Got a New Mod in Progress “RedShift” Not much to say about it since it’s not finsihed yet. I was working on a sample only mod and got the itch to modify the graphics on it.

A Preliminary GUI sample is here

Peff

Heh, and I thought ReBirth Really Rocks!

Living in California, USA, one has the opportunity of experiencing nature’s own Superphat SubSonic Basslines which literally “Rocks the House”!!! This morning i was rocked out of bed by an Earthquake!

Looking at the Earthquake data, and from personal experience, this is an analogy of what it felt like this morning: Imagine a 5Hz Sine wave filtered down gradually opening up with the filter resonance rising to a peak very quickly. Now imagine this tone pumping through 54000 watts of power, hehe

Most Importantly! no equipment was damaged! and power and utilities have not been severed. All systems are still go!

Anyways, the media likes to hype up these kind of events and make it sound like there was some kind of major disaster, and it’s kind of funny to see national news raising a bunch of hype about the small humble community of San Juan Bautista, where i reside. But the effects of the earthquake are not as severe as many people might be led to beleive. (no bridges collapsing or sky rises tumbling down, no buckling roadways, no derailing trains, or any other phenomena associated with major natural disasters)

Basically this earthquake was centered directly below where i live;-) This information on the internet is amazing! Here’s a report on the quake from the US Geological Survey, who has a seismic sensor on my property used for triangulating the location of earthquakes:

Some Notes about how to protect your equipment in situations of earthquakes:

Don’t stack up your gear too high, try to keep it below 5ft. This keep the center of gravity low to the ground, making it less likely to topple over.

I have some keyboards on ultimate support systems single pier stands which have held up with no problems in earthquakes. Other Keyboards on Quick-loc stands which are also in good shape.

Most importantly, insurance on your gear, just incase it’s really bad

well, back to rocking with ReBirth:-)

Getting Perfect Rotation From knobs

I’ve been using Infini-D by Metacreations (now corel) to build a 3d model of the knob. I suppose any 3d rendering application will work fine. This seems to be the easiest way to get perfect rotation out of knob actions. Photoshop’s rotation feature just doesn’t quite cut it. Rotated images usually end up wobbly. I think the vectoring actions in the upcoming Photoshop 6 will probably work, but we shall see.

With the 3d Modeling application, you create a model of the knob, then animate it to rotate around a center axis. After rending the animation, you can cut and paste each frame into a film strip and save the assembled animation frames as a jpg and pack it into your mod.

Dancing Pixels on the Knob Background

Yep this happens if the background isn’t exactly the same in each frame. A quick way to create a perfect set of background frames is to select a single frame with the selection tool in photoshop, then “Define Pattern.” Then select the entire strip and “Fill” using “Pattern.” Move this background layer behind the knob layer and you have a perfect set of backgrounds for each frame.

How ReBirth Handles Knob Animation Strips

After experimenting for such a long time, I’ve figured out how ReBirth responds to these animation strips. The program reads the horizontal width of the jpg - Total w(pix). It then divides that number by the amount of frames it’s supposed to have - Frames. It then subracts 1 pixel for the divider line - div(pix). This determines the animation frame width - w(pix). The height is calculated by reading the vertical size of the jpg - h(pix)

Altering the vertical size of knobs is pretty easy, just increase the vertical size of your image. Increasing the width of the knob frames requires a bit of algebra. For example, I usually like to make the 909 knobs the same size as the 808 knobs. The 909 knobs are displayed in 12×12 pixel frames. Increase them to 13×13 pixels as follows:

h(pix) 13
w(pix) 13 + div(pix) 1 = 14pix
14pix * 41 frames = 574 pixels
574 pix - 1 div(pix) = 573 pixels.

so the final image size of 12565.jpg (the 909 knobs) would be 13 pixels high by 573 pixels wide.

Short Cuts

I use the Avid Quicktime Import Plug In (which came with the Avid Video editing software for the Powermac 8500) - this can be a wee bit difficult to find now that the software is so outdated.

