Hey guys... Lets make a Competition !

[TanookiMonk]

Ok i was looking at those project example built in with magic ! While those are very important to learn magic, i find there is no "Real" Eye Candy that can show the power of magic. So i think that we could make some great ones that Eric could built in with magic ! What do you think Eric and you guys ?

So if you are interested, here are the rules that we could start with :

Built in module only (No Isf, No ffgl, No Glsl)
No Kaleidoscope as a final module (Can be integrated but no pure and only kaleidoscope)
No Starfield as a final module (Can be integrated but no pure and only starfield)
No sound source needed as we would want a newbie to open those example and look up those great scene fast
Please try to show what the engine is capable of !

[Magic]

I think it sounds good! Admittedly I don't put as much time into the sample projects as I should, so I would be happy to include any great new projects with Magic. I will give credit to the author and also offer a free Magic Performer license, and maybe some other prizes too if I can think of any good ones .

Let me also propose a separate but related competition: I've been looking to replace the big image on the Magic home page (https://magicmusicvisuals.com) with a promotional video. If someone makes a really great one I will put it there and I will also offer a bigger prize including a cash payment of at least $250 USD (I'll pay more if it is truly outstanding). It should be around one minute long and it needs to have great music too (with no licensing issues). I'll keep the competition open for two months or so, but I reserve the right to declare no winner . Feel free to post here to ask any questions.

[TanookiMonk]

I think it sounds good! Admittedly I don't put as much time into the sample projects as I should, so I would be happy to include any great new projects with Magic. I will give credit to the author and also offer a free Magic Performer license, and maybe some other prizes too if I can think of any good ones .

Let me also propose a separate but related competition: I've been looking to replace the big image on the Magic home page (https://magicmusicvisuals.com) with a promotional video. If someone makes a really great one I will put it there and I will also offer a bigger prize including a cash payment of at least $250 USD (I'll pay more if it is truly outstanding). It should be around one minute long and it needs to have great music too (with no licensing issues). I'll keep the competition open for two months or so, but I reserve the right to declare no winner . Feel free to post here to ask any questions.

This is just too awesome !! Can a scene be choosed in both competition ?

[spacedoctor]

Cool, great ideas!

[Magic]

Can a scene be choosed in both competition ?

Sure . But for the video, I would hope that it has more than one scene -- maybe 3 or 4.

[TanookiMonk]

Ok so here is one entry right there . Everything was made within magic. I even recreated real molecular structure wich give a more detailed touch to it !

There is some things i could adjust but this can give a good idea of where i wanted to go with this. Maybe i will upload a new version later... will see !

I uploaded the magic file in attachment. So hope this could help somebody out there !

[Magic]

Wow that's very nice! The only thing is that it runs kind of slowly on my PC (around 35 fps), which is supposedly a fast machine. Not sure why but I'll have a closer look.

[TanookiMonk]

There is definitely something fishy right there because i just tried it on my girlfriend's computer wich is a Athlon X2 255 with 4g of ram and embedded graphics. And it run at about 50 fps !

[TanookiMonk]

Hey Eric,

Earlier you said : "It should be around one minute long and it needs to have great music too (with no licensing issues)."

So this is another thing we should look deeper. What kind of music type you would like ? Something Modern ? Uplifting ? Deep ? Hard ?

i was making music today so i just made a little song in 1 hour with chiptune/lofi element that could fit in the hard category. Keep in mind that this is nowhere near from being finished but this could give you an idea of where you want to go with this !

https://soundcloud.com/qitano/magic-mus ... -1/s-wiaws

[Magic]

That's pretty good! The length is perfect. And the voice at the end is cool .

I don't really care too much about exactly what genre the music is. The two most important things are that it sounds professional and that the beat stands out really well in the visuals.

If more than one person makes a really great video, perhaps what I can do is edit them together so there are examples with different music. In that case I would consider multiple winners .

So I think just make whatever you like, because that way it will be the best.

[Fractal Grinder]

So for your competition Eric I have a few questions because im super interested:

All we need is a finished Mp4 or other video file or do you want a project file?

Can we submit multiple entries?

When is the deadline?

Do we have to host the file somewhere where it can play or can we just send you the full quality uncompressed file?

[Magic]

The main thing I need is the project file, but of course I also need any supporting assets (audio files, images, models, etc.). You can easily collect these all into one place using the File > Collect Assets command.

I don't need the exported .mp4 because I will render it myself. This way you don't need to send me a big video file, and also I'll be able to re-render it at higher resolution in the future (for example, 4K).

