I started messing with my Animata OSC plugin for Quartz Composer and trying out different kinds of data I could feed from QC to Animata. The Audio Input patch is the obvious choice, so might as well get that over with first.
The first test. Just playing various samples and seeing how the communication works. Not very exciting, since I’m not using any images in Animata.
I will probably post something more interesting tomorrow. The point with this test was more to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. That is to figure out exactly what is the frequency range of the different spectrum bands of the Audio Input patch.
My testing method was not the most accurate, but should be fine for this purpose. I just want to have a rough idea of what is going on. They way I measured this was by generating different frequencies with the Max/MSP cycle~ object and then seeing at what frequency the maximum value jumped from one band to the next one. Here are my results. The frequency is in Hz:
Band 0: 0 – 580
Band 1: 580 – 1000
Band 2: 1000 – 1500
Band 3: 1500 – 2000
Band 4: 2000 – 3200
Band 5: 3200 – 4800
Band 6: 4800 – 6140
Band 7: 6140 – 8230
Band 8: 8230 – 10300
Band 9: 10300 – 12380
Band 10: 12380 – 15110
Band 11: 15110 – 17880
Band 12: 17880 – 20000
There was no point trying to measure Bands 13-15 since they go over 20kHz and my sound card can’t handle that. Actually, in normal use – normal use for me meaning music visualizations – there’s not much point using the bands above 8, since the amplitude at those frequencies is barely noticeable.
Let me know if you are doing something cool with Quartz Composer and Animata.
Last week, I took part in the SenseStage workshop at the Hexagram BlackBox in Montreal. http://sensestage.hexagram.ca/workshop/introduction/. It was a workshop designed to bring together people from different disciplines (dance, theatre, sound, video, light) and cooperate in a collaborative environment with interactive technologies.
During the workshop, there were tons of sensors – light, floor pressure, accelerometers, humidity etc. – all connected to little microcontrollers which in turn were all wirelessly connected to a central computer that gathered all the data and sent it forward as OSC to any client conected to the network.
Basically, we had 5 days to complete an interactive performance sequence using the data gathered by the sensor nodes. This is what our group came up with.
We call it Treasure Islands and it’s a bit twisted interactive performance/game where a girl finds herself in a weird world where she is floating on a donut in the middle of the ocean with a mermaid talking in her head. She has to travel to all of the different Islands around her, and collect sounds from them in order to open a portal into this strange dream world for all her friends. Sounds like a good concept, doesn’t it? Check out the video and you’ll see that it actually makes sense.
There was a lot of sensor data available, but we ended up using just the pressure sensors on the floor and camera tracking. With a bit more time we could have evolved the world to be more responsive to the real world, but I’m pretty happy with the results we were able to achieve in such a short time. Our group worked really well together, which is not always the case in such collaborative projects.
Credits:
Sarah Albu – narrative, graphics, performance
Matt Waddell – sound, programming
Me – animation, programming
And I guess I need to include some more technical details for all the people who check my site for that kind of stuff (I know you’re out there).
We used camera tracking with tbeta to track Sarah and used that data to move the doughnut and to make the environment responsive to her movements. All of the real-time animation was done in Animata, which really is a perfect tool for something like this, because it allows me to animate things really fast without compromising in quality. Max was used as the middle man to convert the TUIO messages and the OSC from the sensor network into the kind of messages Animata needs to hear.
We sewed some IR LEDs on the hat to help with tracking in a dark space.
Each island is an instrument that you can play with. Stepping on a certain area would trigger loops, add effects to your voice etc. Matt could explain the sound part better than me, but the video should make it pretty clear. it doesn’t reproduce the effect of the quadraphonic sound system we used though. Some visual clues were also triggered in the animation based on her movements on the sensors.
That’s pretty much it. If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
My workflow in creating ths animation was pretty unorthodox. Almost all of the character animation was recorded real-time with a custom setup involving Max/MSP and Animata. I created a patch in Max to control animation in Animata with the sound of the interviews. I also had some sliders and buttons to trigger things like blinking and arm movements. I used After Effects for compositing and for some additional animation.
