Designed for creators of interactive artworks, the Touch tool set uses powerful Academy Award-winning visual effects technology to enable digital artists to author, perform and share expressive interactive 3D visuals from their PCs. On the 'Vapor Trails' tour, Touch artist James Ellis is using TouchMixer and TouchDesigner to create and perform real-time 3D animation sequences, which are projected onto a 40ft by 15ft (12m x 4.5m) LED screen. While some animations are structured to precisely match musical cues and particular sections of the music, others are designed to enable on-the-fly improvisation, providing visual variations from concert to concert.
"I'm in love with this concept," commented Geddy Lee from Rush. "Touch is an innovative new technology that allows us to create a visual environment for our music that evolves as the tour progresses. This means, the more the Touch operator understands the nuances of our music the more they can improvise and re-shape the visuals, both rhythmically and creatively, making the show different every night."
Rush approached Derivative to create the visuals for the 'Vapor Trails' tour, the band's first in five years. "During the show, the live element makes the visuals more expressive and enhances the feeling of the band's music," said Greg Hermanovic, founder of Derivative Inc. "The 3D animation keeps in step with the music each time a song is played. Geddy (Lee) was especially keen on the abstract visuals we'd been performing for the electronic music world, and was ready to channel them into the band's vision of their show."
The Touch 012 road kit for the tour includes two Dell Inspiron 8200 notebook PCs featuring the NVIDIA GeForce4 Go GPUs. Both notebook PCs are loaded with the TouchMixer and TouchSynths, used by Touch VJ Ellis to control the movement of 3D characters, shapes and animation lighting. "While Rush are touring, the visuals continue to evolve under the band's creative direction. The power of NVIDIA's GeForce4 Go GPUs gives us more headroom to the amount of effects we can achieve in real-time," added Hermanovic.
(Lee Baldock)
