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                       obsidian by xplsv
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                      code: mrdoob x three.js
                 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 rhythmic 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 the 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 part)
         and 2 more to fill the next day, so that
         was encouraging.

         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 had to
         find a good way to follow it. As if I was
         forced 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 there. 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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