If you haven´t heard of Animata yet, you should head over to http://animata.kibu.hu/index.html and educate yourself. Download the software and go through the tutorials. I also recommend reading through the mailing list, it has tons of useful information.
Controlling Animata with a mouse and doing real-time animations is pretty cool by itself, but Animata really shows its true potential when you control it with OSC. Then you can start doing something like this:
There is a Processing example available from the Animata site that controls Animata with sound input.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Unfortunately, the Kitchen Budapest guys are busy improving the software and there isn´t really good documentation available about the OSC messages needed to control Animata. I´ll try to go through all of the available messages and give you some examples in Pure Data and Max/MSP
I assume that you know something about OSC, Pure Data and Max/MSP, because I don´t want to write a huge post explaining everything from the beginning. I´m also assuming that you have spent some time learning the basics of Animata.
One more important thing. I´m using revision 35 of Animata compiled from the svn repository. NOTE! YOU WILL NEED TO COMPILE ANIMATA FROM THE SOURCE CODE TO MAKE THE /LAYERPOS MESSAGES WORK. IT IS NOT AVAILABLE IN THE BINARY VERSION ON THE ANIMATA WEBSITE. All the other messages I´m showing here do work with Animata 003 that is available from the site. OK, let’s start.
All incoming messages to Animata must be sent through port 7110. The “name” in the message refers to the name of the joint, bone or layer.
Moving a joint, x and y are float values:
/joint name x y
Control the length of a bone, value is a float between 0 and 1:
/anibone name value
Switch on and off a layer, on_off is 0 or 1:
/layervis name on_off
Set the transparency of the layer, value is a float between 0 and 1:
/layeralpha name value
The next two messages require the svn version:
Moving a layer in absolute mode, x and y are the position coordinates as float values:
/layerpos name x y
Moving a layer in relative mode, x and y is the amount of pixels you want the layer to move from it’s current position:
/layerdeltapos name x y
PURE DATA TO ANIMATA
I´m not really comfortable with Pure Data, but I was able to get all of the messages working except /layervis. I believe this is because Animata is very picky and is looking for real boolean values and Pure Data is sending integers when sending 0 or 1. This was just fixed by the Kitchen Budabest guys. The /layervis message works now. I have updated the code so please download the .zip again. You need to compile Animata again from the svn for this to work.
There is a little problem, because Animata needs float values in the messages and Pure Data doesn’t have a separate number box for floats, so have to make sure the number you are sending is never an even number. I did this by multiplying the values by 0.999. If someone knows a better way, let me know.
MAX/MSP 5 TO ANIMATA
It´s pretty much the same deal with Max/MSP. The /layervis doesn’t work here either. This was fixed in the svn version (>36). My Max-patch has been updated so please download again.
I didn´t add the /layerdeltapos to the example patches, because it´s really easy to lose your layers somewhere outside the window.
SENDING OSC FROM ANIMATA
There is also an option to send OSC messages from Animata. For this you need the SVN version. It simply works by clicking on the small OSC tick box on the Skeleton tab. The messages are sent through port 7111. The message format is: /joint name x y
QUARTZ COMPOSER
I’ve made a plugin for Quartz Composer that makes it really easy to control Animata from Quartz Composer. Check it out over here.
HOW ABOUT OPEN FRAMEWORKS, PROCESSING ETC.
Basically, any software or programming environment that is able to send OSC messages should be able to communicate with Animata.
Processing works perfectly and you can download the Sound Input example from the Animata website that will get you started. I´ll see if I can find the time to do a similar sample file for Processing also.
I’ve also had luck testing OpenFrameworks. Download the FAT version of OpenFrameworks and modify the oscSenderExample.
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THIS?
Whatever you want! Hook up audio input, MIDI controllers, sensors or computer vision to control real-time animations.
Check out my Mickey Mann project for an example on how to control Animata with an Arduino.
I have always liked the voice of William S. Burroughs and I´ve always wanted to do something with the Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups clip.
Now I have. It´s still missing some parts of it as I had to meet a class deadline for this. I will have to finish this later.
If I haven´t uploaded a new version with the missing parts in a couple of months, feel free to send me angry emails with the subject: Get Your Lazy Ass Up and Finish That Animation!
