Rocking Out and Getting Your Geek On: Negrita!

We spoke with Marino Cecada, an italian visual designer who has been doing some out of the box work for various pop and rock acts. Where most rock shows visually rely on simple live camera registration, Marino uses Arena and some custom FFGL wizardry to take things to the next level.


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Tell us about yourself
I live and work in Italy, and since 2006 I have been working in the video production business, in the beginning as a cameraman and editor. In 2007, together with 2 colleagues, we worked on our first visual project for concerts: it was the "Soundtrack" tour for Elisa, a famous Italian singer.

There were no live cameras for that tour. We had PVC screens on which our videos were projected. Each video was done especially for each song (track). During the years, I have been more and more attracted by video ­art and, generally speaking, everything regarding video production in the music and concert world.

Some of the first interactive video installations I made were with Quartz Composer. I used it to work on musical video­clips and collaborated on other tours in which I have always supervised the visuals and recently also direction and broadcast.

Then, in 2012, while preparing for a tour in the US with Il Volo, my colleague Steve Sarzi proposed to work with Arena. I never heard about it, but after using it with Steve for a couple hours, we had already set the basics for the project I had in mind and most of all, it worked! I was impressed by how fast and easy the software is to use. Also, it immediately read SMPTE signals which was extremely important as I usually work with pre-made videos which are synced.

Tell us about your last work
The last job was for Negrita, an Italian rock group that has a 30 year long career. For spring 2015 they had an in­door stadium tour in mind. The lighting and stage designer, Jo Campana, conceived a very essential stage: the background was made of three big LED screens, 5,60 meters tall and 4,20 Meters wide, occupying 16 meters in length.

Because of the importance given in terms of space, a lot of the show was centered on what was happening on these screens. The idea we had was to mainly use live footage and to exclude tracks with simply a video in the background. The live images had been conceived as a graphic element in support of the set/scenic design, so the important thing was that what we were filming had to be processed and filtered to give a different interpretation for each track.

Being a live broadcast, the result was a sequence of live videos that followed the dynamics and the energy of what was going on on stage. No pre­-created video could have given the same feeling. The only part we left unprocessed was the very last song, in which all the lights were turned on and the show came back to a more "earthly" environment.

Tell us about the video system you used
To realize what we had in mind, Telemauri , which is a video rental company Steve and I closely work with, gave us 3 cameras with cameramen, three remote­controlled cameras plus some small ones which were placed on stage, one of which on the drum set.

All cameras were routed into a ATEM switcher, which was extremely versatile. Thanks to it we could independently control 4 SDI and 4 other input signals to the computer with Arena.

What came out of Arena, went directly to a video matrix and consequently to the screen. Our output was a single full HD signal, the mapping of the three screens were directly done on Arena, deciding what should go on each screen. I prefer to keep some of the controls of Arena in manual mode, like the master fader for example, so we connected a Samson Graphite MF8 controller to the computer.

Have you used particular effects?
One of the aspects that made us choose Arena towards other more "prestigious" media servers, is that through FFGL we could develop our own plugins. In fact, also in the previous tour, Elisa's "L'Anima Vola" we created some plugins to make a choreography of the singer moving on stage, while on the screens her movements were repeated several times to create a trail.

Elisa tour 2014

Another plugin I enjoy, which has been developed together with Davide Mania (an FFGL programmer I have been working with for years) we named ScrumblePict. I often use it, and it allows us to have copies of the signals without having to use more of Arena's clip slots . These copies can be moved, rotated, scaled and cropped, allowing to always create different templates.

Elisa tour 2014

Biagio Antonacci tour 2014

Could you show us some of the graphic styles used for the show?
As I mentioned, I very much enjoy working with image decompositions, so in this tour we also got busy with breakdowns and recomposing the signal that came through the switcher.

Negrita live, example of the ScrumblePict effect.

For other tracks, we took advantage of the edge detection and pixel screen effects.



Another fantastic aspect of Arena is the possibility to use DXV files with the alpha channel. In this way we can create moving masks for live inputs.

Negrita live, mask with alpha channel and live inside

More info and other works and productions at http://www.editart.it

World wide FFGL plugins list

This list contains all the FFGL effects for Resolume we know about at the moment. Most of them are free, some are premium.

