The Adventures of the Original Hamster

If you haven’t heard of Animata yet, you should head over to http://animata.kibu.hu/index.html and educate yourself. Download the software and go through the tutorials. I also recommend reading through the mailing list, it has tons of useful information.

Controlling Animata with a mouse and doing real-time animations is pretty cool by itself, but Animata really shows its true potential when you control it with OSC. Then you can start doing something like this:

There is a Processing example available from the Animata site that controls Animata with sound input.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Unfortunately, the Kitchen Budapest guys are busy improving the software and there isn’t really good documentation available about the OSC messages needed to control Animata. I’ll try to go through all of the available messages and give you some examples in Pure Data and Max/MSP

I assume that you know something about OSC, Pure Data and Max/MSP, because I don’t want to write a huge post explaining everything from the beginning. I’m also assuming that you have spent some time learning the basics of Animata.

One more important thing. I’m using revision 35 of Animata compiled fromt svn repository. NOTE! YOU WILL NEED TO COMPILE ANIMATA FROM THE SVN TO MAKE THE /LAYERPOS MESSAGES WORK. IT IS NOT AVAILABLE IN THE BINARY VERSION ON THE ANIMATA WEBSITE. All the other messages I’m showing here do work with Animata 003 that is available from the site. OK, let’s start.

DOWNLOAD MY EXAMPLES. Contains the Animata Scene + Max and PD patches.

FORMATTING THE OSC MESSAGES

All incoming messages to Animata must be sent through port 7110. The “name” in the message refers to the name of the joint, bone or layer.

Moving a joint, x and y are float values:
/joint name x y

Control the length of a bone, value is a float between 0 and 1:
/anibone name value

Switch on and off a layer, on_off is 0 or 1:
/layervis name on_off

Set the transparency of the layer, value is a float between 0 and 1:
/layeralpha name value

The next two messages require the svn version:

Moving a layer, x and y are the position coordinates as float values:
/layerpos name x y

Moving a layer, x and y control the speed that the layer is moving:
/layerdeltapos name x y

PURE DATA TO ANIMATA

I’m not really comfortable with Pure Data, but I was able to get all of the messages working except /layervis. I believe this is because Animata is very picky and is looking for real boolean values and Pure Data is sending integers when sending 0 or 1. This was just fixed by the Kitchen Budabest guys. The /layervis message works now. I have updated the code so please download the .zip again. You need to compile Animata again from the svn for this to work.

Pure Data to Animata with OSC from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

There is a little problem, because Animata needs float values in the messages and Pure Data doesn’t have a separate number box for floats, so have to make sure the number you are sending is never an even number. I did this by multiplying the values by 0.999. If someone knows a better way, let me know.

MAX/MSP 5 TO ANIMATA

It’s pretty much the same deal with Max/MSP. The /layervis doesn’t work here either. This was fixed in the svn version (>36). My Max-patch has been updated so please download again.

Max/MSP to Animata With OSC from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

I didn’t add the /layerdeltapos to the example patches, because it’s really easy to lose your layers somewhere outside the window.

SENDING OSC FROM ANIMATA

There is also an option to send OSC messages from Animata. For this you need the SVN version. It simply works by clicking on the small OSC tick box on the Skeleton tab. The messages are sent through port 7111. The message format is: /joint name x y

HOW ABOUT QUARTZ COMPOSER, PROCESSING ETC.

Basically, any software or programming environment that is able to send OSC messages should be able to communicate with Animata. Unfortunately, you can’t send compatible OSC messages from Quartz Composer, because QC can not send OSC messages that mixes strings and floats. According to the Animata mailing list, the same thing is happening with EyesWeb.

Processing works perfectly and you can download the Sound Input example from the Animata website that will get you started. I’ll see if I can find the time to do a similar sample file for Processing also.

I’ve also had luck testing OpenFrameworks. Download the FAT version of OpenFrameworks and modify the oscSenderExample.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THIS?

Whatever you want! Hook up audio input, MIDI controllers, sensors or computer vision to control real-time animations.

Check out my Mickey Mann project for an example on how to control Animata with an Arduino.

Here is the source code download link one more time.

