I'm experimenting with the Midiout CHOP.

If if feed it a WAVE or Constanst CHOP, I hear some low clicking noise, but that's it, no MIDI instrument being triggered. (Yes I have a sound card .. and my hardware choices ARE shown on the destination tab (Microsoft GS WaveTable SW Synth / Creative Sound Blaster MPU 401)

I've experimented with all kinds of combinations of channel names / matching etc (which btw is very confusing).

Tried it with both 8.1.704 and 8.1.746 (Win XP)

Known bug? … or what I am I missing?

Mike

I'm digging way back in my memory here, but basically the naming of the channels is key. MIDI has 16 channels, and you need to specify one, followed by the type of event (as a character code), followed by the note #, as the name of the CHOP channel. So,

ch1n64

will specify note 64's volume track on channel 1 (there are notes 1-128). I don't recall if the volume is specified in the 0-1 range or the 0-127 range offhand.

Using a MIDI-in CHOP to load a midi file will show you the basic layout and names of the tracks that the MIDI-out CHOP expects.

If you have 1 track that represents the tone, and not 128, you can use the Fan CHOP to create the note channels for you (set to Fan Out, the channel names to ch1n, and make sure the incoming signal's range is 1-128).

Thanks for the info.

It doesn't seem to be a channel issue.

I connected a Constant CHOP to the MidiOUT CHOP, and the MidiOut seems to accept a variety of channel names/formats. When I set the destination to “MIDI FIle”, and write out a MIDI file, the MIDI events ARE gettting written properly.

It just doesn't seem to want to send those same events to my SoundCard / MIDI interface.

I have other MIDI software on my machine, so I know the soundcard / MIDI drivers are setup correctly.

Mike

It would be helpful to find out if :

a) MidiOut doesn't work in WinXP 8.1.704 , 8.1.746

or

b) I'm missing an “obvious” step

Is anybody using this CHOP in Windoze ? …. with what version of Houdini?

Mike

I'm not sure if this is obvious or not, but the MIDI Out chop plays notes only when there is a change in its value, so a constant CHOP won't produce any sound (though a default Wave CHOP would). Also, you need to play via the playbar in order to hear the notes.

Turn on the “Echo Messages to Textport” in the MIDI Out CHOP to see if any events are being generated by Houdini. If Windows has a built in software synth, you can try using that by selecting it in the MIDI Destination parameter. Might help you troubleshoot if it's a hardware problem or not.

I don't think many people use this CHOP, so it's quite possible something's been broken in the past few versions.

Well, I'm just starting to use this CHOP extensively to do procedural animation with MIDI via techno beats etc … The MIDI in works fine, I haven't tried the out yet but MIDI basically needs two commands to play a note to be heard, the first is a “note on” This might be what's lacking, telling the note when to be struck.

The second is the velocity which is how hard it was struck, and I guess even a third would be the track volume; but this can be easily revised in a MIDI program.

I will try this out later in the day

What are you using the MIDI out for? … if it's just to hear the song a better way to go about it would probably be to use a separate .wav file to hear the stuff. Windows would need to know exactely which sounds to be “triggered” via MIDI .. sequencer programs control this very well using independent sound liberaries most of the time, but I'm guessing windows wouldn't know much about how to do that and would probably reference a low level sound liberary of some sort.

The MIDI out works perfectly … I tested exporting a MIDI file from Nuendo (audio/midi program) importing a MIDI file into Houdini and then doing the MIDI out and re-importing back into Nuendo.

Some things to watch out for are on the MIDI-In side like having say note scope 1-300 say to get all the note pitches instead of just one pitch. Also to turn on “note amplitude” to get the velocity channels.

I tried generating my own MIDI data with waves and fans etc but since I'm very new to Houdini I didn't get very far, but I'm guessing the channels can be named according to the MIDI info and merged into the MIDI out CHOP.

a few things I do know though, sorry if this is obvious …

Piping the MIDI out chop into the audio out won't work … MIDI isn't audio data, MIDI is note, velocity, pitch, pan, info to name a few, not even necessarily music. They also use MIDI to control pyrotechnics and construction equiptment and probably other things.

MIDI is the protocol, through which a music program or a keyboard gets a note-on command with velocity and volume etc, and the keyboard will go fetch a certain sound of a certain pitch and play it back.

andrewlowell
The MIDI out works perfectly … I tested exporting a MIDI file from Nuendo (audio/midi program) importing a MIDI file into Houdini and then doing the MIDI out and re-importing back into Nuendo.

