Uconsole + ESP32 DSP with Mic input

 

I've started playing around with digital signal processing using the uConsole and an ESP32.

Development Synth

I recently put together a little Arduino synth that I could take with me to work on when I'm sat on the tram to work.  

It's powered by a single Arduino Nano, with the 5 push buttons sending internal MIDI messages.  Hopefully the new modules I create with this will go into the Helios Mk2.

New Audio DSP Books

Some new audio DSP books have arrived.  The Will Pirkle book was from a recommendation from an interesting blog post from Valhalla DSP.

Udemy FMOD For Game Audio Course

 
Recently I completed Udemy's FMOD for Unity Course.  I can recommend it to anyone interested in learning about responsive audio in Unity.  It's 3 hours (took me about 7) and by the end you'll be triggering event and random sounds.

Link to course:

https://www.udemy.com/course/fmod-for-interactive-games/

VR Door and Key System

This week I've implemented a door and key system in my VR game...  you pick up a key, and then you're allowed to enter a door.  For the user interface, the colored key is displayed on your wrist (and disappears once used).

Pick up keys and open doors

Helios Mk2 update

I've finally started work on the follow up to the $20 synth...   The Helios Mk2  

It's still very early in development but it's starting to come together.  So far it has a keyboard with arpeggiator (plus MIDI so you can use a proper keyboard), a delay, but most importantly of all there's lots more synthesis options :-)

Performant Grass for VR

 

It's probably not the most enticing headlining you've ever read, but it might be of some interest for some! I first saw this effect used in Half Life 2, where they use a flat 2D image and then use code to have it always be positioned towards the camera (so you never see it's flat).   Actually thinking about it a little more, all of the enemies in Doom were created in this way. Where as in Half Life 2 they used it sparingly and effectively, I've gone completely over the top and just copied and pasted like there's no tomorrow.  I'll be a bit more subtle next time I promise.  Here you can see the position change a little clearer:

The images were created from DALL-E (using prompts like 'bush single branch with leaves flat 2d albedo texture on black background').  From here I adjusted the image in Affinity designer:

In unity you need to change the image type to 'Sprite 2D & UI', get the Alpha Source from 'Grey Scale', generate Mip Maps and change the max size to something like 256.  The Alpha source is important here, as that's what removes the black background.

The C# script is very simple:

public class LookAtPlayer : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GameObject player;
    // Start is called before the first frame update
    void Start()
    {
        
    }
    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        transform.LookAt(player.transform);
    }
}

We declare a public variable, which when back in Unity, we drag the main camera onto.  

And that's all there is to creating performant grass!