Since the movie is imported as a vertical film strip, it must be rotated 90¡ counter-dclockwise. To compensate for this rotation the animation start position is usually about 10 o’clock Mid position is 3 o’clock and finish position is usually 8 o’clock. When rotated. the start position will be 7 o’clock, mid position 12 o’clock and finish position is 5 o’clock.

Reduce the image size to fit the dimensions listed below with the Bicubic dither setting. I only reduce the image width and let photoshop automatically calculate the height (proportions constrained).

On the new layer, copy the background of knob (including fixed shading etc onto this masking layer. Then disable the bottom knob layer so that only the mask shows (the transparent grey and white blocks should be visible where the knob normally is).

Select the area of 1 frame including divider (e.g. 12507.jpg select 30 h x 31w area) Then “Define Pattern” from the selection Create a new layer. Select ALL . Then Fill with the pattern. If your dimensions are set properly, the Fill should align perfectly with each frame of the knob allowing the changing steps of the knob to show through and keeping the frame background identical on each step:)

Save this image as a photoshop document keeping the layers in case you need to make changes. Then save a copy as a jpeg into your MOD folder RePeat this for each knob Well this is how i do it…Perhaps you can use some of the techniques involved.. hope this helps a bit:)
 

How i do my knobs:-)

After seeing Trin’s posting on the official Propellerhead’s message board and from getting several inquiries about how i do them, i’ve written down some basic notes about how i create some of my knobs. Click on the knob icon on the left for a reprint of my posted reply.

=Peff

What??!! Another One? Well not really, I’m cheating by reusing the same old GUI for the Techno Box, but this time i’ve adapted the original Techno Box by Mac Junkie for ReBirth RB-338 2.0. The 909 Section contains the TB-909e Samples while the 808 Section has the original set of MJ’s Techno Box samples.

I’ll make the mod available soon without a finished demo song. As far as the GUI goes, i think most people already know what it looks like

A bit of Background info on the Original Mac Junkie Techno Box:

This was probably the 3rd mod of ReBirth to emerge, and the second mod to completely change the GUI of ReBirth v1.0. The First mod, (that i had seen) was created by “ma baker”, which had 909 samples replacing the 808 samples. The second mod was created by “po[ar” which used loops and miscellaneous sound effects.

Mine was the first 808 GUI modification (not really sure about this), but “Breaker” was the first to competely modify the interface for the “ma baker 909″.

After Finishing the original Techno Box, I made the variation of the TB-909e, which thanks to Acid Mother, was adapted to the Win95/NT platform, and finally accepted by the Propellerheads with the “Official” status. (They were pretty strict back then, one of the criteria being that the mod needed to work cross-platform)

Well after about a year of doing this stuff, I’m pleased to announce the official Re-Introduction of the original Techno Box for RB-338 2.0

It will be available very soon;-)

=Peff

P.S. “Axiom” is under a big revision at this time…The aliasing on the fonts really has me irritated, so i’m going to redo all of the text, however the samples are set.

Still Hot Here!!!

Hami has finished the Dejenerate Oxydized edition. Ready for Download Check it out, it’s quite impressive looking, in my opinion. The demo song leaves something to be desired - i tried using the pcf filter frequency to simulate scratching.

Also a bit of news for MacUsers there’s rumored to be a rebirth 2.0 MOD UNPacker floating around in the works for Mac OS. It will also extract PICT and AIFF Resources from ReBirth 1.5 Mods for RePacking into Rebirth 2.0 MODs or for General Unpacking of ReBirth 2.0 MODs for image heisting and AIFF Sample Stealing:-) Now this would be something cool! if you see this, please email me!

ReTake it easy,

Peff

It’s a Hot One here today! Rarely do i need air conditioning, but today is an exception…I guess i’ll go get some sun instead, but I have posted a copy of AXIOM(b4).rbm Graphics are still the same, but the samples have been slightly modified/changed.

any suggestions before i make it final?

Email me at [email protected]

I’ve finished a “very” rough version of AXIOM, but the sound set is not finalized. I started digging out some other gear to sample for it — not good since i get easily distracted playing with the stuff…

In the meantime, ive put together a list of some of the equipment i use to record samples for the mod. However, ReBirth Seems to be replacing quite a bit of it based purely on the ease of use and amount of productivity derived from it:-)

Click on the Ring Logo to see my List

AXIOM Mod is coming along:-) I’m touching up the graphics and finalizing the sound set. I might have an MP3 demo up soon.

