VIEWING

To view the Final Composition here is a link to the course website......

http://www.mgc08.com/

I will post photographs of the show viewing up on the blog but here is a 3d model of how I envisage the piece to look and at what scale it should be presented at.

The next step would be to turn it into an interactive viewing interface, this could incorporate many separate animations on screen at the same time.

The project would work best as an interface, it would no longer simply be an audio-visual animation, the screen would turn into something to investigate up close with the viewer choosing what to explore and at what point.

FINAL PIECE ELEMENTS

Front Elevation Reading with Audio




Perspective Reading



Perspective Reading with added relief map extrusions

EVALUATION

The final project pieces will not be posted up here but I will reflect on them and the project as a whole none the less. I am pleased with the completion of the task. It was a great exercise in methods and processes and taught me alot about the simple act of timing, rendering and most importantly I feel project organisation.

The simpler the outcome got the happier I was as I feel I have produced an 'honest' result to my brief. It may seem that not a great deal was achieved in terms of animation but this project iwas I feel very large in terms of management and preparation..

At times the proposal was not central to my thinking and this slowed the project down as I forgot the main aim of the whole thing. A shame considering the writing of the proposal was a very useful exercise and the part that although initially struggling with, I actuallly enjoyed immensely.

It is very difficult to clearly state why you want to do something and then how!

Stylistically the result is somewhere in the middle. Interestingly minimal but at the same time too conservative in approach. To me though it is still an 'animatic' or test piece, a working out of ideas in one technology that can then be followed through with more imagination.

It has definately helped me with 3D software skills, not in terms of modelling, texturing etc but in terms of new approaches to form generation and dealing with time and sequence, areas that I will try to incorporate into wider architectural visualisation.

I have not really had the time to see this through to an installation or interactive outcome, but this is the next step. I am content to realise this. This I feel is the major learning to come from the last term, that nothing comes easy in this field, and that only through hard work and alot of hours do results show themselves. I struggled at many times to get to the next stage mainly because working with computers can lack a sense of scale and immediacy that I get from other mediums.

I have pushed myself to do thorough research and the hidden benefit of such projects is all the little bits of new information that you pick up along the way, even if they dont immediately inform your work. I now know about stereoscopy, the history of the phone exchange, how to make your own dialtones and obviously alot more about a building in Vauxhall.

It is a shame that this has to end now as I only just feel that the project has got to that brilliant stage when it becomes malleable and decisions feel intuitive. Obviously I would do things differently if going over again, but I feel that I have got alot out of the system and can now move on with a clearer focus.

Although not a convert to purely deterministic approaches to projects I have noved away from trying to pre-judge outcomes and getting confused with simply trying to visualise an 'image' that I feel may look impressive.

The next project that I undertake will be more interesting as a result I'm sure.

RESONANCE

The next step is to bring the readings to life and to add greater dynamism and visual intrigue to the piece, at the moment they are too flat and lifeless. They are dealing with frequencies but hardly move. Each element has to have its own motion frequency as well.

I have been looking into sound frequencies but animation itself has a frequency. A frame rate of 30fps resonates at 33.3 milliseconds and has a frequency of 30hz. Here are a few other examples that will inform my next step.

1ms = flash strobe light
2.27ms = 440hz (tuning device)
50ms = 20hz (lowest frequency of human recognition)
100ms = blink of an eye/reaction speed of a human.
150ms = time delay for a telephone service
200-670ms = general beat of modern dance music

With this in mind we can determine the frame rate for each the window tones:

Tone range = 20-100hz
= 50ms-10ms

Therefore a brightness level of 100% (100hz) = 10ms = one one hundredth of a second.

We would have to render are animation at 100 frames per second however to achieve this result.

40hz = 25ms = one fourtieth of a second = 40 fps
50hz = 20ms = one fiftieth of a second =50fps

This is very difficult to achieve in reality but we can achieve the effect of resonance nonetheless.

This next study is rendered at 50fps and has the tones resonating at 50hz. In other words the elements go through a cycle of being visable and not present.

Note that having some elements stay constant highlights the resonating elements.

The optical result I feel will play on the desired sense of secrecy and conspiracy that I wanted fromthe outset.


Because of the playback device the result is inconsistant, sometimes frames are dropped that are present at other time sof viewing.

BACK TO 3D

I realise that both perspective and elevational representations have there benefits.

The bass flicker animations highlight the variation in tone very well and also the shadow causing the secondary visual beat is clear to read. For analysis of the tones in three dimensions they give us less however.

Rendering the model in perspective and also with camera movement is what is needed, it also adds greater dynamic to the animations.

