Steinway Player Piano Animation

Sheet music for my piece, 'In Passing': http://www.mfrederickson.com/images/inpassing.gif

A study in procedural animation and image based lighting. Wrote the piano piece and created a dynamics rig to make keys react to "fingers" with physically accurate stiffness and damping. The lighting is from various traditonal lights and an IBL probe. Mental Ray / Maya

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• player
• piano
• steinway
• maya
• animation
• brown
• university
• michael
• frederickson

[TeeSav]

wow amazing job how did you learn how to do the whole IBL thing

[mfrederickson]

just practice - this ibl is one of debevec's ('kitchen probe'), with mental ray.

[Nemisto89]

Any chance I could get a copy of the midi file?, the piano is amazin.Matt

[mfrederickson]

Thanks a lot Matt. I didn't have a MIDI version of the exact performance used in the animation, so I just played it through Pro Tools quickly and posted it for you. You can find a MIDI with bad sustain here:

mfrederickson . com/piano/In Passing.mid

The MP3 of the original is here: mfrederickson . com/piano/song1.mp3

And an alternate song idea:

mfrederickson . com/piano/song2.mp3

[mfrederickson]

'In Passing'

[SwannyRiver]

By the way, was the animation driven via midi?

[mfrederickson]

About MIDI: I certainly considered that, and it would really only be a minor extension to add that functionality - in this case I hand specified which key would play at which time and let the physics sim handle the bounce. The rig is set up in such a way that with a simple C++ parser for MIDI I could add that ability in half a day.

[bloodl3tt3r]

Steinway is godly.

But nobody gives a shit about your school.

[surfacere]

yamaha blows...no where near comparison to any steinway

[gotitans999]

awesome, I just sent you a message

[thunderbirdice]

Amazing! 

[gotitans999]

Do you have this video clip available in higher resolution and for sale?

[XxELiTeGLiTcHeRsxX]

best piano makers

[Theyallfloatdownhere]

Great work if I was the company I would consider using something like this as a commercial.

[PowderSpark]

is this digitally animated, or is it a stop play animation?

[Atreju1987]

kann irgendjemand in köln mir dieses stück beibringen?

[ooxcfhxoo]

Did you ever try to do full songs? I bet you could make how-to tutorials with a voiceover.

[Kapomafioso]

Really wonderfully made animation...also beautiful music!

[awesomeallison007]

lol you should make a 3 minute video of E, B, E, B, E, B. you are a great musician and animator. : )