Creating glitchy hologram style visuals with the Remove Background FX in VDMX6

Using the Remove Background FX along with VHS Glitch and Layer Mask.

One of the popular stylizations for science fiction is the classic glitchy hologram communication. The techniques for doing this have varied over the years, but fundamentally use the basic idea of applying a mask to a foreground layer, messing it up a bunch, and compositing it over a background with some amount of transparency.

As previously demonstrated in the How to instantly remove backgrounds from video with VDMX tutorial the Remove Background FX can be used with live cameras, movies, and still images to quickly create these compositions. In this follow up tutorial we will look at going to the next step of using a specific set of additional filters to achieve a particular style, in this case, a glitchy hologram.

For more information on using masking techniques in VDMX, see the Luma Key Techniques for Layer Composition tutorial.

Quick Guide: Creating a VDMX Sci-Fi Hologram

Learn to create a hologram illusion in VDMX. This tutorial includes a project file and assets for backgrounds like flying through space.

You can download the project assets here: Download Project and Files

Hologram Effect Process

Here's a breakdown of the main process:

  1. Isolate Subject: Apply the Remove Background FX on the Foreground layer. This masks out the background by setting the alpha of masked pixels to 0.

  2. Composite Layers: Use the SourceAtop.metal blend mode. This composites the image over the background layer, differing from the default additive mode.

  3. Adjust Transparency: Apply the Layer Mask.fs FX to the Foreground layer. Set this effect to Multiply mode. You can then use the Brightness slider to control the transparency level of the 'hologram'.

  4. Add Glitch Effect: Apply the VHS Glitch.fs FX to the Foreground layer.

  5. Enable Audio Reactivity: Add an Audio Analysis plugin to your project. Use the data-sources from this plugin to adjust the amount of glitch and other effect parameters.

  6. Output (Optional): You can optionally add an NDI® Output or Syphon Output plugin. This allows you to send the final visual result to other software applications.

The Result

  • You've now created a dynamic holographic look, similar to effects seen in classic TV shows.

  • This demonstrates some of the exciting visual possibilities with VDMX.

  • If you make something cool, share it and tag @VIDVOX!

Hiding the orange privacy dot on external displays (Official Apple method)

Set the Privacy Indicators toggle to off to hide the orange / green dot on external displays.

Good news everyone!

As almost every visual artist on using macOS knows, in recent years Apple has added an orange / green dot that appears in the menubar whenever an application is using the microphone and / or camera for capture. While this privacy feature is generally a fantastically useful tool for people to track which apps may be recording sound and video, it was extremely annoying for anyone trying to perform live visuals. Although there have been several workaround published since then, none of them have been officially from Apple and always came with some additional security risks that were not worth the trouble.

Fortunately as of macOS 14.4 there is now a method provided by Apple for hiding the privacy dot on external displays! The instructions are fairly straightforward and can be found in this Apple support note: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/118449

After you’ve rebooted in Recovery Mode and entered the ‘system-override suppress-sw-camera-indication-on-external-displays=on’ command in the Terminal, the new option available in System Settings under Privacy & Security for the microphone / camera will allow you to turn the privacy dot on and off for external displays on demand. This makes it possible to quickly re-enable or disable the privacy feature temporarily as needed.

Note that this will only remove the privacy dot on external displays - this technique will not work on your main monitor.

Analyzing multi-track audio from Live in VDMX using Soundflower

For musicians working in Ableton Live or other multitrack production software one of the most useful tricks for driving real-time visuals is to output each sound track on a different set of audio channels before they are mixed together to get more accurate results for each sound when performing audio analysis in VDMX.

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More Fun Audio Analysis Techniques

Using individual plugins to directly automate the control of different aspects of a video performance or interactive installation can create some pretty awesome results, but one of the most powerful capabilities of VDMX is the ability to connect these plugins to each other to create more complex behaviors and visual effects that can be switched between during live VJ performance.

For this set of tutorials we'll look at a few ways that the Audio Analysis plugin can be used alongside the LFO plugin and standard interface controls as a demonstration of this technique.

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Bar graph visualizations with Quartz Composer and VDMX

Among the many uses of Quartz Composer, and perhaps one that is often overlooked, is the ability to make visualizations of data and other information. Since the compositions are rendered in realtime, when creating them for this purpose it can be helpful to make the patches reusable with published input values for use in other environments, or replicating within QC itself.

In this two part video tutorial we'll first create a composition in Quartz Composer that renders a simple bar graph data visualization with inputs for changing its labels and values that can be used in other applications. Once the patch is completed it can be loaded into VDMX and set up to respond to a variety of different inputs as a visualizer of tempo or audio levels as part of a VJ set, an on screen display of MIDI / DMX channels, or any other arbitrary data that you can get into your computer by OSC.

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Three Different Ways to use Audio Analysis (or other data-source) to Trigger a Movie in VDMX

​In this quick tutorial we'll be looking at how to use the Audio Analysis plugin instead of the typical keyboard MIDI, OSC, or DMX shortcuts for triggering video clips in a media bin. This can be a particularly useful technique for using VDMX to run interactive installations that respond to sound and other inputs, or for automating and beat syncing parts of a VJ setup.

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Guest Tutorial with Shakinda of iLoveQC

Since it was started about a year ago the iLoveQC website has become one of the top resources and community sites for Quartz Composer developers and Mac VJs using the node based language. If you haven't already taken the time to check out the site, they've got some great interviews with artists, tutorials to get started, FX for download and even Final Cut Pro plugins for non-realtime video production. For this guest tutorial we're joined by iLoveQC founder Graham Robinson, also known as Shakinda who has been part of the in the VJ community for quite some time and is an all around QC guru.

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