Instant
Instant film, developing as you watch, for Resolume
What it does
An FFGL effect for Resolume Arena and Avenue. An integral instant print is exposed through its front and then develops out in the open, over minutes, in an order the chemistry decides. Instant runs that process on the clip, stage by stage, on the host's clock, and the look follows from that, with nothing painted on.
A Take captures the frame, and an averaging meter sets the exposure the way a camera would, bringing the frame's average to mid grey within a camera's range. Exposure is the lighten/darken wheel on top. From then on the print develops from that moment, whatever the clip does next. In Continuous mode it takes a new print every Interval seconds, and in Take mode it shows the clip until you press Take.
The reagent front leaves the pod edge and climbs the frame, so the print develops from the bottom up. Under a dark green-grey opacifier the three dye layers arrive at their own rates, cyan first and yellow last, so the picture comes up pale and blue-cyan and then warms. Temperature changes every rate by the Arrhenius law, each dye layer with its own activation energy, and the timing layer that ends development speeds up less than the dyes. So cold film stops short, magenta most of all, and the print comes out pale and green, while hot film finishes warm.
Spread picks a full, short or uneven reach, and wherever the reagent didn't get to, the dark negative shows. Expired paste doesn't reach as far and fades the dyes towards pink, and Dirty Roller leaves a mark that repeats at the roller's circumference. Speed runs film time from 1x (a real print, ten minutes to the stop) up to 256x, with 64x as the default. Border shows the print in its frame or the process full-frame, and Mix fades back to the clip.
- A Take exposes the clip's frame; the print then develops from it whatever the clip does
- An averaging camera meter at the take, with Exposure as the lighten/darken wheel
- Three dye layers, each first-order at its own rate: blue-cyan first, warming to full colour
- The opacifier's dark green-grey clearing, and the print developing bottom-first from the pod
- Arrhenius temperature, per dye layer: cold film stops short, pale and green; hot film finishes warm
- Colour, black and white and vintage stock; short, uneven and expired spreads; a dirty roller
- Speed from real time (1x) to 256x; Continuous prints every Interval seconds, or Take on demand
- Universal macOS bundle and a Windows x64 DLL
Where it stands
v0.1.1, and early days. v0.1.1 turns the cold print green, as the manufacturer describes it, by giving each dye layer its own activation energy. It hasn't been loaded into Resolume on macOS yet. On Windows it has: the v0.1.1 build loads, registers and renders in Resolume Arena 7.27.1 on software rendering (no GPU), with every parameter as declared, and it passed all 9 of the fleet's checks. Eight controls showed as moving the picture there, Temperature and Speed were inconclusive, and Mode and Interval only act at the next take. Everything else is measured by an offline harness driving the real plugin and reading each claim back out of what it renders: each dye layer follows its first-order law with the stated time constant; a neutral grey four minutes in is a blue-cyan print (R 0.68, G 0.61, B 0.52) that then only moves towards neutral, reaching it at the stop; the time constants at 14 and 34 degrees C keep each layer's own Arrhenius ratio and the timing layer's; a grey comes out green when cold, neutral at 24 degrees C and warm when hot; each row starts when the front reaches it; the dirty roller repeats at its circumference; and a print survives a resize. It catches nine models broken on purpose, and all 12 controls change the picture. The checks prove the stated model, not a real print. The yellow layer's activation energy is fitted to a black-and-white development chart, which is itself an assumption for instant dyes. The cyan and magenta layers' are fitted to the manufacturer's description of a green cold print, not to a measurement, and the time constants, the stop and the timing layer's activation energy are numbers I chose. The reagent front is modelled but you can't see it. The macOS build is signed and notarised. There's a user guide and a browser demo, but no presets and no OpenFX port. Try it in your own rig before you trust it in a show.
Watch it running
Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.Watch it there instead