Brickface

Brickface is a creative coding / VJing application. It is composed of a generative scene, animated procedurally, with user control from a custom-made UI, and from music-informed MIDI.

An initial parallelepiped is split recursively until a user-defined depth is reached. Each resulting parallelepiped (called brick) hold both its original position within the original structure, and a displaced one along the Z-axis. Additional random positions are also defined, along with a color, a random chance for emissiveness and rotations. Tweens are available for several animations between these parameters. The tweens are triggered through OSC, which can come from the TouchOSC layout or from the music.

I derived several different variations from it. Including abstract cubist trompe-l’oeils.

The emissive bricks variation featured in the music video
Light tunnel variation
More lit bricks
The TouchOSC interface.
Inharmoinous split
Staggered bricks in an inharmonious split
I really like the emissive bricks

Here are the different palettes that I’ve used across all iterations and variations.

Tools used:

  • Unity for the scene, bricks structure and animations.
  • TouchOSC for user control over animations and the scene.
  • Reaper, where the music is composed and sends out MIDI.
  • Chataigne, which translates Reaper’s MIDI into OSC messages; receives TouchOSC messages; and allows mapping, enabling and disabling the various triggers.
  • OBS for video capture over Spout from Unity, and over Voicemeeter virtual audio cables from Reaper.