"jr" <cre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
> (I know I _always_ get into .. deep water when I make "forthright" comments,
> nevertheless..)
>
> "Dave Blandston" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > "jr" <cre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > > ...
> google 'Hayseed Dixie Enter Sandman' for one I like as well as the original.
> :-)

uh, belay that.  misremembered.  was thinking of Lemmy's version (which is ..
ok) and Hayseed Dixie did an 'Ace of Spades' cover, not Sandman.  hence (?)
mix-up.


regards, jr.

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"Dave Blandston" <nomail@nomail> writes:

> That's interesting - I had forgotten that
> frame_number even existed because I
> got used to using clock years ago, but I can see
> that frame_number would be more
> appropriate under some circumstances, possibly
> including this one. I did in fact
> have to include some code to convert number of
> frames generated to time elapsed
> so using frame_number would be exact instead of
> within 1 / framerate / 2. The
> beat markers will be in milliseconds which would
> have to be converted to
> frame_numbers though so it's a trade-off either
> way. Thank you for the excellent
> suggestion!

In case someone doesn’t know, the /POV-Ray Reference/ has something to
say about this
(<http://www.povray.org/documentation/3.7.0/r3_2.html#r3_2_1_2>):

> Unlike some animation packages, the action in POV-Ray animated scenes
> does not depend upon the integer frame numbers. Rather you should
> design your scenes based upon the float identifier clock. By default,
> the clock value is 0.0 for the initial frame and 1.0 for the final
> frame. All other frames are interpolated between these values. For
> example if your object is supposed to rotate one full turn over the
> course of the animation, you could specify rotate 360*clock*y. Then as
> clock runs from 0.0 to 1.0, the object rotates about the y-axis from 0
> to 360 degrees.
>
> The major advantage of this system is that you can render a 10 frame
> animation or a 100 frame or 500 frame or 329 frame animation yet you
> still get one full 360 degree rotation. Test renders of a few frames
> work exactly like final renders of many frames.
>
> In effect you define the motion over a continuous float valued
> parameter (the clock) and you take discrete samples at some fixed
> intervals (the frames). If you take a movie or video tape of a real
> scene it works the same way. An object's actual motion depends only on
> time. It does not depend on the frame rate of your camera.

[...]

> For new scenes, we recommend you do not change the Initial_Clock or
> Final_Clock from their default 0.0 to 1.0 values. If you want the
> clock to vary over a different range than the default 0.0 to 1.0, we
> recommend you handle this inside your scene file as follows...
> 
> 
> #declare Start    = 25.0;
> #declare End      = 75.0;
> #declare My_Clock = Start+(End-Start)*clock;
> 
> Then use My_Clock in the scene description. This keeps the critical
> values 25.0 and 75.0 in your .pov file.

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Subclick <no### [at] spam> wrote:

> say about this
> (<http://www.povray.org/documentation/3.7.0/r3_2.html#r3_2_1_2>):
>
> > Unlike some animation packages, the action in POV-Ray animated scenes
> > does not depend upon the integer frame numbers. Rather you should
> > design your scenes based upon the float identifier clock. By default,
> > the clock value is 0.0 for the initial frame and 1.0 for the final
> > frame. All other frames are interpolated between these values. For
> > example if your object is supposed to rotate one full turn over the
> > course of the animation, you could specify rotate 360*clock*y. Then as
> > clock runs from 0.0 to 1.0, the object rotates about the y-axis from 0
> > to 360 degrees.
> >
> > The major advantage of this system is that you can render a 10 frame
> > animation or a 100 frame or 500 frame or 329 frame animation yet you
> > still get one full 360 degree rotation. Test renders of a few frames
> > work exactly like final renders of many frames.
> >
> > In effect you define the motion over a continuous float valued
> > parameter (the clock) and you take discrete samples at some fixed
> > intervals (the frames). If you take a movie or video tape of a real
> > scene it works the same way. An object's actual motion depends only on
> > time. It does not depend on the frame rate of your camera.
>
> [...]
>
> > For new scenes, we recommend you do not change the Initial_Clock or
> > Final_Clock from their default 0.0 to 1.0 values. If you want the
> > clock to vary over a different range than the default 0.0 to 1.0, we
> > recommend you handle this inside your scene file as follows...
> >
> >
> > #declare Start    = 25.0;
> > #declare End      = 75.0;
> > #declare My_Clock = Start+(End-Start)*clock;
> >
> > Then use My_Clock in the scene description. This keeps the critical
> > values 25.0 and 75.0 in your .pov file.

