Yin, check this out, and give me a hand

[Krash]

THIS PRESET IS NOT FINISHED

I really liked Electric Universe, but I felt it needed a little more movement. I've got most of what I want, except for custom wave 4 (the arcing effect between the 'electrons').

I'm really rusty on alot of this math, and I can't work out how you've calculated that curve to stick with the positions of the electrons. Obviously now that the electrons are out of sync, the curve will be more complex, but I'm not up to working out the function anymore.

Have a look, and see if you can work it out.

- Krash

[StudioMusic]

Krash, I wish my math was advanced enough to help you out, but I can say that this preset is Damn good anyway. SM

[Zylot]

Wow, Yin got Krash moving.. that's no laughing matter. Krash: I'm not sure how Yin did this, but if you'd like, you can look up the equation for a simple bezel(sp?) curve, like those used in Flash and other graphics editing progs.

You can modify it to suit MD by using sample as the length constraint.

[someusername]

hey krash, can't check it out atm, (in a hurry) will reply as soon as possible...

[Phat]

Bezier curve is correct I think, Zylot.

[someusername]

Krash, the preset needed some movement, but this is getting serious! There's no point in analysing the math behind wave4 (it's the relatively-upper half of a rotating ellipse with a non constant center and radii), the important thing is a lot of assumptions had to be made to reach to those equations.
About wave4, what exactly do you have in mind? If you want it to run through (phenomenally) all six electrons at every frame, i'll agree with zylot and phat on using b-splines. however this would look somehow unnatural (otherwise you'd have to sort the electrons with respect to distance between them and run through them in an appropriate natural-looking order. I think that's 120 permutations (120==factorial of (6-1)==5!==some other time!!!)
On the other hand, if you wanted the wave to run through the actual 3 electrons appearing on a specific frame, i think i can work the math out but i'll need some time and i'm not promising anything. it won't be easy (it's an 8X8 non linear equation system) but i can always try.

[ You can see there was a good reason these electrons were synchronized in the first place! ]

Tell me what you think, i'll keep in touch

edit: it's a quite different preset indeed. i thought it would be boring but it's ok afterall

[Krash]

Zylot: I'm ALIVE!!!! bwahahaha

I still check the board a couple times a week, but I haven't been motivated to produce anything for a long time. It's now 4.5 years since I've done any mathematics at all, other than MD, and I find that without fancy math (like yin's, basically), all the presets start looking same-y (good, but repetetive).

Yin: I was just thinking to draw the spline with the three real electrons. As the x/y co-ords get swapped every frame, the end result would be two arcs, each connecting three electrons.

Everyone else: once this preset is done, it seems ripe for some nice after-effects to be added in, I'm sure you'll all have a play with the values to get something tasty.

Oh, and I posted a mod to shifter-witchcraft in the bottom of another thread - not sure if anyone noticed or not. I've tweaked it a little since then, for some more movement.

- Krash

[Krash]

One thing I thought of, but quickly abandoned due to the complexity of recoding the whole preset, was to turn the orbits into three dimensional defined paths, so I could rotate the whole thing in 3d if I wanted to.

On a similar note, someone who was good with physics could use custom waves to spit out a preset that looked like on e of these: http://www.officeplayground.com/galaxy.html
I'm sure you've all seen them. Would be pretty cool, I think, and a good exercise in generating the equations - giving the rings a gravitational tug on each other, rather than being spun by the torsion in the string - could be intriguing.

I don't think I'm up to it, but it could be cool

- Krash

[shifter]

Krash, nice remix, but witchcraft was originally by fishbrain, i just played with the colours and stuff

[Krash]

really?
I never found the fishbrain version
oh well =P

- Krash

[someusername]

krash, it's ready, at least my part!!! I just logged in to upload it and saw your reply. We were talking about the same thing after all.
I hope you like it, it gave me a little bit of a hard time, not with deriving the equation for the wave curve but with deciding which parts of it should be visible in the end! (i have a natural tendency to make things hard when they're not!) I used an equation for a circle that passes through 3 predefined points, there's always one with that property, and then tried to find arcs of minimum length among the electrons and display those. It took me a good 6 hours but i think it's worth it. i also included "state snapshots" of it in the zip so you can see the progress.
The last file (004) contains some comments, thought it would be useful in case anyone wants to tweak it. what else??? oh yeah, i used the same concept for the wave's opacity as in the original (subtle with pulses upon beats) if you want to change it, you might want to keep the last couple of lines in the per-pixel code: d=... and a=... They "erase" the part of the wave that runs through the core beacuse echo_zoom causes it to appear magnified out of nowhere somewhere else on the screen. you must have noticed that.
anyway, math and physics in presets is always nice but they require a lot of calculations and coding and code space seems to be limited after all! Check the "under destruction" file in the zip, it's a version of my "Survival of the fastest" i began writing, with both linear and angular effects. I left it in the middle 'cause if you try to write anything more in the per-frame code you'll get a "String too long!" error message and the preset is not even 1/10th yet of what i had in mind!
you see, certain things are really intriguing but some times it's better to stick to the subject.