I set up a group on Vimeo for the students and faculty of University of Lapland on Vimeo. http://vimeo.com/groups/ulapland

Here is a widget containing all of the videos that are added to the group:

You can embed this player to any website with this code. Just copy & paste. Modify the code if you need to adjust the size.

Not many people know this, but Concordia University in Montréal also has a toon department deep inside the maze that is known as the EV building. The university officials would prefer to keep this knowledge as a secret, since the brutal self torture that goes on inside the faculty would shock many people. In the same way that the Average Joe or Jane does not want to know where the meat inside his/her burger comes from, no-one really wants to know the shocking truth about the stories behind your Saturday morning dose of laughter.

Tooniversity from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

When watching cartoons, people rarely think about the amount of time and dedication the cartoon characters spend on perfecting their sketches and routines. Unfortunately, consumers love to see toons getting hurt. There is just something special about dropping heavy anvils on the heads of unsuspecting cartoon characters that appeals to the majority of viewers.

Like in all fields of entertainment, the competition in the cartoon business is also very harsh. You are only as good as your last fall from a huge cliff. That’s why all the aspiring cartoon students at tooniversities across the world practice new and inventive ways of getting themselves hurt.

A group of activists from PETT (People for the Ethical Treatment of Toons) have been able to sneak a spy camera inside the Tooniversity facilities at Concordia University. Because of their brave action, all the dirty secrets inside the Tooniversity will be exposed. Please go to http://tooniversity.originalhamsters.com
to find more information and sign a petition to stop this madness.

This project was made at Concordia University for Vincent Leclerc’s Tangible Media and Physical Computing class. You can find technical details from my class website

I have always liked the voice of William S. Burroughs and I’ve always wanted to do something with the Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups clip.

Now I have. It’s still missing some parts of it as I had to meet a class deadline for this. I will have to finish this later.

If I haven’t uploaded a new version with the missing parts in a couple of months, feel free to send me angry emails with the subject: Get Your Lazy Ass Up and Finish That Animation!

Cut-Ups from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

A video project I did a while ago. We were given roughly 1 hour of footage to remix into something new. This is what I came up with.

Six Frames from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

I’m really interested in stereoscopy, which you might have guessed, if you’ve ever seen me running around with my View-Master camera. In my opinion, View-Master is still a superior method for viewing stereoscopic images, but it’s only still images. That’s why I wanted to see if I could improve the design and make an interactive View-Master for animations.

This little hybrid between Mickey Mouse and Steve Mann enables you to control and view stereoscopic animations that are animated in real-time.

It’s an old View-Master viewer modified to have ChromaDepth lenses, some custom buttons, accelerometer, bluetooth radio and an Arduino to control it all. I thought about hiding the electronics with bigger ears, but decided not to, because I like the ghetto-cyborg look he’s got going on there.

So how does it work? You look through the viewer to the screen where you will see some 3-layer Månsteri-action in all of it’s stereoscopic glory. The great thing about ChromaDepth stereoscopy is that it works with basic colors. You don’t need two channels for the video to achieve a 3D-effect. On a dark background, everything that is blue will appear to be in the background and everything that is red will appear to be in the foreground. Colors in the spectrum between blue and red will appear to be somewhere in the middle. If you didn’t understand my explanation, look it up on the interwebs.

The accelerometer detects your motion and will move the character on the middle layer, giving the illusion that the character is trying to mimic your movement. You can control the content of the layers with the three buttons on the side of the viewer. Button three controls the background, button two the middle layer and button one controls the foreground. Check out the video and you’ll understand what I mean. If you have ChromaDepth glasses, put them on to see the 3d effect.

The Arduino sends the sensor data and the button states wirelessly via bluetooth to my computer. The information is parsed in Max/MSP, which in turn sends the data as OSC packets to Animata (my favourite software at the moment). Animata then animates everything in real-time and handles the hiding/revealing of different layers.

If you are interested, I have uploaded the Arduino and Max 5 source codes and also the Animata scene. It’s all very specific to my setup, but someone might find it useful. Download the source.

Here is our VJ crew Superia United doing visuals for the one and only Ruckazoid.

Qstock festival in Oulu, Summer 2008.

Superia United meets Ruckazoid from Aku Meriläinen on Vimeo.

