Stacked MSG Procedural Shape Animation

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Stacked MSG Procedural Shape Animation

In yesterday’s post we used 2 temporal generators to build a procedural shape animation from a MSG preset. The preset was based on the 1C Abstract5 processor. Today we use 3 different stacked instances of this processor in a single MSG preset with 3 temporal generators to build a more complex time varying shape animation.

We mentioned in yesterday’s post that the 1C Abstract5 processor overlays it’s generated shape on top of it’s input image stream. So you can either stack multiple instances of the 1C Abstract5 processor on the same image stream, or you can route the different 1C Abstract5 processors to different color channel streams to build more complex visual effects.

For this particular example we used 3 different 1C Abstract5 processors, one for each of the 3 color channels associated with a MSG preset’s color image output (R Out, G Out, B Out). The image gallery below shows the different processor’s IO (input-output) routing that was used to build the overall MSG preset effect. We start off by generating a flat gray colored image in the R Out stream (SetToValue processor). We then use that image stream as the input for the 3 1C Abstract5 processors, which output respectively to the B Out, G Out, and R Out streams. I ordered the output IO routing for the 3 processors in that order so that I would not override the flat gray R Out image stream until the 3rd 1C Abstract5 processor was run. A ForceColorMap processor was used to colorize the final full color effect a little by mapping to through a color palette.

Two Ramp temporal generators were attached to the A and B editable parameters of the 3 1C Abstract5 processors. The same TG Min, TG Max, And TG Increment settings were used for the 3 processors. The only different parameter setting for the 3 processors was the R parameter. We mentioned yesterday that these 3 parameters (A, B, and R) adjust an internal shape generating math equation in the processor module to produce smoothly varying different shapes.

So the procedurally animating shapes cycle over time in synch, but with varying appearance. I did this on purpose so that the shape evolution and associated movement from the 3 processors would stay in synch over the course of the animation. You could change this by varying the TG settings and other processor parameters to create a totally different kind of shape animation evolution over time.

The image gallery above shows off the parameter settings for each of the 3 1C Abstract5 processors. So we’re generating an animation with 3 slightly different variations of yesterday’s procedurally animating 1C Abstract5 processor. Procedurally animating multiple processors that work together to build an overall visual effect is a way to build increasing visual complexity into the resulting animation output.

I rendered out the finished animation the same as yesterday’s post. I opened a new Movie Stream, set the Stream Write Flag to Enable Write on Op End, and then ran the MSG preset in loop action mode until I generated enough animation output into the open Movie Stream. I then stopped loop action by pressing the space bar key, and closed the open movie stream. The finished animation can be seen here.

Category: MSG

Tags: procedural animation temporal generator

Stacked MSG Procedural Shape Animation

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