Software > Olive Studio

My New Light Animation Software

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frankr:
An idea that I have been toying with for a while is to have an interface to allow the use of the flam3 APIs to generate some fractal images for pixel mapping. It seems like this could be a powerful mechanism to generate cool effects.  Just a thought. 

This could be a potential plug in as well...

Frank

PVPlaceLights:
All thoughts count!

I was responding to another post last night and trying to list the potential plugins and forgot about the media generators (until you just reminded me). One of the effects I have in the pipeline is an image or video projection effect where the image or video is mapped to the physical layout of a display. This is nothing new as a number of professional systems do this and it matches up good to matrix like fixtures. It wouldn't have to be limited to video or images though, since any computer generated pattern could be projected (i.e. media generators). A media generator could be a solid color, moving lines, checkerboard patterns, gradients, plasma, fractals, or whatever someone can program. So yes, great thinking. This is going to be my second favorite feature when all is said and done.

--Matt

PVPlaceLights:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Logincool, do you have any white paper, or architectural manifesto?

I see controllers and channels, are you providing any abstractions above those?

Is this essentially grid  based?  Such that your effects will "render" as alterations to grid values?

Congrats on getting this started.

-P


--- End quote ---

Olive is not grid based. Grid editors are the common interface for sequencing software. Olive is not a sequencer, rather it's a composite animation editor. A brief white paper is in the works that explains the model/paradigm behind Olive. I will publish it our site soon and let you know. Also, a member is working on a comprehensive User's Guide so Olive will be fully documented along the way.

Simply put, though, the Olive interface is a cross between NLE video compositing and computer animation software. You use "tracks" to visually layout "effects" that target "channels". Output values are calculated by the computer using interpolation and other animation techniques. This is pretty much the same as popular CGI animation packages. The white paper provides examples of workflows and compares them to existing workflows using sequencers. My belief is that Olive will help users achieve levels of productivity not currently possible with existing tools.

Controllers in Olive are used as containers for channels and are of a specific type. This simplifies the output configuration for large groups of channels, which are more generic in use. There will be Virtual controllers that can have no common protocol and allow channels from other controllers to be associated with it. There will be Fixture controllers for handling DMX stage fixture devices. There are Light/Dimmer controllers for handling channels with single address lights (i.e. Lynx Express) and RGB controllers for managing channels with multiple address lights.  There are many other planned controllers and a plug-in system for developing controller extensions.

Channels will also come in many flavors. A channel is an abstraction for a place to send data. It's not a physical location, although the physical attributes of a channel can be defined. If it's a dimmer/light channel, then it will receive dimming values from 0 to 255. If it's an RGB channel, it will receive 3 values defining the color. RGB+W channels will serve common wall washers and floods. R+G+B+W channels will seamlessly support the many users with stands of red, green, blue, and white lights. Servo channels will support moving hardware. Multiplex channels will support channels that put common DMX stage devices into different states based on specific range values. A plug-in API will also allow third partied to develop channels.

Channels are associated with a controller. You could create an RGB Controller and add as many RGB channels as you need. You do not need to configure this controller's protocol, so you're not tied to a particular piece of hardware. For example, you could set you controller to manage 150 RGB channels, like you would find in a Cosmic Color Ribbon. You can animate the channels and make full use of the internal display visualization system. When you're ready, you go back and configure the controller for the actual protocol. In this case, I'm using a WS2801 strip over DMX that works exactly the same as a CCR for less than half the cost. Or, I could have used Smart Strings and the PixelNet protocol.

Thank you for your questions. I'm working hard to get a new release with more functionality out soon.

--Matt

rrowan:
Thanks Matt

Nice write up on Oliver and its basic goals

Looking forward to the next release

Cheers

Rick R.

ptone:
Matt, sounds really good, I've used a lot of NLE, compositing, and 3D software, so the paradigm is really familiar to me.  I think non-linear changes, and tweening will be key to getting the high channel displays to have some really organic motions.

I've been working on some more programatic software, which won't have nearly the UI of Olive, but will hopefully allow for some extremely powerful ways to script out some complex effects that would likely not be possible in any kind of GUI.

Stoked to see that it is cross platform, I might be able to help contribute a Mac Installer.

Really look forward to your white paper, I enjoy talking about architecture and have thought about it a lot.  You can see some of my thoughts in the initial docs to my project:

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and the code is all open source and available here:

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-P

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