That's it for now (wow, these replies sure grow big really fast!), tell me what you think.

Yin

[someusername]

edit: Great remix of witchcraft (i 've never seen fishbrain's original too) shifter's remix is also awesome.

[Zylot]

Yeah, fishbrain started it all. Also, I saw that alreayd, you posted it under a different name, Illumination

[fiShbRaiN]

Hey dudes!

Too busy... no internet at home... (no bloody phone at home!)

Some great stuff from all! Love the witchcraft remix
I'm getting inspired again by this activity... though its all getting very "mathsy" isnt it?

Wish I was here more often

So, here's my lame-ass "Not quite dead pack" (mostly remixes)

* betelguese (hyperdrive remix)
LOL - if it aint broke, dont fix it... this seemed to be a popular preset and i was almost frightened to remix it... but i did... so here it is
* digital washclock (binary sandwich remix)
* one step beyond (alien remix)
* quark matrix
* witchcraft (metropolis remix)
* witchcraft (ritual dance remix)
* witchcraft
yes, been flattered by and very fond of ALL witchcraft remixes (that scrolling parchment rocks!) so here is the original


Cheers all,

Keep on milking the milkdrop!!!....
(Hope to return one day with some more inspiring stuff)

[*note:
I actually wrote a program to dismantle a monochrome bitmap and create milkdrop code to draw it up in a custom wave... got very excited... but the .milk file it generates is too big for milkdrop ... ]

[Krash]

nice one, yin. That's pretty much how I'd imagined it. sweet.

- Krash

[someusername]

Krash, thanks, it's yours now. i'll be waiting to see it posted when you're done with it.

fishbrain, what exactly do you mean about the mono-bitmap/custom wave program? Btw, some of your presets are really great and original too, well done

[Phat]

Correct me if I'm wrong fishbrain, but I think he means its a program that takes a gray scale image, and makes a .milk file with custom waveform code in the shape of the image.

Very cool idea btw...

[someusername]

(actually i was hoping to see something like "i was joking!") I'm a noob with 1.04, how is that possible?

edit: if it is possible to load a bitmap into milkdrop this effectively means that you can have arrays of whatever sort of previously saved data (that can't be recreated procedurally) passed into milkdrop and use them with custom waves. (You can even create bump effects-with additive drawing on) This would turn the world upside down!!! (unless i'm already upside down and don't have a f... clue!)

[Zylot]

Yin: He is writing a program that looks at the grey image, and turns it into milkdrop code.

then you can import it using the 1,04 custom wave import export things that hardly ever work for me oops did I say that knthnx

s'probably my fault anyways, but you got the idea

[someusername]

sorry zylot, i don't get the idea! (ok, i'm stupid, so shoot me!) For someone who doesn't know what you're talking about, it sounds like you can actually "paste" an entire bitmap anywhere you want you want on screen.
If you just mean that you can predefine a SINGLE y-point-value (and color/opacity) for every x-point-value in the custom wave, i know this is theoretically possible.(though it would produce enormous files and it's use is pretty much limited)
However if we're talking about the first case -covering rectangles on the screen with a bitmap- i'd like to know more about it (with a little bit more details please!!!)

[fiShbRaiN]

Yeah, Phat knows what I'm talking about methinks...

My original idea was actually pretty primitive, quite simple, and not particularly elegent...

hmmm... I hope this makes some sort of sense...

..a huge list of "conditions" based on the current "sample" value (i.e. 0 -> 255) which draws horizontal vectors ("scanlines") to create the original bipmap...
(inspired by E.Os(?) "error" and "fear usa").

e.g., "Hi" as

= = =
= =
=== =
= = =
= = =

I haven't actually examined "fear usa" and "error" presets, but I gather that the most compact method would be to convert the bitmap (from binary) to decimal numbers and to perform bitwise operations.

As far as I know milkdrop can't use procedures or functions (if it can you better tell me pronto !!!) And so in my experience coding stuff in milkdrop can sometimes involve some convoluted logic/statements... but I gather milkdrop wasnt designed as a full-on procedural programming language (which is fair enough).

[fiShbRaiN]

Yeah, Phat knows what I'm talking about methinks...

