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Friday July 4, 2008
Greeting and Happy Independence Day! It's a hot summer evening and I'm back with more stuff of interest to computer geeks and artists of all types. The topic for tonight is music and I'm going to discuss recording and using your own simple samples. For this exercise I used a cheap headset microphone, a small plastic soda bottle and the excellent Audacity open-source sound editing program. If you're trying this on your own PC make sure the mic is plugged into your PCs sound card before you begin. I started up Audacity, got the mic positioned and pressed the “record” button from the row of icons near the top. To make the a sound to record I simply blew over the mouth of the bottle to make a nice hollow note. Press the stop button to end the recording and you've got a raw sound file. I was able to trim the sample, tune and adjust the pitch and save it as a WAV file within Audacity. I repeated the process a couple more time with varying amounts of water added to the bottle to produce a higher pitched note. Once I had 3 samples, I was able to import the WAV files into the Orion sampler. The sampler will automatically detect and map your samples to a range of notes. Finally, we're ready to play the samples as an instrument either with a MIDI controller or through step-editing. It's fairly easy, and very fun and you can get some unique and highly usable sounds from this technique. If you haven't done it yet, give it a try.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week were created from the previously mentioned bottle samples.
The book of the week was “3D Toons” by Steve and Raf Anzovin. It isn't a detailed guide to creating toons but it has some excellent and varied examples from different artists. This book was also my bargain of the week, cause I got it at the local 99 Cents Only Store for the princely sum of $0.99!
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday June 27, 2008
Hello Again! It's another lovely warm summer night here in the old gray cat's loft, and I'm here with more stuff to share. The topic for this session is Graphics and the focus will be on a very useful 3D technique. I've been working on a project in Anim8or that required some facial animation. I decided to make use of morph targets to move the characters mouth, eyelids and eyebrows in a convincing manner. To use morph targets you define the start and ending positions for the points (vertexes) of a 3D object. The rendering software can then fill in the intermediate in-between positions, creating a smooth animated sequence. It's just the thing for lip-syncing recorded speech to an animated mouth. One of the drawbacks to this technique is that it becomes unwieldy when dealing with more than a few points. A partial solution is to define your object as a subdivision or spline surface, reducing the number of points to translate. Try it for yourself the next time you need add a bit of expression to your animation.
The picture of the week was created using Anim8or.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are a set of synthesized samples.
The PC game of the week was Travian once more. I've been recruited into an alliance and now stand a significantly better chance of survival.
The Movie/DVD of the week was “Hellboy”
The diversion of the week was Sudoku.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday June 20, 2008
Greetings! We're on the verge of summer and the topic for this hot evening is games. I'm going to focus on a couple of free/open source clones of classic turn-based strategy games. I'll start the session with FreeCiv, a very faithful reproduction of Sid Meier's classic Civilization II. I like the tough AI, wide range of options and depth in FreeCiv. I don't like the long time it takes to play but that's common of most good 4X strategy games. The graphics are clear, but 2D and a bit understated. You really don't need 3D gob-smacking graphics to enjoy Freeciv, just a good brain and lots of time and patience. The other freebie find of the week is Empire Allegro Advance; A Windows clone of the popular Game Boy Advance title Advance Wars. I like the cartoony graphics, the low system requirements, and the fact that it comes with a map editor and source code. I don't like the slightly cheesy vibe of the project and the fact that it is too easy to beat the computer opponents. I'll have more of my favorites on display here in later posts. In the meantime, give them a try and have some fun!
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some more beat-sliced drum loops.
The PC game of the week is still Future Pinball. My favorite table is the recreation of Bally's Wizard from 1975. The last electro-mechanical tables from the mid 70s were the best IMHO.
The movie/DVD of the moment is “Juno”.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday June 13, 2008
Hello and Happy Friday the 13th! Tonight's timely topic is music and I've an interesting technique to share. In past blog entries I've described the use of looping in music to create pieces from short instrument or synthesized samples. Beat slicing is a related electronic music technique, in which a loop or sample is divided into separate beats, usually some even increment such as 1/16. Each subdivision can now be played independently of the other so that you can now play the entire phrase at a different tempo with little of the distortion associated with time stretching. You can also reorder the segments (slices) to get a completely different musical loop. Beat slicing is most often used on drum patterns, but you can also use other instruments or vocal loops for different effects. The first and most famous beat slicing tool is ReCycle, but you can use a number of different music applications and plug-ins to get the job done. My advice to the uninitiated is, as always, to try it and see if you like it.
