obsidian by xplsv [web]
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obsidian by xplsv
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code: mrdoob
direction: trace
music: om unit x lorn
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blah blah blah...
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This time I challenged myself to see if I
could do a demo with just my ARM Chromebook.
Not being able to "launch" ChromeOS with the
--allow-file-access-from-files flag made
things a bit harder. That means that I
couldn't use textures or models. Luckily
three.js nowadays have a fair amount of
primitives to play with.
It was also a great excuse to improve
frame.js, which is a sequencer and editor I
started back in November.
https://github.com/mrdoob/frame.js
So, initially I wasn't really planning to
do anything for Euskal. But just as I
arrived I learnt that Navis was going to
release so, even if I only had 2 days until
the deadline, I decided to go for it.
Some months ago I found this great track by
Om Unit and Lorn and I kept it on my folder
of potential demo tunes. I decided to use
that one because it was the shortest in the
folder, even if I was scared of "wasting"
it by doing a crappy demo.
The process was like with "Or so they
say..." once again. I had no idea what the
demo was going to look like. So I started
building the first scene aiming to get
something that matched the tune's mood.
Took a while but in 3 or 4 hours I had the
first part - that's 13 seconds done, 227 to
go. Then, somehow, I came up with the idea
of the always changing sphere that suited
this rythmic sound in the tune - probably
influenced by the intro of Masaaki Yuasa 's
Kaiba. The tune also felt like something
was travelling, so I went with a classic
idea of making it travel through a tunnel.
The process continued for the whole day
until I called it a day. I had 2 minutes
filled (until the end of the title) and 2
more to fill the next day.
Initially my plan was to do random scenes
and just sync them with the music - like
most of demos are. But I seemed unable to
do that, once I finished a scene I could
only think on how to follow it. As if I
had to tell a story.
I struggled a bit more the next day with
what to do when the spheres collided.
Actually, the idea of the colliding spheres
came the second day, so I spent a long while
improving what I had and running out of
time for the last 2 minutes. Anyway, again,
after I had the collision I guessed the
obvious thing would be doing some sort of
explosion. But I couldn't stretch that idea
for too long. Luckily then the idea for the
city (another classic) came up and I
wondered if I could stretch that part for a
whole minute. Turns out it worked pretty
well with the tension that tune has at that
point.
I did most of the work at the hotel because
the party place has become a meme-con and
is impossible to do anything. I was
expecting the deadline for demos to be
around 5pm on Saturday so I went to finish
the demo at the party place. The deadline
was at 12pm and they were pretty strict
about it and I got disqualified (spain is
different).
I finished in time for the demoshow and I
got to enjoy it on the big screen. So did
the 6,000 at the party place (even if they
have no idea what this is all about. I also
proved myself that I could do a demo with
that laptop and I couldn't stop to be
amazed how this little device had pretty
much the same power the big computer I
used to carry around for parties 10 years
ago had.
Requirements:
Any browser with WebGL support.
Also runs on Chrome for Android but
it runs at about 2fps on a Galaxy Nexus.
I may try to optimise a few things.
Software used:
ChromeOS, Text App, frame.js editor
- mrdoob & trace.xplsv
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More info?
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mrdoob: http://www.mrdoob.com
trace: http://trace.xplsv.com
om unit: http://soundcloud.com/omunit
lorn: http://soundcloud.com/lorn
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xplsv.com 2013
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