Remember to read the manual that is provided within the .zip file, and remember it was only a prototype. It is *very* fiddly, and can take a while to get used to. It also has a habit of crashing if you don’t play nice. The Mac version is untested ( as I use a PC ), so if it works, yay!
So the expo was last night. Lonnng night and I’m incredibly tired now ( Got a 2500 word essay to write that I’ve been putting off, and putting off - ugh ). However I thought I should do a quick wrap up.
The presentation went relatively well - though there wern’t nearly as many industry people there as I would have thought. I got approached by two or so industry people who seemed interested in what I was doing, got given one card, and the other guy I’ll get in touch with later ( I know him, so it wont be hard ). It seemed like most of the people there were parents, and most people seemed to think that aAVis was merely a visualisation - not a tool for *creating* visualisations. So I had to sit by the exhibit all night to ensure people knew what it was, and how it worked. Ended up creating a few presets on the night. A few merely to show what it could do - and one towards the end which I was actually quite pleased with!
Here’s a few screenshots :
And the one I’m most pleased with :
The Pictures don’t really do them justice, I’ll try to get a video up sometime tomorrow - though the new motion blur I’ve added has issues with the video capturing method I’m using - so I might turn it off for them. Furthermore, my friend ben took some Photos, so hopefully I should get some of those in the days to come.
All in all, I think the night went well, and it was nice to see aAVis playing on a projector screen for the whole night. Didn’t crash once! Beautiful!
What’s next on the plate ? Well I’ve got that essay, an exam, two more essays, and then I graduate ( hopefully, fingers crossed! ). I’ll attempt to package aAVis up into a format that most people can enjoy and use. After that , I’m going to whip up a website portfolio at www.tenfiftyfour.com so I can show off some of the work I did throughout university. And from there, it’s on to find a job! I’ve got one interview type thing lined up already ( have to finalise dates and the likes ), but yes, It’s interesting times. I’ll also be possibly shutting down my personal ‘moads‘ blog as I’m not really a design *student* anymore! But we’ll see. The other thing I’d like to keep up is my “Not so Impressive Entertainers”, which I hope to make into a book. In any event, right now - I’ve got an essay to write…
I spent the day today doing two things :
1) I spent the morning trying to get motionblur working. Trying to use multiple textures to simulate a blurring effect ( Basically using lots of drawtotextures ).
2) Went to uni to check the room in which aAVis will be presented.
After heading into uni and spending 3 hours there trying to get it to work on the uni computers, I found that the machines there just don’t work well with the way I’ve got it set up ( As it’s been designed on my machine, it tends to freak out on others - plus I hadn’t tested it on modern radeon video cards yet, which seem to be what the macs at uni are running ).
So I’ve decided to just go with the best possible option I *know* will work, and that’s me bringing in my home computer. It’s heavy, but it will work!
While relaxing and playing some TF2 tonight ( and admiring their amazing motionblur they’ve added to that game ), I realised … “Well, if I’m bringing my home machine, I know *exactly* the kind of system I’ll be running it on”. And then it hit me, I can use the Accumulation Buffer!
I ditched the idea in the early stages, because my laptop does not support it, and originally - that was my presentation machine. However, it works perfecly on my desktop computer and provides brilliant motionblur!
And the best thing is ?
It’s only about 6 lines of code.
How about that eh ?
The end of year exhibition is coming up, and even though I’m not being marked on aAVis at it ( I’ve already been assessed, marks yet to be delivered ), I’ve got a few things I’d like to change so it’s more impressive for the people moving through.
I sat down today and re-wrote the ‘frame saving’ code for the “party mode” I’ve introduced. I was using processings in-built ’saveFrame()’ function to save a .jpg of the current scene, then using this - it loads that frame as a texture onto a 800×600 ( stage size ) QUAD, and fades that quad out. Quite simple really - but very effective. The only problem is, that processing takes a bit to process ( haha ) this ’save frame’. So I’ve re-coded it in opengl. The save frame takes absolutely no time whatsoever anymore, the only pause is the loading of the new preset, which at the moment is unavoidable.
I also sat down and attempted to build a really nice motionblur out of a similar technique, but I’m having problems with it, and there’s a big storm outside so I need to turn the desktop off. So no more of that tonight.
EDIT - On another note, I’m glad wordpress saves posts as drafts while you work through them! As I was typing, that “big storm” blew the power in my house. Fortunately nothing was damaged and my computers are still functioning perfectly! ( yay ! ).
Before the presentation, I managed to modify the cube and osciloscope elements so that they too were able to be edited by entering in mathematical formulae ( yay ). I decided that for my presentation it would be best to focus on what makes aAVis stand out from the other visuals tools out there which is this customisability. You can take one thing, and turn it into a host of other things. Yay.
Obviously it’s still at the early stages, hence why I’ve decided to call this a prototype. Future versions would obviously be more complicated.
It’s been a crazy last few weeks. Don’t really have the time to sit down and write out a detailed post. Interesting bit of news though, that small video I posted the other day caught the attention of a VJ, he wants to use it this weekend at a show! hah, obviously doesn’t know how unstable it is ;). Still though, Cool.
So I’ve got two days left ( well, one night, and a day ) until I have to present aAVis to my lecturers. I’ve done the best I can given the data that I’ve lost from my laptop crash, and I’ll just have to hope it’s enough! I’ve decided this is more of a prototype / proof of concept rather than a finished product ( Although, it is fully-functional, albiet with a few bugs ). Each element that you can add offers a different example of data and how it can be added / displayed.
The biggest addition since my last post is my evaluator.
In flash, it’s possible to parse a string as a mathematical function. So for example, say you’ve got the following setup :
var myFunction:String = "2+2";'
var theAnswer:int;
You can use eval() to evaluate the string “2+2″, and print out the value 4. However Java ( and therefore, processing ) does not have this functionality. So I’ve had to code one myself. My evaluator understands simple functions ( +/-* ), random(value), and low / medium / high FFT values. I will prolly add Sin, Cos and Tan for movement functions tommorrow.
Why am I adding these ? Simple, so the user can enter in functions as the properties of an object. They can specify the size of a particle be ‘random(200)’. This gives the user a lot more control, as I will be showing during my presentation, when I use my ‘particles’ in various ways to produce a different effect each time.
I still have a lot of work to get done, so no sleep for me. I just hope it’s enough for my lecturers.
After this, I’ve got a week and a half to tidy it up for the presentation.
Quick update. My Laptop died, and I lost about 3/4 days of work. Boo to that. Fortunately I had a backup on my desktop computer, but I’m still annoyed. I’m now behind schedule for my due-date. Sigh.
January 4th, 2008
aAVis, processing
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