The picture of the week was created using Bryce
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some beat-sliced drum loops.
The PC game of the week is Future Pinball. Future Pinball is a both a detailed emulation of a real pinball table and a flexible construction set. The coolest thing is that it's a free program. The 2nd coolest thing is that there are a lot of user-designed recreations of classic tables available for download.
The book of the moment is The Art of Computer Programming volume 1 by Donald Knuth.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday June 6, 2008
Greetings again! The topic for tonight is graphics and the focus is on creating your own extensions for Project Dogwaffle. I recently acquired and started using the tBDW thinBasic Dogwaflle scriptable interface. This package allows you to create your own plug-ins for Project Dogwaffle using the ThinBasic scripting language. There are only about a half dozen statements and a like number of equates to get your head around, so getting started is relatively easy. Your thinBasic script can either render a completely new picture or modify an existing one. I've written some simple scripts to convert color pictures to b&w and to generate mathematical patterns. It's fast, fun, and easy so I'll recommend it to anyone looking to expand the basic functionality of PD.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some boogie drum loops.
The PC game of the week is still FreeCiv. This TBS game is an open-source clone of the classic Civilization 2 PC title.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday May 30, 2008
Friday Greetings! It's another nice late spring evening and I'm back with more of the good stuff. Tonight's topic is computing and I'll focus on portable applications. A portable application is a program that can be that can be installed and carried around on a portable storage device and used on any Windows computer. What this means is that you can take a small suite of your most used programs on a handy USB flash drive or portable hard drive and have them ready to work wherever you go. PortableApps.com has collected a number of free/open-source programs with a handy launcher application. The set includes portable versions of Mozilla Firefox, the OpenOffice.org productivity package, and ClamWin anti-virus. Being the artist/musician/geek that I am, I was also interested in graphics, games, programming and music applications. For 2D drawing you can use GIMP, or Project Dogwaffle. For 3D graphics, Anim8or and a few different portable versions of Blender are available. For music you can use the brilliant and free Audacity sound editing application. For games you have a fair selection of low calorie, limited resource options to choose from. Programmers can use the Decimal Basic programming language to create small applications. As an exercise I put together a bunch of portable stuff that took up only about ½ of a 2gb flash drive. It's perfect for computing and creating away from home. Give it a try!
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some fat bass parts.
The PC game of the week is the classic puzzle game Bejeweled.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday May 23, 2008
Hola! The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on a unique all-in-one solution for music making. In the past I've tried a few different Linux distributions, most recently settling on Suse. While I've had some success with most applications, the one area that really favored the Windows OS was sound and audio. Getting my Terratec EWX 24/96 audio card to work with Linux proved particularly problematic. This past week I found the Musix Linux live CD distro and decided to give it a whirl. Musix is a single CD containing both a Knoppix Linux OS and a slew of music and media programs; a sort of portable music/graphics studio on a CD that has the added advantage of being FREE(!). I downloaded the ISO image, burned the CD and proceeded to try Musix on a number of machines. On the first PC (Athlon XP) Musix was able not only able to run, but properly configured my “problem child” Terratec card. I immediately got some music running through Jack and Rosegarden. Next I went on to the more powerful Athlon X2 PC with the Emu 1212M. This time Jack couldn't configure the sound card, and after a few fruitless minutes I gave up and went on to the next machine. The 3rd computer I tested is a lower spec AMD Sempron machine, with a Terratac DMX Xfire 1024 sound card. This time Musix was defeated by the LCD monitor I had hooked up. The resolution/frequency was out of range so I wasn't able to test it properly. So the final score for this outing was 1 out of 3. Musix might work on the other 2 systems with a bit of research and effort, but that's been one of my major beefs with Linux from the start. It's still kind of a computer geek's OS rather than a easy consumer product like Windows. I'll continue testing Musix, but in the meantime I don't see it replacing my other commercial music packages like Orion, Acid, and Music Creator.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some static synth runs.
The PC game of the week is still Travian.
The book/graphic novel of the week is “Preacher: Gone to Texas” by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. I can't believe I missed this remarkable series (and Neil Gaiman's Sandman) during it's first comics run in the late 90's. Thank goodness for trade paperback collections.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
