Cineversity

Hello,

  So, we all know it is a very easy thing to make say, some cloned cubes take on the appearance of a spectrum analyzer with a sound effecter and a delay effector.  In this scenario, the clones animate in chorus with the frequency variants of the sound in real-time.

  What I would like to do though, is have the clones take a static position that represents the sound for the entire track… think of how audio looks in a timeline such as Final Cut or even Cinema.  Is there a way to load in a sound file and have the clones take on that appearance?  They needn’t animate, I just need to create a static condition which I will later animate in After Effects with masks.

As always, thank you in advance for any insights or advice.

- Will

Hey Will,

Create a line (perhaps in Z direction) with objects (polygon object) and set the frequency accordingly so they go from one side to the other from “low to high Hz”, then set up an animation that pulls the Cloner Object along the X axis. The objects will move based on the sound in Y. (The orientation is set here for illustration, you might like to change that.)

Then place the Cloner Object into a Tracer to create for each clone a spline along the x move and the y of the sound.

Set the Animate>Playmode to single.

Start from frame zero and let it run to the end.

Make a copy of the Tracer and while the copy is active press the C key.

You get a spline with as much segments as the number of clones.

Use this spline as “Object” on the Cloner Object>Object>Mode>Object.

Now you have all to place the Clones on the “point” of the Spline.

Uncheck the “Align Clones” in the Cloner Object.

You might project (flat) a gradient over the cubes.

Have a nice weekend

Sassi

P.S. You might animate the appearance of the new objects with a Plain Effector set to Scale -1 and a short falloff (linear)

Excellent idea, good Dr!  Thanks for that, sounds like exactly what I need.

You’re welcome Will, I’m glad that I could help.

Let me know if something needs adjustment or such.

All the best
Sassi

I am wondering how fast to move the effector, and how long I need make the line of clones be… but I guess that’ll just be a little trial and error.

Will, you move the Object Cloner to get a progress on the X axis. (The Y for the amplitude and the Z for the Hz). Each frame, if not set differently from the default, will create one vertex point on each “cone” spline.

The distance from the initial frame and the end frame will describe the distance of the model in X. Keep in mind, that the longer your animation is (in frames) the more vertex points you will get, like a sampling frequency. This is easily to decide with a Cloner Object in Grid mode, as dummy/proxy, the clones in X represent then the frame numbers.

Keep in mind that you can scale the final Spline in all three axis of course. With that you have five parameter to set up. The amount of clones or splines effectively. Then the “sampling frequency and the three axis XYZ, to get the dimensions. The first two parameters are fixed, but the last three might be scaled after all, before or even after you use the vertex points as sample/dot.

All the best

Sassi