Using textures on geometry, wave CHOP and Gig

It has been a week since I have updated the blog, I feel like my progress has somewhat slowed down. But I may just be reaching a point where I needed to reflect a little. Not to say I haven't been busy, I've been try to learn things for the next stage of the development of my final major project. Having such a wonderful & knowledgeable group of friends around is definitely been crucial to my development, talking about ideas within the visual realm is eye open and many ideas come from that. My friend Jedd Winterburn introduced me to the idea of using TOPs as textures for geometry. The result is something more organic and with depth, which my visuals have lacked until this point. The gist of it is using a PBR shader and an environmental light as a material for the geometry. You can use a TOP with the environment light, it's worth experimenting with different images to see how it effect the outcome. The PBR shader then is used as the material for the Geometry, you then can change the priorities of that PRB shader to make it more reflective or rough etc. I found that Using TOPs that move on the surface of a geometry is very interesting, I could imagine once the geometry has some manipulation and movement to it you will have something very interesting. I think using a particle system will be create some create results with different movement of wind etc. You can see the moving visuals on a geometry > here <

A CHOP that is really cool with working with audio is the wave chop, it's a good way of sculpting the data from the audio. By this I mean it creates different curves of data from the input of the audio. I used this filtered data to change as instancing data for geometry for the visuals below. An interesting thing came out of doing all the visual work, my friend and longtime collaborator Louis Sterling saw the visuals and asked me if I could perform them at his gig on the 15th of February. Although he asked me the day before. But most of the work was already done, I mainly had to find away of performing with them. To perform with touch designer i pretty much was only changing values in the wave CHOP, which were enough to create performative visuals that where striking and dynamic. Because of the nature of playing live I tried using Touch OSC on my phone to control the parameters. I had luck at home with a stable internet connection, but in the venue it was a no go. For some reason the internet wasn't working at the venue, which makes me sceptical over how it's going to work over the universities internet. Although I am am going to have to test it out in the near future. I am going to go in soon with my computer to try working with visuals and audio together, although I think the first session will literally be try to figure out how the computers will communicate  to each other. It's a shame I don't have a space of my own to do this, but it's ok, some day. 

What this work has brought into my hemisphere is that I could possible have one visual idea that is changing via parameters in touch through OSC. Depending if it works, OSC can also change the lighting which is dope to. I am going to try this out very soon. I just need to find the energy to bring my gear into uni.

See below an example of the visuals I did for the gig. 

​Written by Jack Cleary