SarahBBR

5th October 2002 23:12 UTC

Noob avs
Well, here it is. I have not done much in the way of avs yet, and am just learning about the coding, etc.

This was the first avs I did that was somewhat original - a simple movement and a simple superscope of my own design. Simple, yes, but I like the way it turned out. Best viewed in a square frame, not the typical rectangle or full-screen. (I think in a rectangle the edge effect is too prominent; I like a little of it around the edge but not 2 inches of it.)

Any comments or suggestions?

And BTW thanks for posting so much useful info in these forums .. a great learning tool.

--
Sarah

Jaheckelsafar

5th October 2002 23:36 UTC

Hey, better than some noob presets I've seen. Better then my noob presets. :) It's pretty simple, but then all noob presets are. Anyway, to the preset.

- Your blur didn't do anything. May as well leave it out.
- Not too reactive to the music. There should be some kind of beat response

UnConeD

6th October 2002 02:42 UTC

The preset is not too impressive, but I'd like to congratulate you on some other points:

And BTW thanks for posting so much useful info in these forums .. a great learning tool.

jheriko

6th October 2002 04:07 UTC

Wow. Pretty good for a noob preset. The moving particles make a cool effect and the 'sphere' actually looks reasonably sphere-like.

Keep making them and keep up the coding. Maybe its just because I am a coder but I think that 80% of any really good effect is going to be code, even if it is simple code.

SarahBBR

6th October 2002 17:42 UTC

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Not as bad as I'd expected. ;) I will take another look at that blur, I must have forgotten what that was supposed to be doing...I kind of like the subtlety of the beat response in this one but most of my other experiments do have a bigger response.

UnConeD - I have been copy-pasting some of the threads referenced in the FAQ and saving them for easy reference. All the stuff I have looked at, I found in the FAQ so I don't have any other ones to suggest.

Also, I had no thoughts whatsoever about publishing a pack... I am not at the stage where I think anyone might actually enjoy these that much, just thought it would be nice to get some suggestions/feedback from some people who know what they're doing.

As for any other issues not being resolved... I think my only gripe is that I wish the effects that come with the program had visible code. It would be a useful learning tool for noob coders if you could see, e.g., how the moving particle works. Is there any way to see that in the program? (Or has someone posted it somewhere?)

UnConeD

6th October 2002 19:42 UTC

The built-in effects don't really use the AVS code. For example, the 'blocky partial out' movement has a fixed, resolution-independent blocksize, which is impossible in a custom Trans / Movement (because you don't know the dimensions of the window).

However there have been a few attempts at reconstruction or approximating these movements. I did a few searches but wasn't able to locate much for some weird reason.

jheriko

6th October 2002 20:04 UTC

Here's a good thread where quite a few of the in-built movement effects have been well approximated in code, this thread also has tons of other useful code and information in it.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....threadid=87661

I couldn't see it on the FAQ so I guessed that you might have missed it.

UnConeD

6th October 2002 20:06 UTC

I'll try and add it the next time I collect some updates for the FAQ. If you find any more, mail or note me :).

Montana

6th October 2002 20:30 UTC

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....threadid=70899
geozop & steven did some decoding of the preset movement's here, and oh steven, sorry for being rude to you at that thread,

that thread is a good thread

Jaheckelsafar

7th October 2002 05:28 UTC

It's missing psychotic beaming ******ds though.

d=.1;

dirkdeftly

7th October 2002 19:25 UTC

Welcome to the AVS forums :D Nice preset (for a n00b), it isn't really impressive, but at least you seem to grasp how the components work and know somewhat how to color presets, the way Montana doesn't.

Try my AVS Primer (i love plugging), available at DeviantART: http://atero.deviantart.com/deviations/ (it's somewhere in there - i'm gonna update my sig with the link pretty soon :) )

A few tips:
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER USE TIMESCOPE! It ruins the preset by cluttering it all up and it takes the originality out completely. (Just to let you know :) )
The r=r+500 can be simplified to r=r+3.62836 by subtracting 158 complete revolutions (in radians: pi*2=6.28318...) from 500. Then it can be resimplefied by using the reverse angle (pi*2-ang), r=r-2.65482. If that's confusing you can replace the r=r+500; with r=r-2.65482; and you'll see it's pretty much the same movement (unless you're using a huge screen there won't be any noticable difference).
Also try using 'wrap' on movements to get rid of those edge-effects. Play around with the 'blend' option, too (it generally smooths out most movements, including the built-in things like blitter feedback). And try turning off 'bilinear filtering' and turning 'blend' on.
The superscope can be fixed a bit, but I can't tell you why without going into a whole lot of detail about the workings of the superscope. (I know, I never really went into the detail on the movement, but who cares about that stuff anyway :p )
Also get rid of the blur, since you've turned it off (it's almost as pointless as Montana.)

