Bloom, and the Cat's Meow

Bloom Peters has made a major breakthrough with her ongoing project to make it possible to use MIDI  (the Musical Instrument Digital Interface that lets you connect electronic instruments to computers) to musically animate objects inworld. If you have ever read this blog or been on Safari, you'll have been blown away by Bloom's region Crescent Melody, with its fabulously crazy orchestra - here's us all enjoying a concert for Cornflakes Week 2024.

Looking at this gif, are you thinking what I'm thinking? How cool would it be to have the possibility of making your own musically inspired animated scenes - even a whole region - of objects all playing along to a tune. Well, that opportunity is just around the corner...

Before we get into the nitty gritty, I had to ask about the cats.

Thirza Ember: you'll keep the same look, the same animal orchestra?

Bloom Peters: nope it's getting a much more professional design so that on release date people can use it right away to create music or use it to control regions and things. There is a major breakthrough with the machine. I created a program in python. It's called "Midi to Opensim"

Bloom Peters: it took a lot of tries haha!  Basically what it does is: it acts as a MIDI input device that can pick up MIDI signals and then send those to a Opensim console as Console Commands on the channels that these instruments listen on. At the moment you must run the program on the same server the console is on.

Thirza Ember: what kind of console commands do you envision it being used for?

Bloom Peters: It triggers like listeners, to open and close something, or, you know, almost anything you can control from a MIDI input signal. You could even control vehicles with piano keys, and it is nearly real time, yes,  I can just push keys on a piano as if it was real like in RL, Right now I'm playing the snare drum... it is being controlled in real time, and with hardly any delay.

Bloom Peters:  The keyboard in RL sends MIDI out signals through a MIDI USB adaptor in which the program can pick up and sends those notes as a channel for example  " /1212 1 " which means note 1 on channel 1212. It can also control anything else right away, if programed on the channels it send on. You can change the channels per instruments, in the settings, since it's straight MIDI. You can just push Play on a MIDI file, it instantly starts, there is no longer the need to wait for it to load, just push play on the program.

Thirza Ember: I guess a big part of the work will be setting up all the things inworld that you want to move or make noises... sounds like a complex, but fun, thing to do! 

Bloom Peters: There will be two versions of this program. A free version and a paid version

Thirza Ember: how will they differ? 

Bloom Peters: The free one will include this entire region with full pack of 128 instruments of the entire midi set kit, 128 instruments, the full midi spectrum, and it will include the special HUDs with tons of songs up front to play for fun. The paid version however will come with the studio version in which you can create songs for it and it will also come with the plugin to load any midi file and play it. And yes it will have to be activated with a key you get from Winxtropia server.

Thirza Ember: so someone who's a musician or a composer can basically write a whole 3d show with their music. What about security?

Bloom Peters:  The program will have anti piracy built in, when you first launch the program it will give you a request code  which is a hidden ID to your machine you then click the link to activate and Winxtropia sends you the matching response code to activate it. It will work forever, even if you reinstall it, and it will not rely on online services to work once you activate. You can also move it to a different pc and machine you can also run multiple copies. The only thing is that, once it's activated it creates a file in the folder called boosty haha... Keep those together and it just works.  I wanted it to be a hassle free experience without people giving copies to others without buying it basically,  but at least the core machine will be free.

Thirza Ember: what kind of time frame are we looking at? And what are we talking about, price wise for the pro version?

Bloom Peters: probably no more than 50 bucks, and I would say a year before it's ready. I've got to begin making all 128 instruments. The professional version will be called Crescent Studio, it comes with very special HUDs and tools to help you make songs

Thirza Ember: How do people contact you so they can stay informed about when the product is ready?

Bloom Peters: They can just tp to Winxtropia and leave a message, there is a cube they can click on to leave a message inside a notecard 

Bloom Peters: Also I am opening a store here, a store sim where it will all be. The store is called Love&Pet,  the sim name.

Thirza Ember: I'm looking forward to seeing that.

 Bloom Peters: this is the beginning of the kits, there will be these, each controlled by one HUD, and 1 script controls all the keys, one on the ground is 1 instrument people will have to take this and create there own machines, using it

Thirza Ember: when you say 'create their own machines' you mean, make the inworld object that moves?