Good point. I got a little carried away with the idea that since the song is a
fixed length and certain key frames have to match certain musical events that a
deviation from the norm might be in order. As the project is progressing though
I see that clock is still the best option. Since the music is time-based,
converting between time and frame numbers just adds another element of
complexity and possibility of error. Also, the worst case scenario of being one
frame off is totally imperceptible. (Especially at 60 FPS!)

On another note, using the spectral view of Izotope RX 8 to locate the beat
marks is working out extremely well. The software allows one to place visual
markers at any point so beats can be marked, which makes it easy to see what's
been done and what's still left. The list of markers can be exported as a text
file (including comments). Editing with the POV-Ray editor into an include file
is trivial, especially with the block selection feature.

Have an awesome day!

Kind regards,
Dave Blandston

Post a reply to this message

Interesting update:

Some parts of the song I'm working on are difficult to tell exactly where the
beats are or even how many there are, even with the "spectral view" because
there's so much happening so quickly all at once. As luck would have it, there's
a free program available called "Spleeter" that analyzes songs and splits them
into drums, bass, and vocals. This makes the drum beats MUCH easier to identify
and will save a few hours of tedious work. Here's where Spleeter comes from:
https://makenweb.com/SpleeterGUI

Kind regards,
Dave Blandston

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"Dave Blandston" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Greetings Friends,
>
> More than ten years ago I made a scene that I didn't think turned out quite
> right so I set it aside until recently. I re-worked some of the textures and
> made some improvements. One of the improvements was to change the flag from a
> flat box with fake shadows to simulate ripples (not very convincing) to a mesh2
> object. Since the mesh2 is easily animatable with a simple sine function that
> led to this animation:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYJac3vCHu8
>
> The message of the image is anti-war and it's based on the Metallica song
> Disposable Heroes, so I've decided to add the music to the animation and try
> animating the inside (currently green) portion of the Metallica logo. My goal is
> to animate the logo in such a manner that the animation is synchronized with the
> music, similar to the visualizations in Windows Media Player and other music
> players. It will be a big job to do by hand. One thing that would help would be
> a software application that would analyze the music and generate a list of exact
> times when a change occurs in the music and save the list as a text file that
> POV-Ray could read, but creating a program that does that is beyond my ability
> so I will try doing it by hand. There are endless possibilities so this will be
> a fun project! One thing that I have working at this point is using video frames
> as the pigment for one or more letters of the logo at a time, which can be
> combined with procedural textures.
>
> Kind regards,
> Dave Blandston

I made a windows program a few years ago call LR_Voice that takes a wave and
lets you place Phonemes that are saved in a file that POV can read.
Its at
http://leroyw.byethost15.com/WinZips/LR_Voice.zip
Although it was written for lip syncing you could use it to mark locations.
Have Fun!

Post a reply to this message

"Leroy" <whe### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I made a windows program a few years ago call LR_Voice that takes a wave and
> lets you place Phonemes that are saved in a file that POV can read.
> Its at
> http://leroyw.byethost15.com/WinZips/LR_Voice.zip
> Although it was written for lip syncing you could use it to mark locations.
> Have Fun!

Thanks but I'm almost done with that part of the project. The combination of
software that I settled on is working out extremely well for what I need.
IZotope RX 8 supports tabbed documents so I can have the original song open in
one tab and a modified version containing just the drums (made with SpleeterGUI)
open in another tab so I can make quick comparisons when necessary. I can place
a marker at a beat by putting the curser where I want on the waveform and
pressing the "m" key. RX 8 can export the marker times as a tab-delimited text
file that POV-Ray can read after I do about 30 seconds worth of formatting. It
still takes quite a while due to the length of the song and the number beats but
it's going well.

Have a great day and thanks for sharing your idea!

Kind regards,
Dave Blandston

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