POLYLINES
Polylines are separate curves that this program lays out in parallel.
When loaded 3dm rendering software such as Rhino, this type of representation allows a great variety of manipulation in terms of creating 2 and 3 dimensional surfaces.
When a sound file (WAV or AIF) is loaded into SoundPlot and the Polylines mode is selected, clicking on the Make 3dm button will bring up the Polyline Generator Settings dialog.
Five editable data windows at the left provide user inputs for control of the
sound Sampling Parameters:
1. Start At (Sample Frame) -
Which sample frame to start reading the data at
2. Number of Cycles -
This is the number of seperate cycles
3. Data Points Per Cycle -
This is the number of data points to take for each cycle
4. Samples Per Data Point
-
The number of sample frames to use for each data point
5. Little Endian -
Windows uses Little Endian binary data storage
The remaining seven editable windows on the right provide user inputs for
control of the *3DM output file:
1. Display From - sets the start of each
cycle segment to display as a percent of the whole curve
2. Display To -
sets the end of each cycle segment to display as a percent of the whole curve
3. X Min - sets the starting point (percent of whole) of
the X-axis to fit the polylines into
4. X Max - sets the end
point (percent of whole) of the X-axis to fit the polylines into
5. Y Min
- sets the starting point (percent of whole) of the Y-axis to fit the polylines
into
6. Y Max - sets the end point (percent of whole) of the
Y-axis to fit the polylines into
7. Vertical Scale Factor - used to change the amplitude of the waveform
Each of these is initialized to a default value by the program
The
designated sound file name is automatically loaded into the File Name box as is
the total number of sample frames in the file.
Once the settings have
been set, clicking on the ‘OK’ button will result in the dialog closing. At the same time, a
*.3dm file will be saved that contains the sampled sound map and a message will
appear in the main program, 'Polyline array is valid. wrote
[filename]_pla.3dm'. This 3dm file will be automatically saved to the local directory
with the name [filename]_pla.3dm. Click on the Send To Rhino button.
Alternatively, the *.3dm file can be loaded into standard engineering drafting tools to be
further processed.
Important Tips
This program will lay out the
waveform geometry (plot) of any WAV or AIF sound file and save it in the form of a
.3DM native Rhino file that can be edited. You have the option to plot the
waveform in either 2 or 3 dimensions. The basic 2 dimensional form of the sound
wave is plotted on the X-Z plane. If only 1 cycle is selected in the [Number Of
Cycles] parameter, you will simply have a 2 dimensional representation of the
sound file on the X-Z plane as you would find in any commercial waveform editor.
The 3 dimensional representation will layout several "cycles" (user specified
interval of sound) parallel to each other which will progress in time in the Y
direction. The resultant mapping will visually express not only the change in
timbre and dynamics, but also the subtle change in phase relationships of any
periodic components of the sound. These Polyline curves may then be used to
construct a lofted surface in Rhino. The user input parameters provide great
flexibility in how the user may choose to visualize and express the sound
geometry.
The exact total number of samples (sample frames) contained in the
sound file is an important limit, because the number of data points taken
by SoundPlot cannot exceed this limit. The total number of data points taken by
Soundplot will always equal the product of the 3 input parameters:
Number Of Cycles X Data Points Per Cycle X (1 / Samples Per Data Point)
Thus, if you want to plot every sound sample of the sound file, you must insure
that the product of those 3 factors will equal the total number of sound samples
in the file.