes":
It slows down to 5 FPS on some scenes when playing real-time, even at 1280x720.

Thanks re the start. There, and in many other places, I feed waveform-based images into the input of the Starfield. They are replicated in the same way as the circles. You can feed anything in, but an image with a black surround or background works best as a Starfield input IMO. It's often useful to use LumaKey (Add>Effects2D>LumaKey) between your image and the Starfield's input. Otherwise some "Stars" get obscured by the black edges of the input scene.

As far as I recall the Mask module was not available when I worked on TNC. In some cases I had to arrange black planes in 3D space to obscure unwanted elements of an input image.

Sorry if the above isn't clear. Right now I'm in a hurry as I have clients waiting for photographs. ( You can see some examples of my photography on my website http://www.terrypayman.com/ )

Cheers,
Terry
artnik
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Re: NORTH

Post by artnik »

That's good to know about the render to movie. I was watching the FPS counter jump around wildly, and assumed that was what the output was going to reflect.

The more I play with this app, the more I appreciate how well programmed and thought out it is – if I go to look for a feature, or get concerned about something like synching across scenes, I tend to find it's been addressed already. :-)

Well, on to the next project. I love the work of Scott Draves (coder of Electric Sheep). His Spotworks DVD (http://scottdraves.com/dvd.html) is what got me interested in visualization originally. He does a few loops with Ernst Haeckel's "Kunstformen der Natur" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur) and I've always wanted to work with that imagery. Currently, I'm sitting here cropping out elements like a fiend.

Cheers,
nik
Terry Payman
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Re: NORTH

Post by Terry Payman »

artnik wrote:...The more I play with this app, the more I appreciate how well programmed and thought out it is – if I go to look for a feature ... I tend to find it's been addressed already. :-)
I agree :-)

Best wishes for your new project. I didn't know the work of Scott Draves. The work on his website is indeed inspirational - thanks for the link.

Cheers,
Terry
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