Finally! We get to the good bit: playing your chases in Resolume! Chaser comes with a suite of six plugins and this section will handle each plugin in detail.
Chaser #
Chaser is the original classic that started it all. It’s a basic player for the chases you’ve created in its namesake app. All you have to do is set the Step parameter to Timeline or BPM Sync, and drag the Sequence parameter to the sequence you want to play.
Of course, each instance of the effect can be tweaked further to perfection.
By changing the Scaling, you change how Chaser scales your content into each slice.
- Fill is the default and it shrinks your content to fill the whole slice, while maintaining the aspect ratio. It crops off any parts that fall outside the slice.
- Mask doesn’t scale your content at all. When chasing, Chaser will cut just holes in your content where each slice is. This mode is best used if you have custom content that already matches the Input Map and you want to use Chaser to add more dynamics to it.
- Stretch stretches your content to fill the slice, disregarding any aspect ratio. In 99% of the cases, this mode is horrible and you should never use it, but maybe you can find some creative use for it.
Sequence controls which sequence this instance will play. Moving the slider will cycle through the sequences you created in the app. It will display the name you gave it in the app for quick reference.
You use Step to control which slices are visible. You’ll probably want to animate this to BPM Sync, Timeline or even FFT. But you could also set it on a fixed step to use it as a quick masking effect.
Echoes are a quick way to keep a step visible for longer. For instance, by setting Echoes to 4, each step will remain visible for 4 steps instead of 1, before it fades out. You could get the same result by toggling every slice manually on more steps in the app, but come on, ain’t nobody got time for that.
Sustain and Release determine the curve of the opacity fade during each step. By default, they’re set to 0.2 and 0.8, which means each slice will be 100% visible for 20% of the step’s duration. It will then fade out to 0% over the next 60% of the step’s duration and remain completely invisible for the last 20%. By setting them to 0.0 and 1.0, it would fade out from 100% to 0% over the full duration of the step. By setting both to 1.0, there won’t be fading at all and it just hard cuts at the end of the step.
Bumper #
Bumper followed quickly on the heels of Chaser and is great for a more hands on percussive approach to VJ’ing.
It has the same options for Scaling as Chaser, so see above. Similarly, you also select a Sequence much the same way.
Instead of an animatable Step slider, Bumper has Next and Previous buttons. You use these to manually tap from one step to the next. This is great for tapping out melodies or hitting musical accents.
There’s also a Blast button, which will cycle through the steps quickly in succession. This is great for building climaxes or going wild on the drop. Blast Speed controls how quickly the steps will play.
Bumper is designed to be played musically. If it doesn’t receive any input for a certain amount of time, it will reset to the first step, allowing you to repeat the melody. You can control after how many seconds it reset with the Reset Delay parameter. You can also disable this feature completely by toggling off Auto Reset.
You control how fast the slices fade out with the Fade Speed parameter. The higher this value, the quicker they will fade out. The fade out curve is defined by the Sustain and Release parameters, described above.
Random #
I love random number generation and so of course there is a Random plugin in the Chaser suite. Random does what it says on the tin, it makes a random selection of slices and chases those. You can tweak the selection using the following parameters:
Selection is helpful when you want to narrow down the set of slices it picks from. By default, it’s set to All, which means it will randomly select from all the slices in the currently active Advanced Output preset. By switching to Step, a Sequence and Step parameter appear. This allows you to set a specific sequence and step to select from instead.
Max Slices controls how many slices the random selection will consist of. Everything is still random, so setting this to 4 will give you between 1 and 4 randomly selected slices on each step. This value is limited to a maximum of 7, or half of the available slices, which ever happens to be lower. It’s dangerous to tell a computer to select more slices than there are. It would start creating slices itself and soon it will devour humanity in its hunger for more slices.
Similar to Bumper, Speed is used to control how fast the slices fade out and the next random selection is made.
Scaling, Echoes, Sustain and Release all also work exactly the same as above.
Outliner #
Outliner is a little different. Its main function is to create outlines around your slices. So it’s a Source and not an Effect, and it can be found in Resolume’s Sources tab.
It’s a very straightforward effect so it has only a few parameters.
First off, it has the same Selection parameter that Random has. You use it to either create outlines on All your slices, or narrow it down to a specific Sequence and Step.
Tip! Don’t use the Step parameter to animate the outlines, because you won’t get smooth fades. Instead, set the Step to a fixed value containing all the slices you want to see outlines on, or just keep it on All. Then apply a Chaser effect in Mask mode on the clip to actually animate your slices.
Width sets the size of the stroke in pixels. This is pixel accurate and always stroked on the inside of the slice, even on complex polygon shapes. So you will never get bleed on neighbouring slices, even if they are right next to each other.
Tip! You’re not a baby, so I don’t need to hold your hand and give you a color parameter. You’re old enough to know how to apply the Colorize effect if you’d like to have color in a clip.
Tiler #
Tiler is great for creating animated pixel patterns inside your slices.
It’s designed to really be a Bob Ross type of creative tool. You fiddle around, causing happy accidents until you see something you like. It has a crazy amount of parameters to play with and with most of them being visual, it’s best to just see it in action in the video below.
Sampler #
Sampler is the latest addition to the suite and she’s all about using video to drive your chases. It samples the pixels underneath your slices and uses that data to change how each slice looks.
Similarly to Random and Outliner, there is a Selection parameter that lets you narrow down which slices get used for this instance of the effect.
Sample Mode controls how the pixels underneath the slice are sampled:
- Center just samples one pixel at the center of the slice. This gives nice high contrast results and is also fastest performance wise.
- Average samples at the center and at the four corners and then averages that. This is slightly slower to process but gives a more even result.
- Blend samples at the four corners and then blends between them. This gives a very smooth result and is great to create happy, colorful atmospheres.
Color Mode then determines how the sampled pixel data should be displayed:
- Color just uses the resulting color as is. It will display the slice in the sampled color.
- Luminance uses the brightness of the color instead. It will display the slice in a shade of white.