After releasing the Cream of the Crop preset collection for NestDrop, I had a good understanding of the visuals that could be further explored. So I started doing mashups just for fun and stumbled across some fresh visuals.

The presets have been organized into categories and subcategories folders. The organizational structure matches that of the Cream of the Crop collection, so both collections can be installed into NestDrop and they will seamlessly merge together.

DOWNLOAD
– Collection of 1,131 Milkdrop presets
– Includes preview images of each preset
– Readme with install instructions

If you would instead prefer having all of the presets in one giant folder, here is a alternate version of the collection which has the categories and subcategories baked into the filenames.

Recently NestDrop has been particularly useful in helping to produce visuals for our online SubSpace Sessions. I have been recording the visuals and using it to layer along with other visuals when creating a show. Below is a tutorial I created which explores some different mixing techniques that are possible in NestDrop.

Recently I’ve been collaborating with N.E.S.T. Immersion to create an exciting tool for VJ-ing. And it’s launched as of today!

NestDrop is a tool for performing with high-resolution high-fps generative visuals which react in real-time to the music and then broadcasts the video via Spout. Since the Milkdrop engine is at the core you can easily bring in your own presets. Use any audio source to drive the visuals, even live audio.

Presets Collection – Cream of the Crop

I’ve spent a ton of time curating a best-of collection of presets for VJ’s to perform with. Over the years the Milkdrop community has released about 52,000 presets and so I selected only the best ones and ended up with 9,795 presets. I also organized the presets into categories and subcategories.

DOWNLOAD
– Collection of 9,795 Milkdrop presets
– Includes preview images of each preset
– Readme with install instructions

If you would instead prefer having all of the presets in one giant folder, here is a alternate version of the collection which has the categories and subcategories baked into the filenames.

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In recent years, the 3D industry went from very little support of fisheye rendering and now every modern render engine fully embraces it. I think we can thank the rise of VR for helping to shine a light on immersive production.

We recently had a chance to upgrade the render engine that we use in Maya for producing our fulldome shows. We were also able to add some computers to our old 10-node render farm. Many thanks to the Charles Hayden Foundation for the grant that made this vital tech leap possible.

With the recent introduction of GPU render engines, things are a bit more convoluted when considered alongside CPU render engines. Yet each render engine is unique and excels at different aspects, so it makes comparing them tricky work.

And so I thought it would be useful to hear from the fulldome community…

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All too often I need to precisely convert between timecode and frames. Or I’ll want a rough time estimate of a render job on the farm. Yet I needed a utility that could allow for intuitive interactivity, GUI creation, and be instantly editable. So I’m using a simple open source solution: Pure Data

Pure Data (aka Pd) is a realtime graphical programming environment which is mainly used in live music performances. But its realtime aspect makes it ideal for my needs. So with some careful planning I applied the math nodes to create tools which automate the conversion process. Basically I’ve created a calculator tailored for animators and filmmakers.

DOWNLOAD
collection of Pd patches

Instructions
— Requires Pure Data to be installed. (supports: Windows, Mac, Linux)
— It’s easy to use. Just click and drag on the number boxes to input your timecode or frames.

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