Compatible with Resolume 7 (64 bit)



Hybrid Visuals Chaser, Stageflow and Pulse:
https://hybridconstructs.com/shop/

Subpixel Various plugins (windows Only)
https://www.subpixels.com/

William Rood aceFX bundle
https://williamrood.net/new/store/acefx2

Angelo Dvizion's Mapper 2, Maste rFX, Kaleido FX and Change to Color
http://www.dvizion.net/portfolio-category/tools/

Daniel Arnett's 360 VJ plugin turns your world upside down and inside out
https://github.com/DanielArnett/360-VJ

Motus Lumina's GeneraXYZ footage packs with FFGL plugins
https://www.resolume.com/footage/GeneraXYZ2
https://www.resolume.com/footage/GeneraXYZ

Juicebar Marketplace with FFGL plugins and other helpful tools
https://get-juicebar.com/

FDVJ Fulldome VJ plugins
https://www.fulldomevjs.com/fdvj/

Plus Fisheye and Ascii
https://raduplus.gumroad.com/l/fisheyeffgl
https://raduplus.gumroad.com/l/asciiffgl

Scratchpole's Starglow effect (Mac only)
https://community.vuo.org/t/starglow-image-filter-for-ffgl-export/6209

Shady Headstash collection of shaders and Wire example patches ported to compiled Wire patches
https://www.headsta.sh/shop/resolume/all/

Notch Block plugin (Windows only)
https://github.com/notchvfx/notchblock_ffgl/

VFXArtShop different FFGL plugins (Windows only)
https://www.vfxartshop.com/product-category/ffgl

Medcelerate TouchEngine plugin for TouchDesigner component integration
https://github.com/medcelerate/FFGLTouchEngine



Compatible with Resolume 6 and earlier (32/64 bit)



Hybrid Visuals Chaser
https://hybridconstructs.com/shop/

BigFug fugGlitch, fugFeedback, fugPower and fugScope
https://github.com/bigfug/Freeframe

Subpixel TriTone and AutoMask (windows Only)
https://www.subpixels.com/

Visution Mapio
https://visution.com/

William Rood aceFX bundle
https://williamrood.net/new/vjplugins

Trypta Kaleido (PC only)
http://resolume.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10008

Angelo Dvizion's KaleidoFX, MasterFX and the amazing Mapper
http://www.dvizion.net/portfolio-category/tools/

Yochee has been porting some Shadertoy goodness to FFGL (PC only)
https://www.7dex.de/works/ffgl-plugins/

We ported Dani Berio's Fireworks to native FFGL and made it part of the open source FFGL repo.
https://github.com/resolume/ffgl/releases

VJ-Spack-O-Mat Lots of fractally and shiny goodness (all plugins PC Only)
https://github.com/trifox/Spack-O-Mat-FFGL-Plugins/tree/2.0.0/release

Daniel Arnett's 360 VJ plugin turns your world upside down and inside out
https://github.com/DanielArnett/360-VJ

FDVJ Fulldome VJ plugins
https://www.fulldomevjs.com/fdvj/

Plus Fisheye
https://raduplus.gumroad.com/l/fisheyeffgl

VFXArtShop different FFGL plugins (Windows only)
https://www.vfxartshop.com/product-category/ffgl





Compatible with Resolume 5 and earlier (32 bit only)



Visution ClipSA, FaderSA, IR OSCSA, IR Keystone2[3], IR Cosmic Pack
https://visution.com/legacy-products/

Dani, Resolume DropShadow and Fireworks
http://resolume.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8506
http://resolume.com/blog/7610

Hybrid Visuals Plexus:
http://www.resolume.com/footage/plexus

Marc Wren sfColorRings, sfSpiderPoints, sfJuniperStar, sfBranches
http://sffreeframe.sourceforge.net/ (careful, these plugins seem to be abandoned)

Oleg Potiy FFGLTriangleMixer (Mac & PC), FFGLVolumeRenderer (PC only)
https://github.com/OlegPotiy/FFGLTriangleMX/tree/master/Bins
https://github.com/OlegPotiy/FFGLVolumeRenderer/tree/master/Bins

Lynn Jarvis Spout FFGL, ShaderLoader, ShaderMaker, AutoThreshold (PC only)
https://github.com/leadedge

Chris Korda Triplight
https://sourceforge.net/projects/triplight/
https://github.com/victimofleisure/TripLight/releases

Team Syphon Syphon FFGL (Mac only)
http://syphon.v002.info/

Darren Mothersele Noise, RGB Source, Spiral Source, Underwater Life, Evil, Plasma Ball (all plugins Mac only)
https://github.com/cyrilcode/ffglplugin-examples

FDVJ Fulldome VJ plugins
https://www.fulldomevjs.com/fdvj/

Plus Fisheye
https://raduplus.gumroad.com/l/fisheyeffgl





So how do I use these plugins with Resolume?

On Resolume 6, drop them in the Extra Effects subfolder in Resolume's folder in Documents. Resolume will load this folder automatically on the next launch.

