My complete collection

[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!

[Nitorami]

Just one preset after quite a long break...

[Cope]

Very cool, I like the different effects you can get by changing a few values in the shaders.

I'm curious though, how do you come up with shader code like this? Random experiments? It seems like some of it is tweaked just right, and those tweaks are the difference between a nice effect and something that looks like nothing.

[Nitorami]

Well observed, I spent quite a few hours on fine tuning. This is more or less try and error but with a certain systematic in it.
Normally the warp shader is the critical one and easily blurs to white or fades to black. Once I have found a nice combination of shaders, I disable the comp shader and try various parameters on the warp shader. It's just easier to see the effect without the comp shader getting in the way. Then turn the comp shader on and see what can be done here.

The movement and zoom effects are largely down to the comp shader, and adjusting these parameters also takes a lot of time. I find it difficult to get these right. Once it looks fine, I try different music and suddenly it appears to be too wild and shaky, or too slow and predictable... so readjust the parameters or control them in an altogether different way... while of course one preset will never fit all music styles.

I want my presets to be reasonably non repetitive, so I use a number of parameters which are either not synchronised such as sin (k1*t), sin (k2*t) etc., or are clocked by the beat in a pattern that will not repeat quickly, such as my vars q27 and q28, where q27 is incremented by the beat and q28 is incremented when q27 goes through 16 or similar. I used this excessively, in the predecessor of infinity, ludicrous speed, which will virtually never repeat.

Tweaking never ends, and often you will have new ideas for the warp shader (which has just been finished), for instance by changing the global zoom variable. This is critical because not all previously tried and tested parameter combinations may go well with this new variable, and e.g. under certain circumstances cause white screen.

Just got another idea to maky infinity more interesting, simply insert factor q5 in the middle of the comp shader, so it reads float dist = frac(-q9+1.0*n/anz*q5);

[Flexi]

hey martin i know very well what you mean.
Nice preset again! (as usual )
usually i begin with the warp shader and then go for the composition part. When I'm going to the comp shader i mostly only do minor edits to the warp. This may also come because you can't do really complex stuff with 64 operations. But this year of being limited to 64 operations was too cool to learn some efficient code tricks. I saw most of your work for the first time just a few days ago and they are all so inspiring. The butterflies are just ! I also neglected all the state driven stuff like different modes to change on beats but focused on fluid, naturally flowing and mostly analog control loops.
but then again there are not very much variables for so complex dynamic systems. the most simple particle in 2D uses 4 variables. And in every one of them i see a dimension. Basically Milkdrop is capable of visualizing a ~30D space. normally we say we're familiar to 2D or 3D, but there are also those hidden ones which represent relationships between objects. that's what i am interested in.

but what am i saying - what would the world be without multiplexer?
Order to the chaos - et voila: Infinity. (and vice versa. Hail Eris!)
*very strange worlds on my mind now* (in a positive manner)

exploring Hilbert space = lerp'ing between different linear and nonlinear spaces.
Martin, you did some impressive 3D tilts on planes.
And I showed how to do logarithmic spirals and Möbius transformations.
Now that i have the complexity too i guess it's time to build some conjunctions between them.
But uh, i guess i talk too much again

... remember my words, i'll be back!

[Cope]

Well the hard work definitely shows Sometimes I seem to hit a road block in a preset, but a few days later I'll pick it up again and have it looking pretty decent after all. The neat thing about tweaking is that it can turn a single effect into dozens of presets that all look very different.

I'm off for a week or so for christmas holidays. So merry christmas everyone

[Phat]

Check this out...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkdrop

[Saint Goody]

Originally posted by Phat
Check this out...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkdrop

uhh... what about it?

That infinity preset is absolutely kickass by the way.

[Flexi]

[Saint Goody]

edit: sonofabitch...

[Nitorami]

One more

[Flexi]

one more remix

i just had to try that and it's cool. the 3D effect is gone, but it gives a nice mosaic as i find.

edit: Martin recommended a minor color enhancement to the file, it's a bit more shiny now

[Cope]

the layered effect is very cool, like an acid trip

you guys both need to write some tutorials explaining the theory behind presets like these, because when I look at them I'm in awe, but when I look at the shader code the awe turns to an unclamped variable awe+confusion which seems to increase linearly to infinity

[Nitorami]

Well, I would do this if I weren't so lazy after a day in the office... Hope I'll psyche myself up sooner or later. However feel free to ask a specific question - would be easier for me to answer than a global "how does this all work" ?

There is not much of a theory, just a few basic transformations which are fairly easy to understand.

[Nitorami]

here we go

[Flexi]

atmospheric - i love the sky.

here, i donate you my first association: Moby - we are all made of stars

[Nitorami]

yeah, more stars

[Saint Goody]

Oh holyshit, that one's unbelievable...

