A miniscule chill pill

crawthorne

22nd August 2004 11:58 UTC

A miniscule chill pill
All Things Chilled and Small

I'd like to share a batch of presets I've made that all sort of variations on a theme. They're not very high on the l33tosity scale by any stretch of the imagination, but they do acomplish what they say on the tin.

These were bread on a steady diet of Cornelius, Portishead, Zero7, Aretha Franklin, Appolo 440, Cibbo Matto, the Soundtrack to Amelie, Underworld and Macy Gray, so give em a bit of love and they should do you right.

My own particular favorite is Nematode Saturday Night to Underworld's "Born Slippy".

crawthorne

22nd August 2004 12:57 UTC

Terribly sorry about the double post. I wanted to swap out the attachment I originally posted, but got a bit confused halfway through. You can remove or add, but you can't replace an attachment, is that correct?

Attachment for above post is on this one now.

PAK-9

22nd August 2004 17:32 UTC

They're fairly smooth and flowy, but to be honest they just look like remixes of the same preset.

Tuggummi

22nd August 2004 22:33 UTC

Very nice :)
I like the movements of the texer2's and the response, also the color work is quite good too :)

Hmm, unlike Paks says, in my opinion all vary enough from each other and are all different in one way or another.

2 things though:

1) Particle size fixed on resolution. This makes your texer2's look correct in all resolutions, which you really should think off unless you don't want anyone else to enjoy them in their fullest :)

2) Use powers of 2 in the convolution filter. Optimize, get better fps, better fps makes a happier preset. Nuff said :p

Nice work :up: And welcome to the forums :)

crawthorne

23rd August 2004 12:07 UTC

Originally posted by Tuggummi
[B]Very nice :)
I like the movements of the texer2's and the response, also the color work is quite good too :)

Thanks. I was looking to create some tonal muted, non primary sort of palettes for the things. I'm a firm believer you can be colorful without actually using every color out there :)

Originally posted by Tuggummi
Hmm, unlike Paks says, in my opinion all vary enough from each other and are all different in one way or another.

Yeah. That's what I meant by variations on a theme. They obviously share a common ancestry, but I wanted to give each one a different emotional context and personality. Thanks for noticing.

And thanks for the tips too. I've changed all my convolves to use power of 2s. It didn't occur to me that AVS would be optimised to convert those to bitshifts!

As for the particle scale, I've implemented it for some, and left it out for others. It hadn't occured to me to check other resolutions, but when I Did I found some of them already responded pleasantly, at least for me. The glowworms for instance look like they enjoy the extra leg room!

I've completely redesigned promiscuous micro tango to be more like the original concept for it. I'd like to hear what you think of the change, whether it's an improvement.

I've also started to work in framerate compensation for them. Another thing I'd completely overlooked. When I get a few minutes to myself I'll propagate that through all of them. Meanwhile, here's the updated version, with other miscelaneous bots and bob tweaks.

Tuggummi

23rd August 2004 16:30 UTC

I've completely redesigned promiscuous micro tango to be more like the original concept for it. I'd like to hear what you think of the change, whether it's an improvement.

And good it looks indeed :D Great work.

Nice to hear that you're going to implent the framerate fix too.

And don't be susprised if someone suggest optimizations, since avs is so darn slow, many of us have grown custom to squeeze out every last bit of speed from it :)

crawthorne

23rd August 2004 19:55 UTC

Yup. I hear what you're sayin'. It's certainly not the fastest thing on earth, but I am digging on playing in here.

I promised I'd not touch em today, but I spent another hour involuntarily mucking about. Here's an updated pack with the newest addition to the collection, still a work in progress, but it has most of the final features. Meet "scorned plankton".

Note: to understand the title, you'll need to indulge in some audience participation.

Tuggummi

23rd August 2004 20:21 UTC

Hmm, not my personal favourite of the bunch, but nice still. Maybe a bit too bold colors for me, but that's a matter of taste.

But here's another trick :)
You can save mucho fps if you render your static backgrounds only once on start up or if the user changes the resolution.

Here is a example edit of your plankton preset :)

crawthorne

23rd August 2004 20:46 UTC

Ahh, but that's assuming it'll stay static! Hehe.

But thanks for the tip. If it stays static, it's definitely getting that treatment.

I know what you mean about the colors. It's a bit of a bitch to balance this one, what with all the accumulating buffers, and I was focusing on the code this time. It is harsh, and I'll certainly have another go at the coloring to match the rest of the collection.

Did you enjoy the motion though, and the participation element?

Tuggummi

23rd August 2004 20:53 UTC

Not really a fan of interaction in this particular form.

I just want to kick back and enjoy the vis most of the time :)

The particle motion is nice, though they tend to like the edges of the screen a bit too much.

crawthorne

23rd August 2004 21:04 UTC

Understandable. I think I'll need to add a sort of virtual participant to take over when no one plays with it.

I don't think they favor the outside in the long run, they'll end up dispersing again eventually, but I suppose I could give them a home ring to gravitate towards to force em to be less shy.

crawthorne

24th August 2004 00:05 UTC

Here we go. Tamed the colors, at least to my liking, and there's a proxy for those not inclined to participate :) I think it fits alright with the others now.

Tuggummi

24th August 2004 06:04 UTC

Mmm, definetly better now :)

And it is actually kinda cool to sometimes tease them by moving the cursor to the center :D

Very nice work :up:

UnConeD

24th August 2004 12:44 UTC

Scorned plankton is funny ;). But the automatic movement could be a bit tweaked I think, now it just draws out a Lissajous. Would be better if it had a more desperate feel to it.

Also, maybe the scorned plankton could be marked in some way?

crawthorne

24th August 2004 13:44 UTC

Originally posted by UnConeD
Scorned plankton is funny ;). But the automatic movement could be a bit tweaked I think, now it just draws out a Lissajous. Would be better if it had a more desperate feel to it.

Also, maybe the scorned plankton could be marked in some way?

Your wish is my command dear. My wish on the other hand is to stop playing when I really should be working.

I've added some desperation and a marking. Poor little thing is in heat now, which explains a lot.

I have a minor plan about a more intelligent behaviour, but it'll have to wait for further tinkering.

Say, does anyone recon I should package these up when I'm done, or are they not quite up to the community standards yet? I've got another 4 ideas to go, still in the same theme, and now that I know what I'm doing I'm going to back and rewrite some of the other to be a bit more organic, though I am a slave to hypnotic quasi cycles. The gloworms for instance, are still going to do their dervish dance, as are the cillia.

crawthorne

24th August 2004 22:27 UTC

Another update!

The proxy now has a sort of mini AI thing going. It picks out a target every so often and tries it's (futile) best to make friends. The result is a lot more organic, and maybe has a bit more of a desperate feel to it. Dunno, been staring at it for the last 5 minutes trying to make up my mind.

Also noticed that the bottleneck on this preset doesn't appear to be the texer, rather all the image processing afterwards. So there's a remix in there too now, which is much more crowded, resulting in a neat sort of inverted effect from the original. I'll need to remix the colors to suit too at some point.

crawthorne

29th August 2004 14:46 UTC

Here we go again. General tweaks, and 2 new presets, one an intro for the pack and the other another variation on the theme.

Files have been renamed to what I take to be the community standard.

Enjoy!