On Resolume 5 and before, create a new folder called ‘FFGL Plugins’ inside the Resolume folder in My Documents (PC) or Documents (Mac). Copy the unzipped .bundle file (Mac) or .dll file (PC) into that folder. In Resolume, add this folder as an extra FFGL plugin folder in the video tab of the preferences. Restart Resolume and the plugins will be loaded.

Let's try to keep this thread clean, so it stays a good resource. Please post additions and changes as comments below, we will then update the list accordingly.

This is not the place to discuss problems with these plugins. For support, you will have to contact the developer of the plugin directly. This is not the place to discuss FFGL development, there's a separate board for that.

New Footage Releases: A Little Different

This footage release contains the work by three artists that each have a very unique approach to creating content.

Joris does it with code. His Plexus FFGL plugin comes as a bonus to the loop pack created with it.

http://www.resolume.com/footage/plexus



Muzencab does it extreme. He explores the limits of visual perception and then goes well beyond them.

http://www.resolume.com/footage/Complementary



And VJ Hummer does it retro. As usual, he's rocking the bold graphical style that he does so well.

http://www.resolume.com/footage/mazerunners

Spout - Sharing Video between Applications on Windows

Do you like stringing apps together like they are sneakers? Do you like the wonderful Syphon framework, but don’t have a Mac?

Then rejoice. Thanks to the efforts of Lynn and Robert Jarvis, there is now an easy way of doing exactly that.

It's called Spout.

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For Resolume users, the system works by installing two FFGL plugins and a utility app. You can then play the output of any Spout enabled application like a camera in Resolume. This means you can use all the effects in Resolume on your generative visuals made in Processing or VVVV. You can also map your projection easily, without having to write your own projection mapping tool while you're at it.

The other way also works. You can apply the Spout effect anywhere in Resolume to send the output to another Spout Receiver.

The real beauty of the framework is that its well documented and easy to use. Setting up takes less than a minute. Using it is a matter of filling out the correct sender and receiver names. This really makes Spout worth its weight in gold ( “But it’s software, so it really doesn’t really weigh anything. That analogy doesn’t make any sense.” “Shut up inner voice! I do what I want! ”)

Supported apps include Processing, VVVV, Jitter and VIZZable. Example code is available for openFrameworks and Cinder. Support in Isadora and Touch Designer is rumoured to be on the way.

Head over to http://spout.zeal.co/ to read more, ask questions on their forum and of course download. But not before you’ve pressed that Donate button, because quality work like this deserves your support.

Now let's make some awesome things happen.

New FFGLTriangleMX Blend Mode from Oleg Potiy



Suddenly FFGL effects are popping up left and right. From Oleg Potiy comes this wonderful triangle blend mode. Guaranteed to get your visual sets certified by the international hipster community, ready for posting as gifs on Tumblr.

Because we were into triangles before everybody else heard about them.
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Oleg explains the idea behind the plugin:
The mixer concept was taken from vj Eps (Vadim Epstein, in[visible] studio, http://vimeo.com/63057090). This video was made with his own vj-machine powered by VVVV environment. I thought it would be nice to get the same functionality in Resolume. Since I’m slightly familiar with OpenGL/CPP programming I’ve coded this pattern into FFGL-mixer and released source code and binary on GitHub. Nothing more, really :)


Besides being modest, Oleg used to be an active veejay for 5 years (2006 - 2011) and took part in Kazantip fest in 2008-2009 as part of the Russian vj-crew. He still perform once or twice in a season, but happily for us nowadays he's now concentrating on how things can be turned into software.

Part of his future plans involve more FFGL goodness: he wants to make the geometry in the FFGLTriangleMX user configurable. Also he's planning another effect that takes an input image as geometry profile and extrudes this profile along the depth axis.

But I'm sure he will have to deal with your cries of injustice first, because this plugin is PC only for now.

Read more about the TriangleMX plugin here: http://github.com/OlegPotiy/FFGLTriangleMX or get the direct download from here: http://github.com/OlegPotiy/FFGLTriangleMX/tree/master/Bins

Reactive Visuals Using Only Resolume, Tutorials to Boot

A while back we had a whole thread on making visuals with Resolume. So we already knew it was possible.

But to see a whole music video based on the concept is still taking it to the next level. Coming to you courtesy of Masanori Yamaguchi (aka Reelvision), this wonderful piece of minimal glitch design manages to walk that elusive fine line: reactive without becoming repetitive, visually interesting without becoming cluttered.



Perhaps best of all, he's not afraid to share with the rest of the class. [fold][/fold]Masanori started a separate blog, where every element of his video is explained in detail. Both in video and still images, he recreates his work step by step.

Truly inspirational.



Be sure to click through to http://resolumextheater.blogspot.jp/ to see the rapidly growing amount of tutorials there!