I totally agree with UnConeD, you are the god of the n00bs :D Keep doing things like actually reading the forums before you ask questions, and you might actually start to be liked around here, unlike, say, Montana.

Jaheckelsafar: It's not quite like that. It does something with R too, but I can't quite put my finger on it. That and it's about d=0.15 (i measured it with a SSC, trust me darnit)

--Atero



(just kidding Tony :p )

Montana

7th October 2002 21:16 UTC

good one, stuart, kinda made me laugh,

SarahBBR

8th October 2002 01:41 UTC

Hi Atero, thanks for the comments. If I can wade through the popups and cookies on your site ;) I will check out your primer.

Re: the Timescope? It's just a line... sometimes you want a moving line. I get the feeling some of you non-noobs go a little overboard with the "code is king" stuff. Nothing personal. But some of the "highly advanced" packs I've downloaded are, well, really super ugly. And yet they get rave reviews because the code is so interesting. (Of course some of them are gorgeous, too.) It makes me wonder what the point of avsing is - is code an end in itself for some people? I am really just in it for the nice graphics! :)

That being said, I will check out your advice re: the movement settings. Very helpful and I thank you.

Re: my good forum etiquette, I mod several forums on a large site so I am well versed in this sort of thing.

UnConeD

8th October 2002 02:02 UTC

I'll assume you were kind of hinting at my packs as well, with your 'code is king'. Well I kind of think of it this way: lots of people spend time making gorgeous, trippy presets with little code. They're great. I make complex, coded presets, which are also nice in their own. It's just adding more variety to huge pool of AVS presets.

Not that I can't enjoy coding up something totally ugly and useless, just for the fun of it. Though I wouldn't release something like that.

Don't worry about it too much though... just do your own thing and be creative. Besides, fellow AVS coders might indeed love complicated presets, but in the end it's the big public that does the voting, and they just care about how it looks and feels.

dirkdeftly

8th October 2002 05:49 UTC

Naw, that's only Jheriko that says 'code is king'

Timescope just kinda sucks. Vertical bouncing scope is better (it's in the ssc examples). Those popups aren't a deviantart thing, I can't do anything about them. The only thing I have to say about them is one popup was annoying, two was downright irritating, but three just pisses me off... :hang:

Karnov

9th October 2002 05:05 UTC

Code is prince.
Getting lots and lots of downloads to boost my already overinflated ego is king.

long live the king

viva la karnov

:)

jheriko

9th October 2002 05:24 UTC

Code may not be king, but framerate is god.

No one wants to watch a preset at 0.2fps, even if it realtime renders the enitre earth and zooms out from an atom to the planet in crisp photorealistic detail. On the other hand, even a simple preset can be really good if it gets 90 fps because it will be very responsive and will run really smoothly. It may just be me but I think it really can ruin a preset if it runs at less than 15 fps, whereas if it runs at 20 or above it can make all the difference.

Warrior of the Light

9th October 2002 12:35 UTC

I could enjoy such a preset :)

And for the coding/framerate issue...
I dont really think that having much coding means a low framerate.
I once made a preset with only one movement (ages ago) with only one movement: d=d*d;r=5*r and a LOT of other useless stuff and it did only 3 FPS. And otherwise, i can imagine that if i made a huge SSC with only small movement filters, that it could run around 100FPS (depending on your framerate limiter).

And must say that especially for a starter coding isn't that important... it'll come... I spent 1 1/2 YEAR without hardly any coding. before you dive into a bottomless pool called coding it is more important to know what exactly does what. When you know that, you can start making things that aren't in the pre-fabricated list. And that can grow out to... wonderful things. And also if you don't now everything about the mathematical functions, just keep trying and do experiments, that'll learn you a lot.

And i must advise you, just as everyone else has said, download other people's work and rip that apart. Don't look at the too difficult things, try things you might possiblly understand.

Good luck and enjoy making presets, make a lot of them.