All the project files I like will be included as sample projects in future versions of Magic. This includes the project file for the video on the web site home page, if one is good enough for that. All the supporting assets will be included also, so that's why they have to be original or at least public domain.

Yes, you can submit multiple entries. Any project file that gets used as a sample project will result in a free product key for the author. Any project file that gets used in the home page video will result in the minimum $250 cash prize also. I will also credit the author(s) publicly on the web site, with a link if they want.

As I've said before though, I reserve the right to choose none at all for the home page video if I feel they aren't good enough for that .

I will also test any project files to make sure they run at least at 30fps in fullscreen mode on my 13" MacBook Pro (Mid-2012), which I consider to be a "medium-level" system (2.5 Ghz Intel Core i5, Intel HD Graphics 4000).

The deadline will be the Sunday after New Year's Day (January 3).

Lemme know if you have any other questions! And feel free to post works-in-progress in this topic if you want feedback.

[TanookiMonk]

Thanks to you guys (Eric and Sadler) We talk about the "Z-Fighting" problem earlier (See : viewtopic.php?f=2&t=557)

So i want to share a good cube example for shiping with magic so here is what i did :

[Sadler]

Cubes look great - mesmerising. If I might suggest, with Random on each RGB the colours change so quickly they lose saturation - I guess due to persistence of vision or because all three RGB values rarely converge at high saturation values. If you did want to slow down the colour change and increase saturation you could replace the RGB module with an HSB module with Random on Hue, a Hold modifier to control the speed and an offset to control the range.

hsb.png (15.76 KiB) Viewed 160688 times

Anyway, just a suggestion!

[Magic]

So i want to share a good cube example for shiping with magic so here is what i did :

Very cool! I think I agree with Sadler that a Hold modifier would make the random colors a bit less dizzying (Hold 0.2 looks good to me), but really it's just a matter of preference. Overall, still a great job

[jsljustin]

Hi Eric,

do we post a link to a video here? As I have a video to an original song I did recently as a promo for my latest CD. The song and video is quite long actually, around 6 minutes, but there are 3 sections in it (a few minutes worth) that feature magic visuals quite heavily. Should I post it here? I can also edit it if there are sections you like better than others for your promo idea.

Edit - The reason I am asking this question again (I just read an earlier post of yours after posting originally) is that my magic project files and music assets are quite small in size, but then when you add all the other video layers and compositing elements, the project size is in the GB range, so not really practical to upload here.. and then of course you may or may not have issues with syncing it all up, as I put a lot of work into getting everything synced, not something that can just be handed over and easily managed.. the video I did took many months of hard work, compositing, editing and rendering to complete..

Thanks.
Justin

[Magic]

Hey Justin, you can post a link to the video now if you want (so people can give you feedback), but eventually -- before January 3 -- I would need you to send me all the assets. I need to be able to render the final video myself, so that I can do it at very high quality using the .png export option, as well as add titles, change the resolution/length, etc.

However, I'd strongly prefer it if projects didn't require a lot of supplemental assets, because I do want to include them in the Magic release, and I can't have the file sizes be too big. In fact, it would be best if all the assets weren't bigger than a few MB total.

One other reason I need your project file is to see how fast it runs. I want it to run at 30-60 fps on a modest computer so that most people will be able to use it.

[Derek Gee]

Not sure if this will be useful or not, it's just a simple text effect demo that uses a sample of an instrumental hip hop track I wrote many years ago (so there won't be any copyright issues). The file contains 5 basic scenes and a 7 scene playlist that's time synced to transition with the music track... and that's about it really. I chose to use the Text Options because they are a recent addition to Magic... I also kept it pretty simple just to show some basic functions to the newcomers

Zip File Download

[jsljustin]

Ok Eric thanks..

I thought part 2 of this comp was for a promotional video... so assets are still needed for that? I realise you want to re-render, but unfortunately my videos are all at 25fps (as we use PAL standard here) so I don't imagine you are going to have a good time converting them to 30fps, unless you have something like Twixtor..

I'd like to submit a video still, but I am not sure, as I didn't just use magic in them, but used magic as complementary effects in them, so they do have a lot of assets outside of magic, as well as chroma-keying and so forth..

[Magic]

I really want people to be able to see how the video is made. So that's why I need the project file. And the project should be quickly downloadable -- no more than a few MB including all the supplemental files. Everything will eventually be included in the main Magic download.

An easy way to keep the size small is to create most of the video using Magic only. It would also help to keep the focus on Magic, which is the main point. Know what I mean?