Audio will be added, but for now here is a perspective animation showing a reading of the top two floors.

BASS FLICKER ANIMATIONS

Reading each tone individually floor by floor gives a detailed analysis of the site but produces a fairly slow paced animation. I feel that it would be great to see and hear the building in a faster paced fashion. The next two experiments contain a render of each floor as a still with audio containing all the frequencies together as one sound. These are then animated in sequence.

The result is an interesting stop motion reading of the facade as a whole simulating a graphic equalizer on a stereo.

Left side:

Right Side:

AUDIO EXPERIMENTS 3 : Bass + Melody

Here is the resulting audio for the top floor with both tracks played together.

AUDIO EXPERIMENTS 2 : Melody

Having decided on 11 sections per side (10 window tones plus dial tone), I now need do build a melody for the track. This I want to be varying but also personal to the individual. Therefore I have decided to use the dial tone frequencies that make up touch tone phones (numbers 0-9).

These consist of dual frequency tones, getting higher in frequency from 0-9. You can see a table of the frequencies through an earlier link in the 'DIALTONES' post.

To match up with the 11 sections I will use the sequence for mobile phone numbers. Here is the resulting audio for my mobile number, played twice.

AUDIO EXPERIMENTS 1

I feel that I must pay equal attention to the audio so as not to produce a conceptually misleading result.

I will use the window tones to program the sound as well as the forms of the animation. The window tones will form one part of the audio, the low frequency track (bass tones), and I will use dial tone frequencies to produce the higher frequency audio (melody).

Concentrating on the bass track first here are the audio results for the top three floors, read from left to right.


They were made by taking the brightness level for each window and converting them straight into a single frequency (67% brightness = 67hz).

The tone duration is dependant on whether it is a wide or narrow window section (long or short tone as with dial tones!). This means that each floor will follow the same beat rhythm of short and long sections and therefore result in a musical composition.

The audio tempo follows the tempo that I have rendered the visuals, if we say a narrow window is one section and a wide one two, each side contains 10 sections, each floor 20 overall . I will make one section half a second (15 frames), so 10 seconds per floor.

An addition at the beginning and end of each floor is an added tone (Dial tone 425hz0, signifying a working line is operating. I will use this to signify a change of floor level.

The changes are subtle for sure but when listened to together in one track will produce an interesting mutating bass line.

LEFT / RIGHT SYMMETRY

Taking the idea of the mirror image of the facade into account I have decided to read both the left and right side of the building using only one structural composition. The tones are read from left to right for the left hand side of the facade and then back again from right to left for the right hand side. This back and forth motion produces a stable constant reading.

The animation below shows the reading of the top floor of the tower.

TONE TEMPO

The animation below shows the window tones per floor for the left side of the facade, animated from top to bottom, followed by the equivalent for the right hand side.

The tempo is fast but highlights the fact that at two points per floor the tone stays constant. It also shows that the right hand side is a mirror image of the left in terms of structure.

ANIMATED WINDOW TONES 1

Having developed a way of turning the towers windows into a visual beat I now need a way to read them, animate them and to turn them into an audio accompaniment.

Here are a few initial considerations:

1. How to show which tone is being read and how many to read at one time.
2. Which view to show the window tones in (Front-on, perspective, top plan etc.)
3. At what tempo the tones are to be read and does this tempo change at all.

Below is a reel of animated studies I produced to help answer these questions.




The first test has the tones as invisible but reads them using a render bar to show up the forms. This I feel is effective in highlighting the undercover nature of the building.

The next two has the tones as semi-transparent but varies the viewing angle.

The final three explore differing camera views and projections but also vary the lighting within the scene. I have animated the light source to move up to replicate the suns movement over the building. This has the effect of altering the shadows cast by the tones and therefore producing a secondary visual beat in the tones and on the bottom level of tones.

This is something that I will investigate further as it could be used to alter volume for example.

The tempo reads the section in 3 seconds and I feel may be too fast.

PROCESS ANIMATION

Here is a small animation showing exactly how the relief mapping results in varied 3D form. At frame zero the 'Top level' is set to 0% and steadily increases to 100%. Note that most of the movement occurs in a very short time, this is due to the fact that the levels in the relief map are very close together in value.

Window tones Relief mapping

The next experiment I undertook was to put the window tones into the relief map for the top 2 floors. All of the windows lie somewhere between the 0% of the glazing and 100% of the cladding. The variation in levels produces a visual beat for the facade.

Below is the relief map for the top floor


Below is the resulting C4D relief model