Semester B: Week 29 Pt. 2
Student: Tai Ser Yeet (22064351)
Programme: BA (Hons)(SW) Digital Media Design
WEEK 29 Pt. 2
26/4/26
I still wasn't satisfied with the outcome of yesterday's attempt and really wanted to try again. Amidst my quest for inspiration, I found an artist on Instagram who mainly does work on Touch Designer and has done large-scale exhibitions to showcase her work. Unfortunately, she has not done any tutorials on the software, so it is going to be hard to understand the mechanics behind some of her pieces.
Link to her work: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWX7gfDjWpt/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
I was especially captivated by this floating light visual with patches of dense particles.
I found a tutorial on YouTube that might help me achieve this look, so I went for it.
The outcome wasn't very similar, but I was intrigued by what I already have, so I decided to stop there and started customising it to my liking by first changing its colour. The artist I mentioned earlier did a vortex effect and some sort of animation for her work, but I didn't know how, so I played around with the PointTransform and managed to get it rotating clockwise, creating an illusion of a vortex.
For example, the scale in the PointTransform TOP creates a vortex effect starting from a value of 0.999, although it is quite temperamental, as too high a value could cause the noise to create a spiralling effect, and it cannot recover to its original form.
I had an idea to combine the line visual from the pre-recorded dance video with this current yellow noise just to see what it would look like. Before that, I tweaked the parameters of the pre-recorded visual in Chromakey TOP to create a duplicated, ghost effect.
I continued exploring ways to create a more 3D particle effect and also tried an idea where the particles would disappear when my body is detected by the Kinect. That could be done by masking my entire body. It was so difficult using the noise TOP instead of the particlesGPU operator, but it is too late to switch to a different operator. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, I messed up the entire thing. It didn't show the streaks that I wanted after adding in the masking effects from my body.
Not giving up, I tried again, but this time, I omitted the displacement TOP from the front part of the network.
It worked! I also discovered that reducing the Period in the Noise TOP helped increase the visibility of the streaks.
I thought the yellow was too bright, so I changed the particles to a plain colour.
After rounds of experimentation, I ended up combining 5 different networks using a composite TOP to create the final outcome. The layers include:
- The noise particles (background)
- Pink streaks
- Fluid simulation light with hand tracking
- Pre-recorded dance
- Live dance using the Kinect v2 motion sensor
I still have doubts about whether this has too many layers and if they fit well with each other. Do I go with the approach of "Less is More" or be the Maximalist on this one?
Sound Effects
For the crucial layers, I picked out a sound effect that I believe matches the visuals well. I have attached the link below for reference:
1. Noise Particles Sound Effect: https://freesound.org/s/242721/
According to the creator, it is derived from small paper particles that burn from right to left, but I personally think it sounded like liquid with a bunch of bubbles.
2. Pre-recorded Dance Video: https://freesound.org/s/845462/
A 3-wick wood wick beeswax candle sizzles. Sound recorded on a Google Pixel.
Final Outcome