Visual Sound Progression
October 12th, 2007
Here is another update. There is a very interesting visualization which pushes the combination of Ape Physics and Papervision3D a lot further. The challenge here was using the Ape Physics engine to control the 3D particles. This was confusing to approach because the Ape Engine only operates in a 2D space, which means I had to take that 2D data and convert it into 3D space.
The result is similar to my previous particle sound effector, but now in 3D. Using your mouse you can move through the particles as they fall. What the sound is controlling in this one is the number of particles created and the velocity in which they are thrown at. I have another version of this working where the particles change colour as they fall downwards, which is very cool, but it really bogs down the program to the point where it almost doesn’t run. I explored many ways around this, and had it working using a lot of different methods, (including re-writing part of the papervision3D engine), however the problem seems to lie in the way Papervision3D updates textures onto its 3D objects. I managed to trace the problem to the source, but there doesn’t seem to be a solution to it. I will have to continue exploring other methods of this.
Anyways check it out. Note that this build creates a few problems in the other visualizers, this will be fixed for the next version.