New preset / mashup with ORB & Flexi code - Star Forge

[Fumbling_Foo]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum here. Milkdrop has some of my favorite music visualizations by far, and I am getting my toes wet into making presets with the awesome mashup feature. As a newbie to preset making as well, I hope that I have cited my sources properly in making this preset.

ORB's Acid Cycle Gas Giant mesmerized me, and I wondered what if I could capture that beautiful waveform and emphasize it. Well, when fiddling around with some mashups, I found Flexi's "Infused with the spiral," and its warp shader worked perfectly to do this. With a couple more lines of code from more of ORB's work, I can to realize beyond my wildest dreams an ideal I had for a brightly-themed preset - a star. Hence, the name.

The preset works optimally at 30fps at 2560 x 1440, but I've included a version for 1920 x 1080 as well.

Enjoy!

Edit: sometimes the visual gets a bit color averaged out by one of the processing filters. Lower resolutions can intensify this artifact. I wish I could fix this and keep the effect but I'm not sure how.

[Fumbling_Foo]

v2

Revised version with improved beat detection and visuals.

Edit: This version, although it still does have different "management" of the fire at different resolutions, works best around and above 1080p.

[Sabine Klare]

Hello Fumbling_Foo,

I have just downloaded also Your newest .milk-file. The previous 2 .milk-files are very good, and I am sure, also this one will be very good.

We are true fans of the Winamp Player and the Milkdrop Visualizer, and with the newest preset I will have 9771 presets in the presets folder. Also I have now 3948 random textures and 2609 Winamp Skins in use, with 1.94 GB of my Winamp folder, for my perfect performances. I use 22 subfolders in my Milkdrop2 folder, because I use also images for some Modern Skins, wallpaperscprokao has 650 .jpg-files and wallpapersdesktop has 480 .jpg-files now.

We both want to hope, that we can see the Milkdrop Visualizer also in the future.

Although I didn't see the newest preset yet, I want to say already: Keep up Your good work!...

BTW, the current monitor for my PC has 1920x1200 pixel, and the display of my current notebook has 1600x900 pixel.

[Fumbling_Foo]

Thanks for the compliments Klare and sorry about the delay, I wanted to wait until I had v3 ready! WOW, that's a lot of presets. I only have the stock presets to draw from currently, as unfortunately when I try the http://www.milkdrop.co.uk/ website all I get is a page image of an erased chalkboard.

And, without further ado, attached is Star Forge v3, MASSIVELY overhauled after extensive testing. Its now extremely psychedelic and may not be safe for viewers with epilepsy. The preset should hopefully look the same with different resolutions and settings. I hope everyone enjoys . Live strong milkdrop!

[Sabine Klare]

If the newest one is in the presets folder this evening, then these will be 9881 presets, together with 4020 textures in the textures folder and 2620 skins in the skins folder. And then I have to run again the Winamp Info Tool and update again on Mediafire in the following days, which I do for the promotions...

Don't worry about me, I have NO epilepsy, only many depressions because Frank and I are attacked so much with problems. But I can relax very well, if I am on the couch with the Beyerdynamic DT-990 Pro headphones and if I have Winamp running on my notebook. On my PC sometimes I do the editings of presets after doing the right-click on the icon and "Start as administrator", also I update the lists with the Winamp Info Tool there.

Today I have Classical Music running in the meeting-point. Mostly I listen to Ambient Dub and Dub Techno, which is the perfect music for the Milkdrop Visualizer, the best music visualizer in this world, together with the best media player...

[Fumbling_Foo]

I hate to hear that you have to deal with depression, but I also suffer from depression with having schizo-affective disorder. Perhaps a little creativity is coming along with my madness, hehe. I wish you well with your depression, cheers m8 .

You must have a very nice setup going with those DT-990 , I'm an audiophile as well and I have a pair of T-90's myself. Its unfortunate that my amplifier went out and I'm using computer audio, but hopefully I'll be able to afford one that I've been eyeing up for a while.

Working on Star Forge and witnessing its evolution has been very exciting, and now I can say that I have accomplished what I have sought for the preset. Building upon the refinements of previous versions, v4 features corrected magenta dominance and greatly upgraded visuals, full screen area utilization, greater employment of martin's beat detection, and greater overall dynamics.

I don't have any plans for a version 5 at this point, but authoring presets has been very fun and I may continue on other ideas. Thanks to everyone who's checked out my presets .

