My complete collection

[Sherwin Maxawow]

By the way, Nitorami.......I hope you dont mind me putting you so HIGH UP on a "pedestal" the way I just did?

I hope you dont feel too special, or something like that.....which I could understand. I am sure you wouldnt want to outshine everyone else too much, and so forgive me if I am going a bit overboard in my compliments towards you.

There are so many good artists. I often sometimes miss some of the more simplistic Geiss originals.


Have you (Nitorami) considered elaborating on presets----specifically new generation presets like geiss's - "Cauldron painterly-4 and 5" which deserved a higher default rating than they had originally in the WA download pack. They were rated a measly 1 or 2 I think.....yet I not only re-rated them to a "5" but I also made several copies of Painterly 4 & 5 just because they are worth it!
Just like I mades multiple copies of most of yours....and many other classic presets from other authors.


I would just like to see more done with "Painterly" especially 4 & 5......because how cool is it to see the musical beats making "shadowed mountains" ?

There are of ccourse so many other presets I could talk about, giving you all my 'two or three cents' worth of opinions and suggestions. But I dont have time for a reply so long that it should be made into a book!

Thanks for all the fresh MILK! Keep the beauty flowing!

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A NEW (Sherwin Maxawow)THREAD is "COMING SOON!" --- keep an eye out!

Sneak Preview: Sherwin Maxawow, talking all about the future of "digital art", and Milkdrop; Plus- WHY Milkdrop is still the BEST. And much MUCH MORE!

Those comments and much more in the next ISSUE!

[Nitorami]

Funky illusions

That one was tough, but I think it is finally mature to be published... very shader heavy unfortunately, so you'll need a punchy video card - don't think it's much fun in fullscreen mode on a notebook. My desktop GeForce 7600 is ok for windowed mode, but in fullscreen 1280x1024 I just about manage to get 22fps, which is a fairly rough ride.
Sorry for the loading time - a second or so - which is a nuisance but seems to be required for compilation.

Probably needless to mention but just in case - don't forget to copy the .jpg into your \textures folder.

Martin

[Phat]

I like this, good work

[Sherwin Maxawow]

BRAVO, Nitorami!

You said this was a bit tough? Is there any easy way you can explain what was tougher about this one?

I only hope that, with all things considered and in all your time and effort you invest making presets for Milkdrop.......that your reward and creative satisfaction is worth it.....and outweighs anything else!

I mean, I just hope you always follow your true heart.....and keep that path clear inside. Not to get to preachy or spiritual.
But your work is truly unique among other preset "ARTISTS"---(an "author" is someone who writes stories in a book)--- and when you mention how this last preset was a bit "tough" to create........I can only wonder what you must mean by that???

Please tell me, (if you would)....do you go into creating a preset having a specific "vision" in mind first? Or an idea of what you want to do, and then set out to to make that basic idea or vision a reality as best as you can on the screen? Or is it more of a play it as you kind of thing?
I just wonder how your creative process works.....especially regarding presets for MD? Is that an OK question to ask you?
Have you analyzed your own creative process in depth?

Its just fascinating to me, as I wonder about it.


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PS. Sorry I have not been around much. Lots of stuff on my life's plate right now. But the funny thing is.....I am staying positive in it all! I hope you all are positive too.


Nitorami... I still plan to respond back to your PM, especially because I have some interesting things to share with you that I believe you will really appreciate! So just be patient, please. Its something I want to share with you......and so don't worry. I will write you back, sometime in the near future.

[Nitorami]

Ben

"tough" means I really struggled with the equations necessary to create the illusion of a fly between buildings, without nuisances getting in your way such as distortions, walls visible that should be hidden, mirrored textures, poor performance etc. I had planned something like this but it was really difficult to implement in milkdrop. Actually I wanted higher complexity, more than two copies of the buildings, but the frame rate would just drop unacceptably.

