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Questions about music videos

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Morris
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:21 pm

Questions about music videos

Post by Morris »

Hi,

a few days ago I downloaded the demo of Magic Music Visuals and played around with its features.

My goal is to create Music Videos like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoFfgJbkl-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xrVAqzJzfI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJa6zmb5PCY

So my questions are:
- How are these types of music videos called?
- Is it possible to create this kind of music videos in Magic Music Visuals and, if yes,
- are there any tutorials how to do this with Magic?

Thank you and kind regards

Morris
perzon
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:38 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by perzon »

Morris,

This is very easy to do in Magic Music and you will be able to do everything you see in the provided clips.
There are tutorials available on Youtube that will help get you adjusted to the interface.
Magic has the ability to export your creations so you can just apply an audio track to your project and away you go.
Morris
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:21 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by Morris »

Thank you very much for your answer.

I have watched many tutorial videos for Magic, but it doesn't do much for my case.
Are there any tutorials which fit my goals?

I don't get how to do animations like in this vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoFfgJbkl-o with magic
(e.g. moving trees, the shining sword etc).

And how are these types of music videos called? Do they have a special name?

Thank you and kind regards
artnik
Posts: 268
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:33 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by artnik »

Hey Morris,

There's no special name for those kinds of videos. None that I've ever heard anyway.

Magic is more like an app for putting assets together to make scenes, rather than something you use to create graphics. If you want to make moving trees, you're going to have to learn to create and animate them outside of Magic, and import them into your scenes.

Alternately, you're going to have to come up with a way to create parts of trees, like trunk, branches, etc and import those separately into Magic to animate them. Keep in mind that Magic, by itself, doesn't really have any painting or drawing functionality, and its animation capability (without custom programmed modules) is limited to scaling, rotating, translating, and colour/transparency effects. Think of Magic as a tool to composite existing elements into scenes, not a place to create those elements.

Does that make sense?

If you are looking for tutorials about how to make and animate trees in Magic, you're not going to find any that specific. But drawing and animating trees in other programs, for import into Magic, there's probably lots.

Until you learn the basics in Magic, it's tough to answer general questions like yours. You're basically asking how to use the software, which involves a ton of different techniques specific to the software, and a general understanding of computer graphics. When posting here, people are normally looking for answers to very specific questions, and those tend to get the most response because people here are great problem-solvers, but they're not really up for teaching the general program.
Morris
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:21 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by Morris »

Hey Artnik,

thank you for your reply.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. I know that magic is not a designing or graphic tool and I am also aware of the fact that you can't draw trees or other things in magic. I already have some artworks which I imported in the Magic Demo. It's more about tutorials regarding the light effects and snow flakes (with the starfield geometry for example). Or about moving the assets and not creating them in magic. That is the reason why I added the YT links so you can better understand what my goals are. The most tutorials I have seen are about the functionality of the software (which is really hands on imo) and the modules itself. But they are often used in another context, let's say in creating 'pure' visualized videos if you want or using magic for live performances.

I hope you can now better understand what my goal is.
Sadler
Posts: 1139
Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:10 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by Sadler »

As others have said most of the elements in the examples you provide are simple to achieve and comes down to creative choices. One aspect (the quivering branches) is perhaps not so intuitive as it requires moving the pivot point to the base of the branch, so here's a quick tut to achieve that.
basic_animation.png
basic_animation.png (67.03 KiB) Viewed 5606 times
I recommend moving on from the demo and trust that Magic can do what you want and way more.
artnik
Posts: 268
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:33 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by artnik »

Hey Morris,

Thanks for the clarification. Much more specific.

Keeping once again to that tree and sword video. Breaking it down, the light and snowflakes are both done with particle systems, and can't be replicated with just Magic. The snowflakes are exhibiting individual paths (they aren't just moving in straight lines) so the built-in Starfield effect won't reproduce it. If you take a close look at the light trails around the sword, you can see a kick in the loop which the artists has minimized by creating a seamless loop with a fade in and out, overlapping the beginning and end of the animation.

If you were to do these two effects, you would still be looking at creating those elements outside of Magic and bringing them in to composite them into the final scene. Using Blender to put the scene together is relatively easy, but creating the individual elements is where the artistry (and complexity) lies. :-)

Here's some quick technique tutorials that may help you. Once again, these are for other programs, and the final output would be imported as video loops:
When looking for tutorials, take a good look at the example of what you want to create, break it down into each separate effect, and search for tutorials for each element. :-)

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the snow effect. It's possible to get relative motion between individual flakes with Magic if you use use multiple Starfields. It's not perfect, but using some SIN modifiers, with different offsets to rotate multiple instances of the Starfield works. I used three here. Looks alright. (I'd upload a .Magic file, but I'm at work and only have access to the demo.) :-)
wibbly_snow.png
wibbly_snow.png (78.4 KiB) Viewed 5593 times
artnik
Posts: 268
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:33 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by artnik »

And here's a start on an idea to do the light trail lights around the sword. (Very rough).
Sword_lights.png
Sword_lights.png (57 KiB) Viewed 5592 times
Lighttrails_render.png
Lighttrails_render.png (5.26 KiB) Viewed 5592 times
Once again, layering multiple versions with different settings (y-axis rotation, Starfield speed, etc) will add some more randomness in the effect.
perzon
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:38 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by perzon »

The more I play the more ways I find to do things.
Here is a starfield without the starfield module. If you remove the last trails module and slow the speed of the other one it should be a flickery effect like in those music videos.
Attachments
No Star Field
No Star Field
no-starfield.PNG (106.52 KiB) Viewed 5580 times
Morris
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:21 pm

Re: Questions about music videos

Post by Morris »

Hey folks,

thank you very much for sharing your ideas. This helps me a lot! :)

I will watch the videos and retry your screens asap.

The quivering-branches-module from Sadler I have already rebuilded and works fine ;)
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