Animusic

Animusic, LLC is a dormant animation company specializing in the 3D visualization of MIDI-based music. Founded by Wayne Lytle in 1990¹, it is currently a registered limited liability company in New York and had offices in Texas and California during its active stages. The initial name of the company was Visual Music, but was changed to Animusic in 1995. The company is known for its Animusic compilations of computer-generated animations, based on MIDI events processed to simultaneously drive the music and on-screen action, leading to and corresponding to every sound. The animated short "Pipe Dream," showed at SIGGRAPH's Electronic Theater in 2001¹, details the use of this specific sequencing. Unlike many other music visualizations, Animusic uses MIDI information to drive the animation, while other 3D programs animate figures or characters to the music. Any animated models in Animusic are created first, and are then programmed to follow what the music, or MIDI information, instructs them to do. Many of the instruments appear to be robotic or play themselves using seemingly curious methods to produce and visualize the original compositions. The animations typically feature dramatically lit rooms or landscapes in rustic and/or futuristic locales. The music in Animusic is principally pop-rock based, consisting of straightforward sequences of triggered samples and digital patches.…

Animusic, LLC is a dormant animation company specializing in the 3D visualization of MIDI-based music. Founded by Wayne Lytle in 1990, it is currently a registered limited liability company in New York and had offices in Texas and California during its active stages. The initial name of the company was Visual Music, but was changed to Animusic in 1995. The company is known for its Animusic compilations of computer-generated animations, based on MIDI events processed to simultaneously drive the music and on-screen action, leading to and corresponding to every sound. The animated short "Pipe Dream," showed at SIGGRAPH's Electronic Theater in 2001, details the use of this specific sequencing. Unlike many other music visualizations, Animusic uses MIDI information to drive the animation, while other 3D programs animate figures or characters to the music. Any animated models in Animusic are created first, and are then programmed to follow what the music, or MIDI information, instructs them to do. Many of the instruments appear to be robotic or play themselves using seemingly curious methods to produce and visualize the original compositions. The animations typically feature dramatically lit rooms or landscapes in rustic and/or futuristic locales. The music in Animusic is principally pop-rock based, consisting of straightforward sequences of triggered samples and digital patches. According to the director's commentary track on Animusic 2, most instrument sounds are generated with software synthesizers on a music workstation. Many sounds resemble stock patches available on digital keyboards, subjected to some manipulation, such as pitch or playback speed, to enhance the appeal of their timbre.

Releases

, three video albums have been released. Animusic: A Computer Animation Video Album (2001, re-issued as "special edition" in 2004) Animusic 2: A New Computer Animation Video Album (2005¹) Animusic HD: Stunning Computer-Animated Music (2010¹) Animusic was released in 2001 on VHS, and later DVD, with a special edition DVD being released later in 2004. This special edition included extra material, such as Animusic's first animation, "Beyond the Walls". A second album, Animusic 2, was released in the United States in 2005. Later, in 2008, this volume received a Japanese localization through a distribution deal with Japanese company Jorudan, Co. Ltd. In a company newsletter, it was announced that the Animusic company would also be producing a high-definition version of Animusic 2 on Blu-ray, to be released sometime before their third major album, Animusic 3. This HD compilation was eventually released in November 2010, featuring all of the animations featured in Animusic 2, as well as the animation "Pipe Dream" from Animusic encoded at a high bitrate. In a later newsletter, the working titles of three animations in Animusic 3, “Sonic Warfare”, “Paddle Ball” and “Super Pipe Dream”, were revealed. In 2012, a Kickstarter campaign for Animusic 3 was successfully funded. "The Sound of Twelve," a music-only album made using similar harmonics as Animusic, was released in March 2015¹. Animusic 3 was never finished or released. In the mid-2000s, a viral hoax email suggested that the "Pipe Dream" video was actually a machine created at the University of Iowa from farm machinery parts. Although this has been proven false, the hoax was still considered "pretty amusing" to the Animusic staff. It is currently unknown who started the hoax. Intel later commissioned a version of the machine to be built which was demonstrated at IDF 2011.

Software programs

According to the company's FAQ, animation is created procedurally with their own proprietary MIDImotion engine. Discreet 3D Studio Max was used for modeling, lighting, cameras, and rendering. Maps were painted with Corel Painter, Deep Paint 3D, and Photoshop. They have also created their own software called ANIMUSIC studio that is based on scene-graph technology. According to an August 2015 newsletter, Animusic was using Unreal Engine 4 for the production of Animusic 3.

External links

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1364087341 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.