I’ve gotten some emails asking about a ReMaker for Mac, however as far as i know, no one has yet to create such a thing. However, I have had success using remaker under Emulation using Real PC running OSR2. Any Codewarriors out there want to take a shot at it?

Also, for anyone who is wondering why MP3? because it sounds good. If you can’t play MP3 files on your computer, then you wont be able to run ReBirth Either

I have a new email address, please send correspondence here rather than my old hotmail address:

[email protected]

Working on the MODs a little bit more, but spreading myself thin. I might have to quit the day job:-) RB2.0 has been pretty integral lately in production of stuff so there’s not much time for obsessing over mods.

I started up a demo of Cubase VST/24 4.0 with ReWire and ReBirth 2.0 and I can honestly say that this is really really amazing. Even if you don’t run any effects with VST, or even add midi sequences or extra audio tracks, having the power to individually pan the sounds is so cool! I mamaged to get all rewire inputs running fairly smoothly on my 604e/233 with no additional audio hardware. Even with some dsp effects running, i still managed to use VST and ReWire fairly easily. Now I definitely have a G3 or a G3 upgrade processor on my wish list!

One special note - VST and ReWire didn’t crash but bear in mind that i wasn’t programming a sequence. I was just mixing one down from a preset sequence. Check out Fred’s cool mix on the ReBirth 2.0 CD

I’ve taken some screenshots of ReWire and VST. Mind you i’m a long time Logic Audio User, and I don’t really like Cubase 3.5, but Cubase 4.0 is much faster and ReWire is so worth the investment (Thank goodness for the competitve upgrade plan)

This has a lot of potential…Especially with multichannel I/O cards and MDR’s like ADATs and DA-88’s. My next project might encompass taking a rebirth track, and tracking it to ADAT, then Mixing it down on my Neotek Series II console. Ah, but i need to get a I/O Card first:-P

I’ve also switched to Netscape 4.5 Preview Release 1… Which is a hell of a lot more stable than 4.05 i highly recommend it.

Changing the site graphics around a bit…I’m getting tired of black

started working on a new mod, too, AXIOM. I scrounged up some Proteus Samples which seemed pretty handy. And using a new idea for knobs where the indicator changes color as you rotate the knob… I’ll have a screen shot posted sometime soon.

Denjenerate Oxidized edition… has the sounds pretty much finalized. I’m just waiting for Hami to finsih the graphics.

If you haven’t checked out my friend moldy’s Real Audio Server, I recommend that you pay it a visit. We are planning to encode some rbs files to mp3 and broadcast them on the automated real audio mp3 jukebox:-) who knows what you might hear on there. Those guys at Niftywerks have really eccentric tastes. Don’t be surprised if you hear aphex twin mix into so some reggae / trip-hop boomin basslines. Squarepusher seems to be the flavor of the month.

I also came up with a new model for a vernier knob. I’m trying to get it to look like a vcs-3 (putney) and will create a panel that imitates one. This time i think i’m going to take images and paste them into the mod rather than try to conceive the whole thing from scratch.

I’ve revised the Graphics on Alpha3 a bit, took AnthonyEID’s advice and made the 808 and 909 frame accurate numbers. BUT the sounds still need to be set, so i don’t suggest downloading this one.

Hami (binary edit/rhythm ace) likes the dejenerate mod so much that he’s going to be revising the GUI and were collaborating on a general version. I’ve inserted some very realistic sounding Drums on the 909 which sound great with shuffle. They have a nice balance with ambient reverberation. These samples are from the Bob Clearmountain Drum Series. They are normally Stereo Samples which sound phenomenal, but even in mono on rebirth they are pretty cool. Check back to see when it’s ready for download. Ive uploaded a track called “OXIDE.MP3″ which is a rough…really rough demo of this mod.

I’ve Added the TB-909e KodeVoder mod. Which has the standard TB-909e interface and a bunch of Vocoder Samples off of a Korg VC-10. There’s an MP3 demo available of this mod.