Author Topic: Getting started with developing visualizers  (Read 16688 times)

cmg

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I would like to develop a visualizer for MB.
Is there any document or sample code for developing it?

swift502

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I'd love to know as well. I'd like to write my own. It has to be doable, there's so many of them already. Where did they come from?
I tried googling how to make one but never found anything useful.
If we could at least examine the already existing ones, but they're all .dll. And I have no idea how to read... or I suppose decompile and then read them. I've no idea how they were written and compiled in the first place.

hiccup

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I am guessing the golden age of visualizers was during the Winamp era.
So that might be a good starting place to search for info.
E.g. http://forums.winamp.com/
At the bottom is a Developer board and a Visualization board.
It seems there is still some activity going on there.

swift502

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Mate I had no idea all this stuff is 15+ years old and apparently there was a golden age of visualizers. I suppose people pre-render their music videos rather than having crappy vague real-time visualization.
I'm too young for this.

hiccup

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Haha. But understand that it was only an assumption of mine that creating visualisers might be a bit retro.
Perhaps it is still an active phenomenon, and creative and talented people will always come up with new stuff build on proven and older ideas and concepts.
I would hate it if my remark discouraged you to do something that might be fun to do, and might be a nice addition to MusicBee.

MP3 is by now 23 years old, and still cool to use!
(well, vinyl is even cooler, and about 90 years old)

swift502

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That's true.  :)
Milkdrop visualizers look really cool. I don't know if it's worth getting into it though. It might just be easier to create a nice 3D animation, rather than having an abstract visualizer.
Last Edit: January 01, 2017, 10:25:02 PM by swift502

hiccup

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O.k., assignment then:
Create a lifelike 3D model of a nice singer, that moves her mouth (and body?) real time with a song playing in MusicBee.
Have fun ;-)
Last Edit: January 01, 2017, 09:13:18 PM by hiccup

swift502

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That should be simple: I'll just invent a real-time lip-sync algorithm and then sell it and become a millionaire. Then write a 3D rendering engine in milkdrop (maybe it's been done before), then I'll add skeletal animation and we're done. Shouldn't take more than several lifetimes.

Seriously though I already began working on your assignment few months ago. I'm working a model of Liz Harris. Hopefully I'll make a nice music video. Unfortunately I don't think it'll have anything to do with milkdrop or MusicBee.

SinusStudios

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One of the reasons i'm going to study programming at university soon is because i want to be able to contribute / continue open source software like VSXU. I've played around with it and got some nice results, too bad the software has critical bugs, incredibly bad documentation aside from some stream recordings and overall-unpolishedness and alpha-stage-behaviour.
The node system though as itself is super intuitive and could switch things up for home and professional / live visualization.

Just look at this sample: https://youtu.be/DuByV6bvyHc

I'm positive that if VSXU was 'famous' there would be implementation for MusicBee.

Regards, Daniel

Dynamitos

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If I'm allowed to do a bit of self-advertisement, I've written my own Music Visualizer independent of MusicBee. I is written in Java and using OpenGL so it should work on any platform. Here is the link to the github.

It probably has some problems with the resolution since I was only able to test it on my 15" 4k monitor, but if there is any problem just open an issue on the github page.

Steven

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If I'm allowed to do a bit of self-advertisement, I've written my own Music Visualizer independent of MusicBee. I is written in Java and using OpenGL so it should work on any platform. Here is the link to the github.

It probably has some problems with the resolution since I was only able to test it on my 15" 4k monitor, but if there is any problem just open an issue on the github page.
if you have tested it with MB and it works ok, you are welcome to submit a compiled version for inclusion in the visualiser addons page

Mattit

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Touching on a pretty much dead topic... Visualizers are great for DJs who utilize multi-screen displays. You can have one going on a split/extended screen while you do all your stuff behind the scenes.