[Cope]

Originally posted by Nitorami
Well, I would do this if I weren't so lazy after a day in the office... Hope I'll psyche myself up sooner or later. However feel free to ask a specific question - would be easier for me to answer than a global "how does this all work" ?

There is not much of a theory, just a few basic transformations which are fairly easy to understand.

ah yeah, I understand. I think what throws me off in these presets is that there's usually several different effects put together, and sometimes I find it tough to separate them. the short comments in the code are always helpful though.

I don't know how it is for anyone else, but when I'm looking at the math in a preset like skywards (very cool as always ) I can't make heads or tails of it. it's only after I spend some time commenting out some lines, or changing values in them, that they start to make sense. for example, there's a line in the comp shader for skywards,

rad2 = abs(rad2b*uv1.x)*q30;

commenting this out turns the skyscrapers into a single tunnel, so then I can say "ah hah, so this line just turns the tunnel inside out" and the preset makes just that much more sense. from there the next battle is following the variables backward through the code to see how they do it.

actually part of the reason I'm writing these articles on the wiki is for me to learn a little more about how the shaders work, and if it helps other people at the same time that's great

by the way, skywards reminds me of unconed's presets from the old winamp AVS

[Nitorami]

It's the same for me in principle, I really have difficulties to reverse engineer other's codes, and therefore rather write my own from scratch.

I imagine the warp shader output as a piece of paper with a pattern on it. It can be displayed 1:1, but it can also be folded into a square tunnel or rolled up to a tube etc. That is what the transformations do; simply start with uv1 = uv-5 to get zero in the middle and than apply transformations to uv1. In the simplest example

float2 uv1 = uv-.5;
float2 uv2 = float2(atan2(uv1.x,uv1.y), 1/length(uv1));
ret = GetPixel(uv2);

the paper would be rolled to a tube which extends to infinity into z-direction, i.e. in viewing direction. If we add the time to one of the components of uv2, the tube will either start to move in z-direction, or rotate. Which means, by the transformation we have replaced x,y by angle and radius.

Instead of the length of 1/length(uv1), which is rotational symmetric, we can use other formulae, e.g.

1/(abs(uv1.x)+abs(uv1.y))

will create a square tunnel. Simply play with it and see what happens.
To make it more interesting, you may wish to add additional effects, for instance you can overlay the tube picture with a planar view GetPixel(uv) etc., or, as in skywards, mask out the tunnel from a certain depth on and replace it by stars or whatever.

[Cope]

ahhh see I never thought of it that way, that the warp shader is like a piece of paper. seems so obvious now that you pointed it out!

I'll do some experimenting with this new insight later today

[Nitorami]

Just a few more

[Flexi]

these trees are awesome. great work as usual.

[Amandio C]

Magic and oniric as usual. I must say that it was martin's work that drove me deeper into this thing. Thank you for the inspiration.

[ShadowHarlequin]

came up with this quick mashup from that last pack posted with some work might be a pretty cool preset

[Nitorami]

Yeah, just haven't got the time to play with it right now - I'm off to a diving course for three weeks.
Just wanted to send something I just more or less finished. The code needs some tidying up though, but I urgently need some sleep now.
Just hope I won't meet any such creatures

[Stahlregen]

HOLY CRAP! That is beyond awesome.
I just hope it won't haunt me in my dreams.

Actually, I was just passing by to drop of these mashed up remixes of your presets... might need some more work, but at 3:30 am, I don't think I'm capable of diving deeper into your code - and speaking of diving, have fun with your course!

[Flexi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y4v0ajLYZc&fmt=18

martin, where did you meet this creepy creature? what's its story? Or better, how did it find you?

Take a dive into the sea of chaos and bring some fresh inspiration.

Spoiler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_humanoid

[Nitorami]

Thank you.
The way the beast found me was merely incidential, when I suddenly discovered a creepy face in a mirrored texture. It was gone a second later, but I thought why not help things by artificially modelling the main features of a face. Then I added a perspective in the comp shader as used previously in the Isengard preset, plus reflections. Added a distortion in the warp shader as used for cloud experiments before, and the result look very convincing. The code integrates add-ons very easily ... for instance the blood drooling from the mouth is just a shape, and so is the excrescence on the forehead.

It was difficult to find adequate movements, and the lighting. Shedding light on the whole screen would spoil the atmosphere, while too little light will get on your nerves. Also the light should convey a certain nervosity without flickering all the time. Had intended to add many more variations evolving over time, such as the shape of the eyes etc. but haven't got the time, will be picked up any minute now. Back in three weeks hopefully.

[Stahlregen]

See you in three weeks then - meanwhile, another pack of mashups.

[Flexi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcWfGmzB85Q&fmt=18

[Nitorami]

A few more.

[Amandio C]

Amazing work. On silent paths is magical.

[Nitorami]

crystal alley

[51Strong]

Truly amazing works of art Nitorami.

[Nitorami]

Silent cathedral