Hello Kineme World

SomeKid's picture

Hello all out there in Kineme World. I am some what new to Quartz but really liking it thus far. Been tooling around it for a couple months. In a masters program for Design and Digital Media and found my way to Quartz. A big apple fan and not that big of programer. Been hanging around Kineme more and more and decided now was the time to sign up.

Working on a project where I am trying to create visuals that respond to live audio. If anyone has any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate some nods in places to explore. I am a pro at making a cubes height or a spheres radius change due to volume peaks.

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World

Welcome to Kineme.

Cybero is all about audio-reactive — no doubt you'll be getting some links from him. Check out his site too, it has a handy Javascript reference and has lots of resources. http://www.cybero.co.uk/

toneburst's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World

Hi,

welcome to the Kineme community!

a|x

cybero's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World - Audio Reactive Assistance Requested

A quick study can easily be made by creating a template visualizer and then feeding that data via a regular audio input patch.

Study up especially as to the Iterators and the divisions / multiplications used to create a believable audio frequency band.

You can also try working with the Kineme Audio Tools example files.

Very useful for installation work and for offline rendering constructs, rather more technically demanding than some of the other routes specified.

Usually one should use a fair sprinkling of Smooth patches to help give a a more fluid set of data, otherwise the audio can be a little too jerky in effect.

There are loads of audio reactive examples out there - on my site - link above and indeed on this site, just follow some of the threads you'll see listed below this post, & / or carry out a search for audio reactive upon the Kineme site - more than a few results.

Download and install SoundFlower - you will find it to be very, very useful.

Experiment, experiment, experiment.

Read and follow :-

QuartzComposerGuide - see Quartz Composer Tutorial link on left navigation panel of this link.

&

Qtzcodex Tutorials

Have fun & welcome to the Kineme forum.

Cheers for the cover and mention @usefuldesign :-)

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World

My major suggestion about making audio visualizers is just to use your eyes and gut. Make sure it looks like it's really locked to the music and that the eye immediately connects the visual to something going on in the song.

Cybero makes a really good point about smooth patches, and that also extends to the increasing/decreasing peak controls on the stock audio patch. You can view those like compressors/limiters in some ways.

Sometimes you want to do something like have a sprite on top of the whole scene fade to black if there is no audio...like an auto dimmer.

I would also suggest that most people want to see something in a scene respond to the bass strongly, and then something different happen to higher pitches. I would design with that in mind. So, trees might wiggle at low frequencies, and stars might fly at snare drum or something.

I think that the key to successful visualizers is more in conceptualization than in the technical aspects of quartz composer.

toneburst's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World

I'd echo what George says about doing different things for the different audio bands. You can probably get away with just using Bass, Mid and Treble though (and I think there's a patch that takes the raw FFT data from the Audio In patch and aggregates it into just three bands like this).

Beware of arbitrarily making everything respond to audio levels though. As has been said, there's no point unless you can make an obvious connection between what you see and what you can hear. People tend to automatically make connection between the audible and the visible though, so that's on your side.

a|x

SomeKid's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World

Thanks guys. There is some really helpful info here. I have started using the smooth patches and they are helpful.

cybero, I had not been to your site. Thanks for both of the links.

Thanks, gtoledo3, toneburst for your words of wisdom. Greatly appreciated.

usefuldesign.au's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World

I'd echo tb's echo too about perception of visuals coincident to sounds. The brains looks for patterns, even when not there, a visual can appear to be in sync.

Many audio syncing QC comps aren't really that effective when peak volumes of whatever frequency are just driving the size of an object or whatever. The sound source is too complicated for a nice visual (smoothing helps though).

Has anybody made something the locks to the beats-per-minute of a audio source (for songs) and outputs a regular metronome pulse and bpm index? (noise-dampening kind of thing I guess)

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Hello Kineme World

Be sure to check out the Linear Value Translation qcClip from Hybrid Visuals. Various audio patches' output values almost always need conversion to a different value range when they inform other patch's input ports. This patch does just that. Very useful.

http://www.hybridvisuals.nl/downloads/linear-value-translation-qcclip/