I recently finished a site for the Black Angels (theblackangels.com) and used some interactive kaledidescope elements, (look on links, contact page etc.) and now I’ve got the opportunity to work with some other musicians, looking to really do some really wild implementations of audio driven viuals. I’ve got your site bookmarked.

I mean, what are the main classes where you extract sound data, such as tempo, etc? Is it enough with basic AS3 or do I need some other libraries?

Thanks!

Where do you find all the small animated pattern you use ? personnal job or find somewhere on the net.

Thanks.

Cheers
Bjorn

Added the lines you wrote, with the obvious question: when and how to apply, so tried:
in the set front of PaperSprite

...
_front = addChild( value );
var filterArray:Array = new Array();
filterArray.push(blur);
_front.filters = filterArray;

no go… (i mean, no blur applied, as expected)

added to update function in PaperSprite

...
var filterArray:Array = new Array();
filterArray.push(blur);
_front.filters = _back.filters = filterArray;

this last turned out in the well known CTRL+ENTER = CRASH :)
tried applyFilter() method, but as _front and _back aren’t BitmapData… well you get the point.

I mean, the idea is great, only one filter instance is continuously applied as the values of the filter are changing… just couldn’t get it done… so far.
The values applied are from 3-4 to a maximum of 11 (i’m multiplying by .04 and bitwise shifting as told). I went on google looking for some similar situation, but AS3 posts and tuts aren’t as popular as i’d like’em to be. I’ll keep trying.

I was writing this and your site went offline :( so now i have updates:
Went back to my original intention: not touching your class. So i created the blurFilter and added to each paperSprite (i add them with a for loop)

paperSprites[i].filters = new Array(blur);

and in the ENTER_FRAME event i used:

blur.blurX = blur.blurY = a; //the value from "z" position
e.target.filters = new Array(blur);

Ok, i know i’m re-registering the blur effect on each frame. I couldn’t find how to do as you told. This way had some strange behaviour: crashed on CS4 environment-player. Worked just fine on standalone player (17mb processing, 20mb swapping, 7 – 15% cpu usage)… so, i’m quite happy with it. I would love to understand some more about class/object to assign the blur as you told me. I’m happy also about not touching your class, i like how it works and “extra” effects as this one should go outside, IMHO.
So… if you feel like it, any advise would be, as usual, very appreciated. If not :) THANKS A LOT, i wouldn’t have come this far without your guidance. Thanks, really.

For a start, you’re creating a new BlurFilter every update, which is a bad idea for memory usage, among other things. You should reuse just one.

Also, you can use a bitwise operator to do Math.floor() and its much faster.

So try this:

Register a public blur property on the PaperSprite:

// In the PaperSprite class
public var blur:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter(0,0,2);

Target this from your enterFrame event:

function rotationEvent(e:Event):void
{
	e.target.rotationY -= 0.5;
	e.target.rotationX -= 0.5;
	var p:Point = holder.localToGlobal(new Point(e.target.z,e.target.x));
	e.target.blur.blurX = e.target.blurY = p.x * 0.1 < < 0;
}

I'll just explain the statement p.x * 0.1 < < 0. Multiplication is faster than division, so to divide by 2 its best to use myNumber *= 0.5 instead of myNumber /= 2.

<< 0 is performing a left bitwise shift and will return an integer, just like Math.floor() but loads faster.

If you're still having problems, trace out the value being assigned to the blur - you probably want to limit it to a maximum, say 24, otherwise Flash will struggle to render the bitmap filter.

Hope that helps.

This is registered on ENTER_FRAME event for every PaperSprite (20 at the time, tried with 10 and 3… always the same), they float very gently and all.

function rotationEvent(e:Event):void
{
	e.target.rotationY -= 0.5;
	e.target.rotationX -= 0.5;
	var p:Point = holder.localToGlobal(new Point(e.target.z,e.target.x));
	//holder is container, which will be spinned on stage's ENTER_FRAME
	e.target.filters = getBlurFilter(p.x); //X here is the representation of Z
}

Using localToGlobal taking Z intead of X, feed the next function returning the array.
If you’re gonna try this, please save any file you’re working on… i would hate to be responsible of you losing any ongoing project xD (the “80″ division is just to get a small number, tried with Quality set to MEDIUM… same result)

function getBlurFilter(p:int):Array
{
	var myFilter:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter(Math.floor(p / 80),Math.floor(p / 80),BitmapFilterQuality.HIGH);
	var filtersArray = new Array();
	filtersArray.push(myFilter);
	return filtersArray;
}

Not to mention i’m not even setting the proper order (on Z value) for the sprites, which will add another step on ENTER_FRAME.

Any hint? (i’m gonna feel so embarrassed when you solve this with 2 lines of code xD )

Yeah, feel free to post some code. Maybe the problems you’re having are because you’re not limiting the blur to a maximum amount? Also using integers helps.

Glad you like the visualisations – I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out. It’s a great project to work on and the next batch should be good!