DEFCON

Here’s a video of a live visuals performance I did recently entitled DEFCON…

Everything was run live in Quartz Composer and controlled by a MIDI controller and Wii Remote. Song is “Android Porn” by Kraddy. Also, here’s a quick development video…

I found some efficient ways to get the glitch effects working the way I wanted by combining a few of Vades plugin’s with several of my own patches. I was getting a bit concerned with frame rates before as they were sometimes dropping as low as 20 but after a bit of reworking they’re back up towards the 50-60 mark. Considering how complex the final video looks I was quite happy with the result!

I’ve got several other ideas in development so get ready for more posts to come.

3d Live Visuals Screenshots

A couple of screenshots from some stuff I worked on this evening using Kineme’s 3d tools…

App

Found a great resource hidden away in the Mac OS Developer tools. A generic app that loads compositions. Before this I had tried to create one almighty composition which I could control in a live setup. This caused endless problems, crashes and even though I had streamlined it a great deal became unnecessarily complex but I still needed a way to switch between different visual sequences. After a bit of tweaking to the standard app interface I’ve got something I can work with.

Also, here are a couple of screenshots I took from some compositions I’m working on…

New things

Just got myself a BCF2000 MIDI controller. Everything set up fine with Quartz Composer and it should be a real asset to my work. The next plan is to create a simple Cocoa app to drive a template composition. Also, here’s a little clip I made on an evening last week. Looking further into glitch effects. I ironed out a lot of redundant patches I had from my previous compositions. My screencasting software doesn’t seem to allow me to have an audio out whilst I’m recording and so I created this by watching a simple audio visualiser and guessing the beat. What a loser.

Audio: Twenty Minutes by edIT

A couple of old compositions

Thought I would upload a couple of compositions I created way back when I first opened up Quartz Composer. Just some tests with visuals reacting to audio…

Audio: Big Top by Freeform

Audio: Vicious Delicious by Infected Mushroom

Premise

I am starting this blog to document my experiments and ideas in a project I have been tinkering with in the pre vis stage for some time. Essentially an intuitive piece of software for Vjs and animators to composite live visuals. Having a history in animation and going to specialising in games development I have unsurprisingly become interested in live and interactive visuals. After my discovery of Quartz Composer several months back I have been filling my spare hours in the evenings creating small tools for my own amusement. Quartz Composer is nice and follows my way of thinking when it comes to creating tools. There is, however, a fundamental flaw. With all it’s possibilities there still lacks an easy and intuitive way to use it in a live setting. It advertises itself as a great tool for animators and Vjs which it is apart from when it comes to an improvised performance. Connecting premade patches and controlling them on the fly can become rather clumsy. My solution…to create a clever interface making it easier for the artist to composite on the fly whilst still holding all the power and flexibility when it comes to creating your own compositions.

I have been slowly introducing myself to Objective C over the past month or so and of course it integrates very well with QC. My only worry at the moment is my lack of experience creating a program of this complexity. The whole premise behind what I’m attempting is to create something which has to essentially render everything in real time and not lag. If I’m able to manage that I believe everything else I have planned will plug in nicely.

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