Bloom Peters: yes. You can just link this onto instrument... for example my guitar - you are the first to see, the first new next gen instrument for Crescent Melody 2

Thirza Ember: how exciting!...  so the two become one, RL and Opensim... and it's not just live playing of notes, it can be some pre programmed synthesized music?

Bloom Peters: yes it can, see those two cubes? to the left... they can now play the songs converted into notecards too

Object: Sending started.

Thirza Ember: that's so cool... you can imagine a bunch of objects all dancing along

Bloom Peters: i had a dream one day that i will create a self playing band in SL but sadly SL let me down; they made it harder and harder to make it happen, reducing everything and memory sizes and things to the point crescent melody is impossible in SL ...but enter Opensim and suddenly - a full studio exploded!

Thirza Ember: SL's loss is  our gain

Bloom Peters: Ohhhh! and you bet that this machine can keep up with hard core rock and roll metal, it has been optimized for incredible speeds. This machine can defeat the fastest drummers in the world... here is a example of the machine being optimized... every single code was well placed so that it can support high speed music without throttling the viewer

Thirza Ember: I feel like a lot of people will be interested in the free version, then will want to graduate to the pro version, because of all the possibilities it offers, and around 50 bucks, even a little more, is really reasonable when you think what other tools can cost

 Bloom Peters: Oh yes its important to offer a free one. I wanted it to cater to people who can't afford higher end prices

Thirza Ember: yeah that's just awesome, I'm imagining if you turn each note into an object moving or an event on the sim the possibilities are endless, and without a lot of latency between the RL and the virtual, makes for a lot of fun!

Bloom Peters: Yes, suddenly you could use midi files to controller the stages of a roller coaster the possibilities are endless now... you can specifically program a midi file to control a airport.

Bloom Peters:  The next thing to show is how i will make it easy for people. You see it would be inconvenient to program a instrument u need when your song won't use all the notes, so i made a tool to highlight, only the notes a track will use, so u can program just those... this is a note marker. You put the track you made into there and it will highlight, all the notes it uses, so it's a visual aid.... they stay lit for you as well. And now all someone need to do is program just those notes for whatever they controlling

Thirza Ember: yes, that's very easy to see so maybe you only need 20 inworld objects or machines not 88 for sure

Bloom Peters: yes. You can make special sounds for each song and put them on a rezzer. This has been a 14 year build up to this point. It started as a touch piano, with mouse! haha! 15 years hard work into this machine, you bet I do keep many backups... I'm kinda happy it landed in Opensim really, rather than SL. Because I can't afford land in SL, it would have been doomed to existence in a sandbox

Bloom Peters: oh! of course I almost forgot... it comes with camera studio as well,  the pro version and free... you can use MIDI notes to move a camera around the scene you can set region coordinates and positions

Thirza Ember: for videos?

Bloom Peters: exactly! want to capture a special moment in the song? trigger it with the camera a note before it happens... use a second pc to sit a empty avatar on the camera it positions your view. Come and try it out, it's back here. Can you see it right above me? if you sit on it you will see

I sat down behind the pink camera. Suddenly the camera and I started jumping all over the scene,  pointing in different directions, to get the best shot of the various instruments playing. You can easily understand how cool it is for a videographer to be able to move their cam to the crucial spot during a song to zoom in on details. This becomes an automated part of the tune.

Bloom Peters: And now if i push a MIDI note on my piano you won't hear a note! cause it uses out of range notes... 89 and above, up to 124 and more. You can have a lot of scenes and it can be controlled via the song as it plays if you learn to put the notes in the right spot. FL studio can go up to 124 notes - or any midi making software you simply add a track, name it whatever you want, and program from note 89 upwards to control the camera.

Thirza Ember: Wow so many tools and toys in all this, it's quite overwhelming. I can't wait until it's available for us all to try. It's going to revolutionize the animated quality of art in Opensim!, not to mention a lot of fun and funny builds.  Also, I am glad to know the cats will still have a home somewhere

Bloom Peters: They are the soul of Crescent, but! there is one more surprise... the name is changing... It will now be known as Crescent Meowlody

Thirza Ember: oh yes? purrrfect

You can visit Winxtropia grid and leave a message for Bloom by visiting

bloompeters.ddns.net:11052/Frutti Music Bar