Some things to watch out for are on the MIDI-In side like having say note scope 1-300 say to get all the note pitches instead of just one pitch. Also to turn on “note amplitude” to get the velocity channels.

I tried generating my own MIDI data with waves and fans etc but since I'm very new to Houdini I didn't get very far, but I'm guessing the channels can be named according to the MIDI info and merged into the MIDI out CHOP.

a few things I do know though, sorry if this is obvious …

Piping the MIDI out chop into the audio out won't work … MIDI isn't audio data, MIDI is note, velocity, pitch, pan, info to name a few, not even necessarily music. They also use MIDI to control pyrotechnics and construction equiptment and probably other things.

MIDI is the protocol, through which a music program or a keyboard gets a note-on command with velocity and volume etc, and the keyboard will go fetch a certain sound of a certain pitch and play it back.

Since you mentioned Nuendo, I assume you're running Windows ?

If you read my previous posts, I have no problem exporting the MIDI to a file, it's when I set the destination dropdown to my soundcard, that I'm not getting any output. Click on the button (may not be obvious that it's a button) labelled “MIDI file”, beside the MIDI Destination label, and you should see choices of your soundcard / MIDI drivers. Try choosing one of those and see if you hear any output. You may have to click the play animation-forward on the bottom playbar, and might have to press the “Send Current MIDI events” button. That button is not documented, so I'm not sure how/when to use it.

I know about the MIDI protocol thanks … and unless something new has happened / changed, I belive the note range is only 0-127

Mike

wow, Houdini just played my piano … ok, so the CHOP isnt' broken,

actually I'm not sure how you would get the MIDI out CHOP to acutally play back into the computer, that could be the problem. All of the MIDI out's are going out of my audio interface, and I don't have any In's available in the list if you know what I mean.

Maybe you could physically wire the MIDI out back to the MIDI in, or maybe there is a sound card internal routing procedure to do it?

So, I'm still not sure how you would “hear” the midi via windows. Yes notes are only 0-127 oops

andrewlowell
actually I'm not sure how you would get the MIDI out CHOP to acutally play back into the computer, that could be the problem. All of the MIDI out's are going out of my audio interface, and I don't have any In's available in the list if you know what I mean.

Maybe you could physically wire the MIDI out back to the MIDI in, or maybe there is a sound card internal routing procedure to do it?

So, I'm still not sure how you would “hear” the midi via windows.

You don't need to do any wiring, and certainly not to the IN port.

The MIDOUT CHOP is (supposed to be) sending data to the OUT port of the midi interface.

I don't have a “dedicated” MIDI interface card, just a soundcard, so any application I run that sends data to the output goes directly to the soundcard. I.E. if I double click on a “.mid” file, my midi app loads and sends it to the souncard.

As I said in my last post, click on the button labelled “MIDI FIle” beside the MIDI Destination lable and see what choices you have.

Do you have a soundcard in your machine? Even if you don't, but have a MIDI interface, that *should* be listed, so the MIDOUt CHOP *should* play directly to your piano, without having to generate a MIDI file.

It's the same thing as if you're using a MIDI sequencer program (Cubase, CakeWalk ..etc). When you use those programs, you don't usually save a MIDI file and then play that MIDI file to hear the music on your instrument(s). You typically just hit the PLAY button in the sequencer and it sends the data directly to the interface.

Anyway, I get the feeling that this feature is broken in the current release of Houdini.

Mike

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, yes that's the feature I was using to send MIDI data out of my MIDI interface (presonus firestation, windows XP SP2), to the piano. It worked fine although the playback lagged a little.

The problem I see is that when it's going “out” it's actually going out of the computer, or at least on my system. When playing a MIDI file from a sequencer etc MIDI is generated in the “in” slots and I can hear sounds. I see the full gammet of MIDI out's on Houdini's MIDI out chop, and I'm sending out to the interface, but alas nothing that's useful to trigger sounds from within my machine.

That's why maybe it could work to send the MIDI data out and then listen to it coming back in again through a different MIDI channel? Who knows.

andrewlowell
I'm sorry I wasn't clear, yes that's the feature I was using to send MIDI data out of my MIDI interface (presonus firestation, windows XP SP2), to the piano. It worked fine although the playback lagged a little.

The problem I see is that when it's going “out” it's actually going out of the computer, or at least on my system. When playing a MIDI file from a sequencer etc MIDI is generated in the “in” slots and I can hear sounds. I see the full gammet of MIDI out's on Houdini's MIDI out chop, and I'm sending out to the interface, but alas nothing that's useful to trigger sounds from within my machine.