[Fumbling_Foo]

I've attached are some of my favorite screenshots from various builds. Results will vary based on the music played. I've also uploaded a slightly tweaked version that subtly improves upon the center design and the presence of the outer ring.

[Sabine Klare]

And then as next v4b...

I have downloaded also the screenshots. And this evening I will have again the URL "linein://" running and my .wav-files with my spoken words in Goldwave as backward versions. I had recorded me via a microphone some days ago...

[Fumbling_Foo]

That sounds cool Kare, hopefully my preset looked pretty cool and went with the audio hehe .

And now, at long last, I present a significantly revised v4, Star Forge v5 . More colorful yet better defined, punchier yet more balanced, more dynamic yet smoother and still consistent, v5, although sharing the look of v4, is improved overall in several ways. In short, if you've liked v4, you will LOVE v5.

Unlike many other presets that look awesome but simply react to the beat in a one-note fashion, Star Forge v5 is now a beast that devours music. Although Star Forge won't transform into a flaming unicorn galloping across a heavenly rainbow, from gospel to death metal and everything in-between, v5 will still be a treat because it tenaciously grips the soul of the song and transforms it into pure eye candy. V5, like v4, can even better provide literally a movie of unique, screenshot-worthy frames, and its even more impressive in motion with music.


Edit: Could a mod help me change the topic title to "New Preset with martin's beat detection - Star Forge"?

[Sabine Klare]

Hello Fumbling_Foo,

I have just downloaded them.

And yesterday I had my 50th birthday, and You can imagine, that I had also very good music running in Winamp. No birthday without Winamp...

Of course I saw also some of Your presets, when I had all presets in Shuffle Mode. This evening these will be 9887 Milkdrop Presets (one more preset)...

[j303]

Hi,
NEw user here looking for some interesting presets to add to my collection. For some reason I can't access your attachment. All I get is a 403 Forbidden error. Can't seem to find any reasons why, does someone form the admin side need to activate something? OR do I need to make a couple of posts firsts perhaps?

[Fumbling_Foo]

Hi j303 , welcome to the forums and thank you so much for taking an interest in my work .

I just tested downloading a couple of the latest attachments (incl. the v5 .milk) and no issues on this end. This is the first time I've heard of an error downloading attachments here, so hopefully its a transient issue as it should be possible to download attachments without being signed in as well.

Edit: also check out the preset bundle topic I just posted. I've had a chance to scope out a few of the presets and some are quite spectacular.

Edit 2: Oh, and happy belated 50th birthday Klare . Having you keep my company on the forums has help keep me going on the starforge project. Many thanks !

[j303]

Thanks for the welcome and getting back to me

Unfortunately I can't get the attachments to work in any browser so perhaps something is broken on the forum side (for new users). You wouldn't mind posting (or sending in pm) a dropbox link or something similar?

[Fumbling_Foo]

PM Sent

[Fumbling_Foo]

Its been very fun working on Star Forge, especially to see how much I've been able to develop it from the original concept, but I must admit that I'm starting to get a bit burned out with preset authoring . For me to develop the preset any further would be extremely difficult, because I still don't understand enough about how the code works to do 3D effects or introduce another layer of processing to the warp shader / per vertex.

Nevertheless, that's all fine and well though, because although I came here as a total newbie, the amount of effort I've put into this one preset shows. I never really liked going "wow" at a preset for 30 or so seconds and then shuffling to the next during the same song; instead, I searched for presets that would entertain for at least the whole song. So, that is the inspiration for Star Forge, and the latest update caps off the preset as a unique masterpiece. At least among the default presets, its the only one that my family and I have been able to watch for even hours at a time and never get bored, and its the only one I've seen where you can take literally hundreds of screenshots and every single one be beautiful and unique. So, I must also admit that I am proud to have made Star Forge. With milkdrop2, even a newbie can make a masterpiece with enough time and effort .

The latest revision has been solid for about a couple of weeks, so there probably won't be any core updates to Star Forge in the near future. I have attached the update with a couple of finishing touches on the preset, along with a couple of comp shader variations from the default preset "Flexi, martin + geiss - dedicated to the sherwin maxawow". So, as always, enjoy .

I also have some mashups and edits lying around, but if I'm not completely burnt out on preset authoring I should continue with those and perhaps find another project to start.


Edit: j303 found that if the preset doesn't work, try removing these lines from the beginning of the file:

MILKDROP_PRESET_VERSION=201
PSVERSION=2
PSVERSION_WARP=2
PSVERSION_COMP=2

Although, when I removed them myself the warp shader didn't apply.