Last Fridays UP was the bomb. I’ve never had that much fun playing in Tivoli. Check out some pics by clicking the picture.

Thanks to Ville Kumpulainen for the pictures.

Time Tunnel in Oulu turned out to be pretty fun also. Our vj-gig didn’t go so well because the lightman had some sort of a power trip and couldn’t keep his hands off the smoke-machine button, so you half the time you couldn’t see anything of the visuals. Pepe Deluxé did a cool show and the visuals looked really good. Krafty Kuts ended the night with a nice set that got me dancing the entire time. Here’s a short clip from the set

Time Tunnel 2007 - Krafty Kuts from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

UP! Tivoli - Rovaniemi (7.9.2007)

DJs:
Waxtastic
AKA Caputo
Dzei
Posten
Dann Doyle
Alfons Å

VJs:
SRVRS*& MKRF

Hosted by:
Rollo Killa, Bukka-Keke & Mega-Dogg

Expect to see mad 4 turntable action on both sides of Tivoli. I’ve got some special blends coming up for all the party peeps. Some old Finnish stuff with some new non-Finnish stuff. Check out UP @ MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/upklubi

Time Tunnel - Oulu (8.9.2007)

Our crew Superia United is doing visuals in the main room.

MAIN ROOM
Hosted by DJ Kaasi with Krafty Kuts and Pepe Deluxé-live!

CLUB B-EAT-Z
For local and national top disc jockeys. Meet Infekto, DJ Sam Lainio and DJ Sektori.

FUNKY CAFÉ
Caters for those who like their music soulful and black. The sets will cover all areas of black dance music from sweet soul harmonies to grittier funk toons.

www.handprod.com

The official Fusion Arts update #3.

My trusty iBook died on me two weeks ago so I haven’t been updating anything for a while, but now I finally got it back after sending it two times to get repaired. It came back a little crippled, with only 512mb of RAM, but at least I can use it now.
A lot has happened since I last wrote anything here. The first weekend we went to Boston where we visited ICA, MIT and some galleries. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to explore the city on my own, the schedule was so tight. This pic is from the ICA.

The next weekend we spent two days in New York City and visited New York Times, Eyebeam, Guggenheim, Ground Zero, Glowlab and a bunch of galleries. For me, the most interesting thing was seeing Eyebeam and getting a glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes at Graffiti Research Lab.

Also, I finally caved into this digital djing business. I went to Turntable Lab and got some records and the M-Audio Conectiv digital DJ thingy. I’ve had my Ms. Pinky vinyls for a few years, but I haven’t had a good audio interface for my laptop so I haven’t really used them that much. Now I might actually take this thing to gigs also. I’m not giving up on vinyl though! No way! This is just a way to add some new possibilities to my sets. I’m also pretty excited to test using this baby as an effects unit, because I can route the signal from my turntables to Ableton Live and get all crazy with looping and effects.

Back in Providence we have done a couple of projects. The most interesting is probably the Call and Response video project. Each of us had to make 20 videos in two days, each 30 seconds long. The first one had to be a call and the others responses to the videos the other people had made. We were supposed to not talk to each other and only communicate through the videos. Here you can watch all the videos. My call is #21 and I finished 13 responses that are scattered all over. Here’s the video that I’m most satisfied with.

Quicktime video

And oh, I almost forgot, last Saturday I went to this little festival called Rock The Bells. I’ll let the line-up speak for itself.
No pictures. Sorry. I only had a disposable camera with me and I haven’t had the chance to scan the pictures in. You just have to take my word for it that it was f**king insane. Just look at that line-up, an overdose of hip hop legends. Wu was there with all the original guys, except ODB of course, and if that wasn’t enough, the reunited RATM turned the entire place into a big and sweaty mosh pit. Things got a little interesting when 60 000 people tried to fit into three buses, but I got back to my hostel in Harlem eventually.I guess that’s about it. Today is the last night in Providence. Tomorrow we are flying to Denver so the next update is going to be from there. Now I’ll just do my laundry and hit the streets. I’m going to miss this place. I’ve been kind of lazy with the gallery, but you can check out a lot more pictures from my Flickr site here.