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Index
Creating
Loucid
Description
of Loucid
Loucid
Music
Loucid
Still Frames
Creating
Loucid
Loucid
is a five and a half minute 3D animated visual-music
video completed between December 2000 and January 2001.
The design of Loucid drew on a large body of
psychological research into mental imagery resulting from
musical stimuli. Such imagery can involve the perception
of containers, space, shape, size, colour, texture and
motion. The design of Loucid also took into
account the strengths and limitations of both 3D
animation technology and the video medium for
representing such material. This knowledge was
implemented within the design of the Loucid
animation via the imagination of the author during
repeated qualitative analyses of the music. The music
ultimately predetermined both the script and production
design of Loucid.
Loucid
begins with a thirty second synthesised section of music,
which was completed in Csound and Metasynth. The layers
include a Risset style endlessly rising tone, and choral
and field recordings manipulated using phase vocoding
techniques. Following the initial synthesised
introduction, music performed by a four piece ensemble
comprising, Drums, Bass, Guitar and Saxophone begins. The
3D animation was completed entirely within the Houdini 3D
animation software and made extensive use of the Houdini
channel operators (CHOPS) to analyse and treat the
musical parts for useful animation data. In contrast with
the previous piece Schwarzchild, Loucid
dealt with the imaging of live instrumentation rather
than midi instrumentation or Csound generated k-streams.
This was possible because as engineer of the music used
in the animation, the animator had access to the
multitrack master on which all musical parts were
preserved in an isolated form. Each of these parts was
processed through banks of filters and Fourier analysis
tools to extract the fundamental frequencies, amplitude
and spectral envelopes that were fed into the various
switches, counters, envelopes and other functions that
created the desired animation from the available raw data.
Therefore, as with the preceding work Schwarzchild,
no key frames were used in the animation, and except for
the camera motion, all animation was created
algorithmically. The camera movements were recorded in
real-time into Houdini in 35 sections with a standard
computer mouse, and then enveloped using CHOPS to achieve
smooth motion. Each of these 35 sections were then
plugged into a switch, which cut between camera moves at
predetermined beats. The output of this switch was then
enveloped to achieve the seamless snapping motion between
each move. A finer temporal resolution for rapid motion
and beat triggered events was achieved by rendering the
piece in fields. Loucid had it’s Australian
debut on the ABC’s rage on the 6th of
April 2001, and
was performed at the annual Australasian Computer Music
Conference - Waveform 2001 - on July 14th 2001.
Credits
Andrew D
Lyons - Animation
Stuart Soler
- Drums
Paul Boswell - Bass
Andrew J McLennan - Guitars
Andrew D Lyons - Saxophone and Synthesis
Music
recorded, mixed and mastered by Andrew D Lyons.
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Description
of Loucid
The
animation begins with an ascending journey towards a
bright light between two buckling walls. The viewer then
emerges within a cavernous space. This space expands and
contracts in time with the bass guitar's spectral content.
The dominant focal point within the cavern is the object
associated with the saxophone in the music. This strange
double-ended object appears to be like an old fashioned
egg timer on its side with a mouth at either end. As each
mouth articulates the saxophone parts in the music,
spindly arms embedded within the mouth weave the sound
out into the cavern like the legs of a spider spinning a
web. The shape of the mouth tightens as the saxophone
plays higher notes and the whole model moves and gestures
to accentuate the phrasing. The saxophone object is
ringed by a phalanx of snowflake like objects, which re-configure
with a new shape and in a new formation in synch with the
progression undertaken by the bass guitar. Streaks of
coloured light stream toward the camera from a distant
source through the far end of the space. These streaks
respond to the amplitude and fundamental pitch of the
electric guitar in the music. At lower frequencies these
streaks of light are deep red, but as the pitch of the
guitar rises they become orange , yellow, blue and
eventually white. More streaks emerge - and with a
greater initial velocity - the louder the guitar plays.
Throughout the piece the cavern and its contents are
illuminated by lights which respond dynamically to the
drumming in the music. At the crescendo of the music, the
cavernous space opens and flattens to become a beautiful
landscape under a distant blue supergiant star over which
the final bars of the music unfold.
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Loucid
Music
The music
for Loucid can be downloaded right
clicking here.
The Loucid animation should be made commercially
available at some stage in 2002, and will perhaps appear
on certain computer art collations during 2001. Details
concerning availabilty and public performances will be
posted here at such time.
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Loucid
Still Frames
Loucid was
field rendered to give a greater temporal resolution for
visual events (50Hz) during playback on PAL TV's and so
there is a noticeable offset between alternating
scanlines in some of these still images.
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