Anim8or Community

Hello there,
I've been venturing into area of procedural (scripted) animation recently. This time it's the idea that I've mentioned some time ago - audio visualization:


The procedure to extract frequency bands from the music is quite simple:

1. Get Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ + LADSPA plugins pack http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugins , Wavosaur http://www.wavosaur.com/download.php , Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v6.4.5.html
2. Open your audio (preferably mono downmix or a single channel)
3. Filter -> GLAME Bandpass Filter with parameters: a, a/10, 10
where a = frequency of the required band (for example 2000, 200, 10)
3. Filter -> Amplify - sound should be as loud as possible but the best the value should be equal for all channels/passes
4. Filter -> Diode Processor filter with value 1
5. Filter -> Waveshaper (acts like an expander making quiter sounds more quiet and louder more loud and beats more 'visible') - 1.2-2.2 should be ok
6. Filter -> Comb Filter with: Band separation = 100-300 and high-ish feedback = 0.95-0.99 - this is the 'smoothnes' or 'slowness' of the curve following the beats
7. Save the file and open in Wavosaur
8. Process -> Resample - enter Frequency equal to FPS of your animation (better not to use fractional framerates), with Apply interpolation = linear or spline
9. File -> Export -> Text
10. Open in Notepad++
11. Record a macro for a single line where you add '"$arr.push(' at the start of line, ');"' at the and and move to the next line and beginning (use keyboard only)
12. Repeat until the end of the file
13. Copy to appropriate location in the *.an8 file
14. Repeat for other channels/frequencies bands to create more audio lists (if you wish/that's required) - it's better to repeat exactly all values entered and change only the ones from step 3.

A hint: 'The best frequencies lie at exponentical curve. i.e I've used 125, 250, 500, 1k, 2k, 4k, 8k (7,2k to be accurate as the filter didn't allow me to enter 8k)'
Have a look here for such frequency lists: http://sound.westhost.com/project63.htm

Currently I'm working on tool to automate the process of injecting the processed audio lists into appropriate morphs' locations in *.an8 file, so that you could just create the *.an8 template and audio lists and using graphical tool inject them automatically without need for manual text processing.

Funny bouncing hair

Here's my quick review

I like the last picture the most, however when I read about 'mixing 2d with 3d' I was expecting to see something else from what where showcased in your video - something like that: - a skeletal or hierarchical animation of planar objects in 3d space. I wonder how that would look when done in Anim8or - I've never tried that so far

Render might not entirely be looking like a still life but it's just 3d dress design.
Dress modelled in Anim8or (human model is just a stock, not related to the design and not modelled by me ), cloth sim calculated in Blender, everything rendered in Bryce.

Oh... I feel that we have strong leadership in this competition already
Anyway I'm posting my insignificant entry - it's the element I've started working on a month ago - but it went to the direction I didn't want and I thought it would be easier to start from scratch than tweak that one, at last I didn't finished that design at all
I've set up for it a quick studio and rendered in ART a stack of two elements. Lightest version has altered contrast and slight colour correction. Cheers!

My idea is in the exact opposition to $imon's idea  :

Gorgeous work as always dwsel, your artistic talents are really showcased well with these images.  As someone who tends more towards the engineering side of things I am always so impressed by those like yourself, Headwax and some other Anim8ors who are able to use these 3D tools to make images that are just beautiful.

Thanks! I'm just experimenting a lot with light and materials so I gained some experience in this area, but I'm terrible or very slow at modelling. Also I'm often grabbing to many projects at once and move to another one when I encounter some difficulties or lack of time and then I'm forgetting about some of them (such a shame). That's why I admire how dedicated are you at inorganic modelling and your ability to stick to one thing for a long time so don't be so modest and hard on yourself! I've always been a huge fan of your meshes that are detailed and correctly built. On the other side of 3d arts I'm impressed at how $imon and Raxx are working with organic models and having such a clean meshes. In the end it just seems that everyone has some special skill or area of expertise