Milkdrop is based on a flat mesh and not made for 3D - you cannot define small surfaces as in game engines, but need to run through the whole uv-space for each single surface, and mask out what needs to be invisible. In this preset this is done 9 times (8 individual walls, plus the lava ground). Unfortunately the masking makes things even slower rather than faster, because the shaders always seem to run the whole code irrespective of any "if"-conditions or similar. Even the invisible parts will be calculated. I guess this has to do with the hardware structure which makes the calculation power possible in the first place.

I have not really, as you say "analysed my creative process" - sometimes I have an idea or "vision" I'd like to implement, sometimes it's just playing around. The night forest clearly was a vision, funky illusions as well, although the latter could not be done the way I had wished so I had to simplify it. I still needed quite some maths for it, and used a mathematical software to assist me with the matrix calculations.

Then, sometimes, I discover something interesting just by chance. Normally I would then still spend a few hours trying to fine tune it... which is not always a good idea, sometimes I found the next day that the original draft looked better than the one I had put a lot of work into. But then again, all of this is highly subjective, and there are days when I'm staring at the screen and only see annoying patterns which get on my nerves. It just needs to be fun.

And, I am getting bored quickly, which is why I try to make presets of quite different character, and try not to use the same shader too often. The best shader trick will look bland after you've seen a hundred versions of it.

Best
Martin

[Saint Goody]

I'll agree with you on the differing methods of working.

Personally I tend to just sit there and experiment and refine an effect endlessly also, the difference being that I tend to save and post most of my efforts into the forum - that is when I'm active.

I'm also curious to know what you think of my remixes of your Crystal Palace preset from long ago.

[Nitorami]

Better than the original, I say. However I can only reasonably see it in a small window otherwise the high number of iterations in the comp shader make my video card choke at 10 fps.

[Saint Goody]

Yeah. Like I said, I usually post them here before they are finished. In this case the finished effect would have been to remove the code for the dots and clean up what isn't used anymore. Having 16 iterations per output frame of code that is only partially used is bogging down parts of them.

The start of those was my desire learn to use the pixel shader code as the primary effect instead of a post effect, and from there I just kept on experimenting. So I've got you to thank for a lot more experiments of my own.

The Iris Bloom remix of it used some of what I've learned since then and I cleaned up the unused code a bit more.

What graphics card & cpu are you making these on?

[Nitorami]

Desktop AMD Athlon 3500+ with a Gainward GeForce 7600

[Saint Goody]

That's pretty much identical to my system except I'm running a pair of 7600GTs.

I find that I get a full 30fps on Iris Bloom though with SLI disabled. It uses 11 iterations in the composite shader.

...I just noticed something interesting. The FPS change significantly only at specific numbers of iterations. I get 30fps at everything below 16 iterations, but once I hit 17 it drops down to 20. I can raise the number of iterations all the way up to 21 after that and it will stay at 20 fps.

This is with SLi Disabled.

Would you mind taking a look and seeing if it does the same on your system?

[Nitorami]

No, it's more linear on my system. In desktop mode -

8 iterations = 25-28 fps
12 it - 21 fps
16 it - 17 fps

[Saint Goody]

hmmm... do you run Vista or XP?

Is that a 7600GT or 7600GS?

I'm a little confused about why we would be getting such drastically different fps on that preset.

[Nitorami]

XP. GT.

[Saint Goody]

I do notice that when the load preset menu is open or even when I have a lot of icons - I made a bunch of folders just to see - on desktop mode the FPS drops to 18-20 on 16 iterations. In fullscreen mode it doesn't seem to be affected by anything short of running a game or a render in UltraFractal.

Here are my complete system specs:
Abit an8-32x
Athlon64 3200+ oc'd to 2.3ghz
1gb DDR400 RAM at DDR333 CL 2-2-2-5-1T - Single Channel
2x 256mb Geforce 7600GTs oc'd at 600core/720Ram (SLi Disabled in these tests)

Vsync forced by driver on forceware 169.04.
Video BIOS 5.73.22.15.01

Windows XP Pro SP2.

[Flexi]

woah, the funky illusion preset is amazing. That's a great 3D effect!