[QUESTION] How to append showing random custom texture files for custom event/presentation?

[xintrea]

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General Request

Your Request

Hi!

I want to know if it is possible to configure projectM so that when displaying presets, in those presets where textures from files are used, the textures are randomly replaced with those that are in a special directory?

For example, I have a directory "texture-custom", which contains logos and photos used in the context of the event. It is necessary that in presets, when a command like this is executed:

warp_2=`sampler sampler_fire_dis4;

... instead of the file sampler_fire_dis4.jpg, a random file from the "texture-custom" directory is loaded.

Is it possible to make such a setting? Or what is the easiest way to make such behavior through code?

[OfficialIncubo]

Simply declare sampler sampler_rand00 (or randXX), XX means any random texture slots you want
before shader_body

...then load a random texture output = tex2D(sampler_rand00. uv).
Where output is ret (or the variable where it outputs).

For more, please read MilkDrop Preset Authoring Guide, then go to Random Texture Selection subcategory (Part of Texture Sampling category).

You can do it on warp or comp shader, but these are different.

[xintrea]

Simply declare sampler sampler_rand00 (or randXX), XX means any random texture slots you want before shader_body

...then load a random texture output = tex2D(sampler_rand00. uv). Where output is ret (or the variable where it outputs).

For more, please read MilkDrop Preset Authoring Guide, then go to Random Texture Selection subcategory (Part of Texture Sampling category).

You can do it on warp or comp shader, but these are different.

This way implies changing the milk file code. I am talking about a global setting so that in any preset textures are sometimes automatically replaced by customized ones.

Currently, the standard delivery of ProjectM includes about 9000 presets. About 2500 of them use textures. It turns out that you need to edit 2500 presets to get effect with custom textures. And it will still be wrong: we are need to see both original effects and only sometimes - with customized textures.

[kblaschke]

I don't really get how this "only sometimes" thing would work. Only for certain presets? Or on a random chance?

You should also note that many presets use textures to achieve a certain effect, e.g. using the texture to animate something etc. , so changing it will break these presets (seen this many times during development).

Changing projectM would be quite a lot of work (including an API change) for a feature only a few people would actually use. One way of achieving it without changing libprojectM would be passing in all presets as data, and then have the application using libprojectM replacing the sampler names on the fly as suggested by @OfficialIncubo - since projectM loads a presets fresh every time it changes, it'll either use a random texture if the sampler is named randXX, or the original/fixed texture.

Elaborating further on this, there are more caveats you need to address when replacing the samplers:

• Only replace external textures, not those starting with either main, blur1, blur2, blur3 or noise, as these as special internal textures required for presets to work properly.
• Keep random textures already in the preset as-is.
• Some presets only use texsize_ instead of sampler_ - you may also have to search & replace those.
• You should keep the filtering options intact, which appear before the texture name as fc_, fw_, pc_ and pw_ plus the reverse character combinations for each.

If you can't change any code or build a custom application, you can still do the search & replace in the files. To show a random texture in 25% of the presets, you'd then make three copies of the original preset and an additional copy of the changed preset and put them all into your preset dir (with (1), (2) etc. suffixed to the filenames). Set the projectM application to shuffle, and it should work just fine.