Name: Sanat Thukral
Student Number: D18129674
In this assigment have made 5 distinct visual art pieces which have been synced to music and compliment it creating a coherent and interactive experience for viewers. One of my aspirations for this assigment was to create variety in my visuals to showcase diversity and a unique perspective to shapes and abstract art. However, all visuals are cohesively connected through the music making it an interesting visual experience which is culminated through the power of code.
I'll explain my thought process and insipration for all of the visuals below with pictures for references below
##Visual 1:
The inspiration for this came from some of the visuals that I have seen in famous EDM music videos on Youtube. I wanted thsi visual to look somewhat like a Captain America's Shield and to some extent it does. I have tried to add a variety of colors that are synced with the visuals. There are some particles behind the main object to signify motion.
##Visual 2:
This visual was really fun to create. The inspiration was to have a 3d effect using 2d elements. This is made with a line object rather than any 3D object. However at a glance it looks 3d dimensonal. I used sin and cosin functions to attain this 3d effect. I also added some 3d boxes at the top and bottom that react to music. I wanted this to reporsent an hourglass and the main spiral in the middle to represent the movement of time. I my opinion it looks really cool :)
##Visual 3:
This visual shows a lorenz attractor which is an infinite form that is made through functions with preset values. I haven't created this design it was studied and discovered by Edward Lorenz, after whom it's named it looks pretty spectacular and I tried to make it reactive to the music. I initially tried to change values of points that I stored in the PVector array and the offset them by a change in amplitude. However, that idea didn't work out. Hence, I resorted to making it appear and disappear with the beat which also looks cool.
##Visual 4:
The centere visual is inspired by a sign from one of my all time favourite books, which is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I wanted to create that in 3d and make it reactive. It's pretty simple, however it goes well together. I also choose to add some cubes on the side to make it look more complete the cubes apper and disappear with the music. This visual just comes to life with music.
##Visual 5:
This visual was probably the hardest to make, I hoped for it to be the best. However, I couldn't finish it in time. I wanted to have a system of spheres orbiting a centere spehere in different directions and I wanted thir motion, size and color to change with the music. However, due to lack of time I couldn't finish it and I choose to keep it in as I learnt a lot about pollymorphism through this as I used a seprate class to make the objects that I displayed in this visual and I also used recursive methods. Educationally this visual taught me the most with intensive research about processing. Hence, I didn't want to remove it. It's still pretty cool but honestly not the best in terms of visual appeal and reaction to music, but I learned a lot in the process so that's always a win.
Step 1: is to press compile using F5 on VS code
Step 2: Press the space bar to play the music
Step 3: Press buttons from 0 - 4 to cycle through different visuals
Step 4: Hover mouse left to right and right to left on all visuals except the first one for a camera pan effect to see them move in 3d
That's it!
There are 6 files which house all of the code necessary for the project to work.I'll list the files below and explain their functions below:
Main.java -> This houses the code to actually run the processing sketch and launch it. That is it's only role, it houses the main function.
Visual.java -> This file extends the PApplet Library along with containing instances of the Minim library. It also contains boilerplate methods for calculating amplitude, buffer size, frequency bands and other useful methods that I can choose to use in any of my visuals. It also contains accessor methods to all of the methods above and more.
MyVisual.java -> This file inherits Visual the file mentioned above and houses core processing methods such as Setup, Setting and Draw. Instead of adding these methods in all of the files that we make for visuals we can just those files in this central methods. This is an example displaying the power of abstraction and inheritance in action.
VisualException.java -> This file is responsible to handle exceptions that are thrown, so the program doesn't crash and tells us what is wrong.
Experiment.java -> This is the file that actually has code for the visuals that I created which are seprated through a switch case and instance of the MyVisual class is also passed in this class to give it access to the PApplet library.
Planet.java -> This class is created to support one of my Visuals and it also inherits myVisuals in order to access methods from the PApplet library and it is instanciated in the Expirment class where it is being used to create visuals.
I have gained a lot of knowledge through this project including solidifying my understanding and knowldge of core principles of OOP. Below I have menitoned somethings that I am most proud of being able to accomplish through this assigment :
When I started this project I knew in theory how to use git and most basic functionality, but I didn't see it as something important that I would use if I had the option not to. However, after working on something at this scale and complex, I understood the praise behind the use of this magnificent version control software that is the industry standard. I also coded this project using two different machines so github became an indespensible tool and it allowed me to save my progress every step of the way and allowed me to complete this project in an organised and constructive manner.
I also consulted this post Link to post which helped me understand why is it important to write good informatinve git messages so understand the pourposed behind every commit and what I have accomplished in that version.
I never really saw myself as an artistic or music oriented person I have never really been attracted towards learning the intricacies behind the beats of a song or the color in a fine-art piece. However, after spending a lot of time listening to different kinds of music and watching a lot of digital art, I can see behind the filters into the details and really observe what makes them beautiful and worth the time and effort people put into making them. In short making this project made me see the culture behind art and music and helped me appreciate it.
We did learn about all OOP principles in first semester with Bianca and in my opinion at the time I had understood them in concept. However, I couldn't really see their application in practice as it just seemed like adding extra effort and honestly unecessary. The reason was because we were only making simple things in labs that didn't require the use of encapsulation or polymorphism. However, with this project and the YASC game for that matter I could really see why OOP shines in bigger prjects where the techniques taught can potentially save thousands of lines of code. This project helped solidify my understanding of inheritance, encapsulation, abstraction and polymorphism through practice.
In the begining of this project I was a little scared of working in 3d as it tends to make things complicated with z axis overall adds more complexity. However, in this project I choose to move out of my comfort zone and try to learn as much about working in 3d as I can and it worked for the best. I learnt a lot about 3D and can now feel confident when working in the 3rd Dimension.
That's it thanks for reading and teaching us all of this really cool stuff Bryan!