That's why maybe it could work to send the MIDI data out and then listen to it coming back in again through a different MIDI channel? Who knows.

Hmm… what version of Houdini are you running? Are you running a full commericial version or the apprentice version?

Oh well no biggy.

On another subject, musically related, not MIDI though, if you haven't seen the “Dancing Man” by FrankFirsching, check it out here :

http://www.stickylight.com/public/houdini-hacker/FrankFirsching/ [stickylight.com]

It's amazing. It reads in a wave file, detects the beat then animates his “skeleton man” in time with the music.

Mike

Wow, cool rope guy .. I'm going to have to try to deconstruct that.

I've been learning Houdini apprentice for around 6 weeks coming from a 3ds background of a few years. Personally I feel like switching over because the gigs I seem to have have all been very scripting and render-pass compositing intensive, which I can already tell that Houdini is much better at. I just got done with a crowd sim which almost killed poor 3ds.

Before I got into CG I tried being a mixing engineer out of college and moved to LA, I was the mixing engineer of a trip-hop label and we did tons of midi-beat-making etc. But after two years I was tired of making $3/h so I moved into CG.

Basically, I will feel I've gotten somewhere with Houdini when I can make a crowd fully animated dependent on the music/midi; making compositing effects dependent on midi/sound, and basically automate most moving parts of a music video in some way to modern music.

If you've ever seen animusic they are doing basically everything I'm talking about except for the compositing with 3ds Max/proprietary code … which doesn't help me since they don't sell their software. While I don't much care for their aesthetic thats the best example of music/CG integration I've seen to date.

It's really a shame that these features aren't used to their potential by the CG community at large, but maybe I / others can put together enough examples there could be some renued interest and project direction geared toards that. O well, I have to learn some more Houdini first.

Please keep me informed if you have any cool MIDI/Houdini ideas

andrew@andrew-lowell-productions.com

Here's some music driven animations done in Houdini if you haven't seen them yet:
http://www.users.bigpond.com/tstex/Loucid_animation.htm [users.bigpond.com]
http://www.nocturnal-illusions.com/trijh.html [nocturnal-illusions.com]
http://www.nocturnal-illusions.com/april1st.html [nocturnal-illusions.com]

andrewlowell
Please keep me informed if you have any cool MIDI/Houdini ideas

I suppose you are aware of Houdini's brother for real time stuff, Touch

http://www.derivativeinc.com/ [derivativeinc.com]

Dragos

Yeah, that software looks cool … there are also things like the kaoss pad entrancer and some other software packages like Resolume

http://www.resolume.com/features/index.php [resolume.com]

What I'm interested in is getting the real logic and renderings to work, I'm not much of a performer unfortunately (got booed out of too many paino recitals in grade school I guess)

Has anyone seen the “House of Sound” in Vienna Austria? There's some interactive a/v artwork there actually.

Im having the same problem, Midi-Out chop not sending midi to internal ports.
Either Midi Yoke (for emulating internal ports) or a rewire host such as Gigastudio.
Havent tried routing through external midi outs however, but I'd really like the internal outs to work.

The houdini console is however outputting correctly.
Has anyone got it to work?

- Marcus

wow hey looks like my first posts got dug up! I would still assume the problem is that when you send MIDI out your are actually sending it out of the soundcard. You'd have to have your software or virtual whatever register as a true hardware option to be successful at that; I don't think it's a problem with the MIDI out CHOP.

I've use the MIDI out CHOP to play out of obscure / pro sound cards, and also save to MIDI files. It was fine last time I checked (of course haven't tried in 9.1 yet)

Ha! I figured i'd give it one last shot, so i imported a midi-file, and sent the signals to the piano, which worked. So started thinking, hmmm, what is different about this file, and the events i send in realtime? Well, turns out, the only difference is that Houdini needs to actually be playing frames, while i'm playing notes!

So now it works. D
Midicontroller -> Houdini Midi-In Chop -> Midi-Out chop (though a Midi Yoke channel) -> Software syntheziser.

Seems a bit laggy though, and i bet once i start processing several tracks with reverbs etc it'll get even more laggy. I read some about Touch http//www.derivativeinc.com/tools/tools.asp and found that they've optimized the midi-out chop, by having it operate though a separate thread or something. Would it be possible to do something like that with houdini?

btw, Thanks andrew for the reply ]

yeah not sure why Derivative and Houdini can't be more “in sync” :roll: