Blender Tutorial - Sound Reactive Animation

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My version.

Using a tutorial to build an audio-reactive visualisation in Blender further enhances my skills within my Contemporary Arts practice. Visualising sound is a major interest within my work.

When following Blender tutorials, I am inspired by the limitless possibilities of 3D modelling. The limits are my technical knowledge, but with time, practice and many more tutorials, I am sure to consistently develop these skills in my artwork.

Following this tutorial:

Easy Reactive Audio visualizer For Your Entire Song (Blender Eevee Tutorial)

Shift + A - Create Plane

Object Editor Panel - Viewport Display - Display as 'Bounds'

Shift + A - Create Icosphere

Edit Mode - Subdivide - Number of cuts '10' - Smoothness '1'

Ensure Cell Fracture Add-On is enabled in Preferences

Object Mode

F3 - Cell Fracture - Source Limit '100' - Recursion '2' - Mass Mode 'Uniform'

Collection - Delete Outer Shell

Object - Transform - Randomize Transform - Location X '16m' - Location Y '7.6m' - Location Z '13m'

Select Objects - M - New Collection - 'Rocks'

Deselect - Object Mode - Shift + A - Add Collection Instance - 'Rocks'

Move - Ctrl + Green Arrow to Snap Next to other collection

Duplicate to create row of 5

¬ - Front - Shift + A 'Camera' - Ctrl + Green Arrow to snap to beginning of loop

'NumPad 0' - View Active Camera Perspective

Animate - Back Arrow to Start at 0 - Hit Keymarker next to Location Y In Transform Panel - Click 40 in animation timeline - Change from -9 to +9 - Hit Keymarker again

Press play to test

Click - Animation (Tool Bar)

Editor Type - Graph Editor

Tool Arrow Right Hand side of graph bar - Modifiers - Add Modifier - 'Cycles' - Keeps motion through entirety of animation

Back to Layout

Shift + A - Icosphere - Subdivisions '4'

Modifier Toolbar - 'Add Modifier'  - 'Decimate' - 'Planar' - Angle Limit '16'

'Add modifier' - 'Smooth' - Repeat - '12'

'Add Modifier' - 'Displace' - 'New' - 'Texture Tab' - Type 'Distorted Noise'

'Add Modifier' - Generate - 'Wire Frame' - Thickness Down

'Z' - View - Rendered ('8') - Ensure EEVEE Rendering Engine is selected

Shading Tool Panel on Right - Toggle 'Show overlays' (Top right workspace) - 'New' - 'Surface' - 'Emission Material' - Colour 'Blue' - Strength '15'

Object Panel on right - Displace Modifier - Strength Keyframe Button (on first keyframe)

Above animation timeline - Switch to Graph Editor - 'Channel' - 'Sound to Samples' - Select Audio File (Titanium by Alisia Beats - Royalty free download)

+ (toolbar) - video editing - video editing - Add - Sound (Titanium by Alisia Beats)

Make sure marker is set to 0

Return to Layout

(Once tested this can be removed temporarily for ease of use)

Highlight Extra rock collections - 'H' to hide

Repeat hiding all items except for the fractured objects

Modifiers - 'Add Modifier' - 'Generate' - 'Wireframe' - Untick Even thickness - Lower thickness

'Z' - Rendered - Material - '+New' - Change colour to roughly mid shade darkness

'+' Next to material in right panel - Emission Materia - to similar to colour on IcoSphere - Strength '1'

Modifier - Material Offset '1'

Make sure This guy is selected first - 'A' select all objects - 'Ctrl L' - Copy Modifiers - 'Ctrl L' - Link Materials

Unhide all the other things.

'NumPad 0' - 'Ctrl Click Icosphere' - 'Ctrl Click Camera' - 'Ctrl P' - 'Object'

Now add in some more instances - Highlight Rocks - 'Shift D' - 'Ctrl' snap move down the end

Back to video editor to add in song

'End Frame' Bottom Right to extend end frame to end of song

Come back to Layout - 'Shift A' - 'Light' -'Point'

'Data (right panel)' - 'Color' Blue - Power up

'Shift A' - 'Mesh' - 'Cube' - 'S' - '8' - 'M' Move to collection - 'Rocks'

'Shading' In top toolbar panel - Rendered View - 'New' - Delete 'Principal' - Add 'Principled Volume' - Plug into 'Volume' - Lower Density

Click on one of the triangles - 'Material' - Strength UP

'Ctrl Point' - 'Ctrl Camera' - 'Ctrl P' - Object

Compositing Workspace - Tick Use Nodes - 'Shift A' - 'Viewer Node' - Attach Image Nodes

'Shift A' - Glare - Stick between image nodes

Render Options - Right Panel - Select Folder - Select File Format (Ffmpeg Video) - Encoding - Container 'MPEG-4'

'Render' - 'Render Animation'

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT:

Here are 3 more tutorials I will complete going forward:

Create A Beautiful Audio Visualizer With Eevee in Blender 2.90 (Blender Tutorial)

Create Trippy Psytrance Visuals In Blender 2.9 - Evee Psychedelic Animation Tutorial

Animate Your Music in 5 Clicks with BLENDER  | Audio Reacting Motion, Flash, & Color |