Project 1

Jarrod and I finished our project this week. It turned out better than we expected. We were having a lot of trouble earlier this week with drawing multiple shapes, but it seems like we fixed it. We made the jump from 2d to 3d, and the images looked a lot better, and the depth granted by the 3d shapes greatly increased the immersion.

That is a sample image from our program. The black keys drew lines (planes), and the white keys drew the circles (spheres). We programmed in the use of the modulator wheel to control the rotation of the lines. It made drawing more interesting, and you could create new shapes out of just the rotation.

Before we presented, we let some classmates test it.

From our observations, Jarrod and I observed that most people would carefully play around with the drawing tools before trying to actually play a song or melody on the keyboard. After they got the hang of drawing they would have much less reservations about playing around with the set-up.



It was interesting to see how everyone reacted to the drawing controls. People seemed to like playing with the extremes of the piece; for example, they would press keys very softly, or play a lot of keys very quickly, in order to test what the program was capable of.

Overall, I learned a lot from this project. I had to learn a new programming language in Max 5, which was an interesting experience. It's a powerful program, but it has setbacks. The node-based system can be finicky, and the flow of the program confusing. It ended up working, though, and I think our final project was a success.

Final Presentation