My original idea was actually pretty primitive, quite simple, and not particularly elegent...

hmmm... I hope this makes some sort of sense...

..a huge list of "conditions" based on the current "sample" value (i.e. 0 -> 255) which draws horizontal vectors ("scanlines") to create the original bipmap...
(inspired by E.Os(?) "error" and "fear usa").

e.g., "Hi" as

= = =
= =
=== =
= = =
= = =

I haven't actually examined "fear usa" and "error" presets, but I gather that the most compact method would be to convert the bitmap (from binary) to decimal numbers and to perform bitwise operations.

As far as I know milkdrop can't use procedures or functions (if it can you better tell me pronto !!!) And so in my experience coding stuff in milkdrop can sometimes involve some convoluted logic/statements... but I gather milkdrop wasnt designed as a full-on procedural programming language (which is fair enough).

[someusername]

I get the concept, i've given it a little thought myself these days, and came to the conclusion that it could be done using "sample value" conditions. I still don't get, however, why the bitmap has to be a monochrome one (2 or 8 bits?) and i assume you only draw one scanline per frame (unless you mean very small bitmaps). Anyway, too bad it won't work anyway because of the file size limit, it would be very interesting too see it in action.

[Zylot]

what is the size limit, anyways?

[fiShbRaiN]

well, the bitmap doesnt HAVE to be monochrome...

I though it would be simpler to start this way.. 2 colors, use the background as transparent...

1) the resulting "picture" would look more accurate (than a colour bitmap) when rendered as scanlines 2) less "sample" points would be used (in the custom wave), i.e. you could use a bigger bitmap than if you used a colour bitmap.

[PieturP]

@Fishbrain:

Fear USA and Error are actually mine, but (and I really agree) E.Os is a great author as well... !

The thing I do is to convert a 'bitmap' of 4x4 pixels into a bigger block of 'pixels'. The way I do it is very basic and not very fast.
I've managed to do some huge ammounts of 'if constructions' of those 'bitmaps' into a ASCII kind a way to actually construct characters, and to build texts with those characters. I've succeeded, but not very well.. To actually build characters, one could better use vectors to draw lines... see Shifters thousand monkeys thing (RESPECT!)

The problem is that 4x4 is not enough to build real characters. If one would like to make even bigger bitmaps, it would cost *REAL* loads of coding....

I'll post my other bitmap-text-presets real soon! (I even got to put some texts in a 'Rovastar Harlequin's' kinda way ... keep an eye on this forum )

[PieturP]

Overall I think that building real images with colours & stuff, won't 'render' fast enough to actually look like something (I did over 240 'if ecuations' in a per_point frame and did'nt get to manage to get another wave to do the same thing...) ... but hey... try to convince me!

[fiShbRaiN]

PieturP:

My apologies...

Yeah, using heaps of "if"s was what I tried... LOL.. obviously too many "if"s.. milkdrop didn't like it.

There is no other way? Correct? (Other than lots of "if" statements testing what "point" in the sample is currently being rendered)

Has anyone managed to implement any recursive algorithms? I have a feeling it would be ugly, but possible. I know many have used texture mapped shapes to get fractals, but has anyone drawn recursive/fractal shapes using only the custom waveforms?

[shifter]

I used a pretty basic fractal tree thing for that 'robotopia' preset.. but i did it the hard way, lots of predefined values

If you do work out a more efficient way of doing them, definetely post it, i want to try making 3d fractals

[PieturP]

A way to prevent loads of ifs:


i=0;
i=equal(counter,1)*20+i;
i=equal(counter,2)*10+i;
i=equal(counter,3)*15+i;
i=equal(counter,4)*30+i;
etc...

But I don't know if this is really faster anyway..

[shifter]

hmm.. i used those kind of statements for the thousand monkeys thing..

if you just wanted to do a two-colour image, you could optimise it a bit like gif images do, instead of:

a = equal(counter,1) + equal(counter,3) + equal(counter,4) + equal(counter,5);

use

a = equal(counter,1) + above(counter,2)*below(counter,6);

and so on.. might save a bit of space if you had lots of horizontal lines

if you really wanted to get into it, use two different counters for x and y..

[shifter]

come to think of it, you could also use that kind of compression to make an image with a few colours.. just multiply the 'a' value by a set number for each rgb set you want to use, then have a couple of 'if' statements at the end to decode it..

[PieturP]

That's called colormapping... (sounds like back in the old days...)

[PieturP]

Finally!

At my GeForce 2 MX 400, this thing (imgicon) is too slow; around 11Fps but hey, it's a start!

[fiShbRaiN]

PieturP!

WOOHOO!! Nice work on imgicon!!