Hey there folks. It’s that time again, let’s do a video synthesis patch challenge! LZX is giving away another module so I hope to really see you break out the big guns!
Challenge Theme: Flowers
THE RULES
You must fill out the Google form below to submit your video!
Direct hardware video synthesis with LZX modules only. An exception is made for non-video eurorack modules (LFOs, envelopes, logic, etc).
No camera or image inputs, no outboard gear except final capture device/camera.
Memory Palace’s image loader may be utilized with ramp/gradient files.
Video entries can be up to 60 seconds, one entry per person.
Both digital captures and rescans are acceptable as entries, please do not submit anything above 1080p.
Entry videos may contain audio, however all audio will be muted for judging. Audio will be added back in for public viewing after voting is completed.
Entries are not judged on capture quality, but good quality videos are strongly encouraged, especially for rescans (use a tripod!).
Entries will be accepted starting now, April 16th, and will end at 5pm CST on Thursday, April 22nd.
Winners will be chosen via poll on the weekend of April 23rd with the results formally announced the following Monday. You need to be registered on the LZX forum to vote!
Creator of the video with the most votes will win their choice of an LZX Doorway or Video Logic.
All LZX users worldwide may participate and are eligible to win the grand prize. Prizes will be shipped to the winner by LZX Industries.
As a reminder, the theme of this challenge is FLOWERS and entries should fit into that theme.
I’ve created a Google form for entries, where you will need to enter your information (so I can contact you if you win) and upload your video. You can optionally post your entry to Instagram or YouTube and share it below in the comments, but you must submit it via the form to be a part of the official challenge.
ENTER HERE
If you experience any troubles uploading or completing the form, just email me. You should receive an email copy of your entry by default. Google sign in required.
I expect to see some wonderfully colorful and vivid patches this go around! Happy patching!
never mattered for me before - but now that it did 100% lesson learned haha. I knew I was flirting with disaster, should have recorded before trying to push on definitely. Hopefully stripping back the bells and whistles will put me back there tonight.
Went through the same issue. “I’m just gonna test if this idea works” kind of moment and manipulated way too much of the patch and couldn’t get back to where it was.
My difficulty right now is deciding what clip to use! I guess I’ll have to stop recording new ones
I just finished up getting everything plugged back in and working from moving spaces at the deadline
oh well next one for us!
looking forward to seeing the entries
Thanks @genlok and @Z0NK0UT for organizing another fun challenge!
This is was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done with the Memory Palace, so I took a moment the other day to write it up and would like to share. The core of patch is rather simple, the pedal was just a skewed/rotating shape from the gradient out of Navigator + Shapechanger, with the Memory Palace in paint mode. I kept the center of rotation for the flower fixed in the middle of the video field (pre MP) so it wouldn’t clip the edges, then I used the Escher Sketch to control the X-Y placement inside the Memory Palace.
It get’s a little more in depth with one of the trigger buttons on the ES also patched to gate a fader that would show/hide the rotating flower, which I found was faster and easier to perform than using the MP to freeze/unfreeze the frame (so in effect it was always drawing). Also, a vertically scrolling oscillator was used to make the pedals wiggle sideways—to add variety to each—first using the mesh in Memory Palace, but then I switched that to the x-position on Navigator for better resolution because it didn’t mess up the anchor placement. Some other controls on the MP are used to modulate the luma key, scale, aspect, and color. The only eurorack module was a 4-step sequencer (pressure points/brains) that rotated through the colors with each ES trigger. Finely attenuated ‘noise’ from the scrolling oscillator also got mixed into the hue for a tiny bit of chance color variation with each pedal, and an LFO was patched to the delay to make alter their spacing slightly different.
The Memory Palace RGB out is going through the Polar Fringe on the way to channel A of the Visual Cortex, while there is a scrolling mix of ramps, waves, and feedback from the chroma key going through the Mapper on the way to channel B. The luma out on the MP is going to a Doorway (probably not totally necessary in hindsight, but that’s how it got patched up) to key the flowers against the background. When ‘scene 1’ fades into ‘scene 2’, it’s just channel B coming from the Mapper, but since the flowers are the source for the chroma key—which is also going to the mapper—then they are still there in the mix, and all the different colors allow the chroma key to pull out individual flowers or groups for a moment, which is pretty cool.
The whole thing was managable enough that I could fiddle with the joystick on the Polar Fringe, while still adding new flowers with the Escher Sketch, and occasionally change a few things on the MP. Except for getting it all in under a minute—that’s like no time at all! Still, I’m super happy with this patch overall, I learned a ton making it, and I’m certainly going to use it (or something similar) again in a longer form.
My entry (Entry #13: Field of Roses) wasn’t too complicated so I can’t imagine anyone would care for detailed patch notes, but I do want to mention a few points that I found interesting:
I ended up figuring out how to do some simple compositing in the process since I wanted the stems under (or masked out by) the flower. I inverted the flower “layer” with a Bridge and then used that to multiply the stem “layer” with a Cadet Multiplier.
One VCO was a Cadet VCO, but the other was a Dixie II+ (I really need/want to get more video VCOs!). Using the Dixie was fortuitous though, because using the sine output gave a nice curve to the the flowers and I used the saw output to VC the hard key of the Cadet VCO in order to make the stems!
can’t wait to see everyone’s work.
