Movies modulating movies

[Michael OBannon]

John,

 

Today's Daily Effect on compositing two movies is really useful.  Thanks very much for that!

 

I've seen references in the past to modulating one movie with another.  Could you comment on the general sequence for doing this and where the inputs are located in SA to modulate a process or image with a movie file?

 

Thanks,

Michael

[Synthetik]

I can put together another daily effect post for tomorrow that shows how to do it. Again, i'd use a Content Context action step in conjunction with Bus modulation to use the background movie associated with one layer to modulate some parameter in the paint synthesizer being drawn in another layer. Bus modulation lets you spatially modulate something based on the contents of another layer.

 

If there's something specific you are referring to modulating feel free to comment on that and i can try to address it.

[Michael OBannon]

John,

 

I'll be looking forward to the daily effect post.  I don't have a feel for the range of application of movie-based modulation.  I'm hoping to learn how to set it up in general, and perhaps a few tips on parameters or variations to explore.  Any guidance for getting started would be a real help.

Best regards,

Michael

[Synthetik]

My promised post is broken up into 2 days. The first one tomorrow is just devoted to making a simple movie of an evolving circular pattern that will be used in the next day's post to modulate the path angle for a generated paint animation.

 

So tomorrow's post is really more about using MSG with a temporal generator to make a 100 frame long movie loop of a simple self-animating black and white sphere pattern. The next day's post then shows how to use a Content Context action step to use the simple black and white movie made in the first half of the overall series to modulate a parameter in the paint synthesizer.

 

So the second day's post is really the one that gets into how to do the modulation. The particular paint synth parameter that is explored is modulating the Path Angle.

 

Anything in the paint synthesizer that includes a Bus modulator option could be modulated by a movie embedded into another layer this way.

 

You can also use one movie to modulate something like an interactive warp taking place in a second movie, so i'll put another tutorial together on how that could work.

[Michael OBannon]

John,

 

Thank for the posts on this in Daily Effects.  They were very helpful in getting started.  Is there a list of the parameters that have a Bus modulation option?  That would be helpful in trying to understand when and how this technique can be used.

 

I'm also looking forward to seeing how to directly modulate one movie file with another.

 

Thanks again,

Michael

[Synthetik]

I'd have to look to put together a list of the paint synth options that have bus modulation in them. If you see one that would be useful that isn't available speak up.

 

One of the things we'd like to do in the future is to move to a more generic modulation implementation for the paint synth. It kind of is the way it is because of how it grew over time. But at this point, it would be useful to be able to modulate anything with anything rather than have specific modulator options now that can vary from parameter to parameter (vary in the sense that what you can modulate with can vary). 

[Thorrific]

So awesome, very helpful, thank you John!  There are always new undiscovered worlds within Studio Artist!