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Hi guys. I just wanted to let you know about my first and only DarkBasic Pro project.

This is a little program I made for progressive rock band "Dream Theater" for their latest tour (I doubt anyone here has heard of them).

The program is basically a 3D character that plays along with whatever you play via MIDI in realtime. It is a wizard character with an octagonal keyboard, and it will attempt to play whatever notes it receives through MIDI as plausibly as possible. The challenge was getting it to sort the notes and figure out which hand and which finger to play which, and perform it as best it can.
The program has already been used for about 12 tour dates up the East coast of the US, then will be used across the rest of the US, then Europe, then across the rest of the world for about 100 shows in total. The program was also demonstrated at this year's NAMM show at the Korg booth.

Here are some screenshots and a video-








http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJUzUICoEr4

Since it's only designed for one specific high end machine, I splashed out on graphics, since it didn't need to be compatible with low end hardware. The video is older and so is without the graphical effects.

Technical notes-
The room uses a parallax mapping shader, modified to include specular mapping and light mapping. Everything else in the scene is also lightmapped, and there is a glow shader applied to the screen to add some softness to the scene.

The musical staff shows what notes are being played in realtime, and uses a custom made vertex shader to ripple the staff based on playing speed.

All of the character animation is done in realtime through code with no pre-made animation. I programmed some basic Inverse Kinematics into the arms so I could position the hands in the correct spot on the keyboard. You'll also notice a cel shading effect, although I'm only using the cartoon outline, and not the shading aspect.

I've also used a shadow shader so the fingers cast a shadow onto the keys, and I've cube mapped the keys to make them shiny.

I also have some video of the program being used live, which gets displayed on a 55" plasma screen behind the keyboardist, and also sometimes used on the large projection screen.
The band's keyboardist also does a solo spot where he duels with the 3D character, and then does a duet, but I don't have video of that unfortunately.

Here are some live clips of the program being used-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CzbmRWKQwc - at 8:42, it is displayed on the large projection screen. Ignore the dancing girl!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Png0bqOfgGk - from 0:55 in, program is displayed for most of the song behind the keyboardist. Also notice that when the keyboardist rotates his keyboard, the 3D character rotates his keyboard too, thanks to a custom made "MIDI Compass" device that translates rotation to a MIDI controller value.

I'd like to give a huge thanks to Rudolpho for making this program possible with his fantastic MIDI plugin for DBP, and for fixing up the problems and making it absolutely bulletproof and able to endure a whole live show of battering.
Also thanks to this forum and the creators of DB Pro for making it possible for me to make this project happen quickly and easily. This forum has been very helpful with all of my problems.

Sorry I can't post any demos, but I'm sure you understand the situation.

Very awesome stuff BlobVanDam, thanks for sharing. I am very impressed by the animations, and how you have had to program so much from scratch. Can you recommend any good books on programming inverse kinematics? It's something I've always been interested in programming.

THAT is impressive stuff! Used on 12 tours so far? Beastly. And I've heard of Dream Theater

good stuff! congratz on a job well done. that's quite an accomplishment!

question: what happens when 2+ people play the keyboard? can the wizard conjure up some help?

edit:
UMMMM! i've just visited your site and your work is amazing. i'm a major sabbath fan, so... you just made my day in a big way! (and the justice vid was vastly appreciated, too!) THANKS!

Very impressive. I'd imagine working with the finger animations must have been a real pain. Great to see a high quality application made with DBPro.

MikeS - I didn't use any help to program the IK. It's a very limited low tech solution that's fudged in a few areas, and relies on the hierarchy being put together and used a specific way. The top of each arm has 3 dummy objects, so I can use a different dummy for each axis to make rotations easier.
Then it uses very basic trigonometry to figure out the angles.
I'd be happy to post some code etc if you want, but it's probably not the most pretty thing to look at and decipher!

Very impressive, it's rare to see a project around here with this much polish! Nice to see it being put to good use too .

Never heard of them?, im going to see them :p.

This look extreamly impressive, the graphic types

W.h.o.a

Nice

This is newsletter worthy stuff

I play the keyboard, and.....You know you want to give me the demo!

I could watch the wizard on my 50in TV!

I didn't know John Petrucci still had long hair.

On topic though;

This is sweet stuff! Nice to see DarkBasic used more publicly. Good to see that you came to it too when asked for this to be made.