[Patrick Deen]

I though I’d check if I could recreate this thing. I can’t seem to get it to work either. This was made with cs3 or cs4. I might have a backup somewhere. I’ll post it if I can find it.

https://www.localoca.com

[Patrick Deen]

Hello Emmanuel,

Sorry to inform you I no longer have the project file. All you really need to know is here in this thread.
You need a comp with a video called target and a textlayer with Dan Ebberts expression in the sourcetext property. (just cop-paste it from the thread)

(Check for my version of the script with comments to get an idea what does what in the script)

Good luck,

Patrick

https://www.localoca.com

[Patrick Deen]

Hello Eric,

First of all, I can’t take credit for the script as it was written by Dan Ebbert but I did upload my source file for everyone to use in their own project. And for you…. I’m uploading it again. I think that all questions that may arise are answered in the previous post. Remember to use a mono-spaced font and have it aligned to the left. If you want to know what everything in the script means you should read the commented version of the script a few posts up…

Good luck with it and enjoy…. and don’t forget to thank Dan 😉

reuploaded ascii file:
https://rapidshare.com/files/164094989/ASCII_EXPERIMENT.aep

[Patrick Deen]

Well, replacing the layer is the easy part… Just import your video.
Place it in the comp and make sure the layer is just above the text layer with the script. You can delete the “replace me” layer. I you’ve read the thread you probably have seen my comment on the “index-1”.

OK, hope this helps 😉

[Patrick Deen]

Small correction on the setup of this expression:

This expression is set up to use the most dense character to represent white (@) and the most open character for black (space). If you use white type on a black background your ascii art will look inverted. I like ascii art better as black type on white paper.

[Patrick Deen]

This expression is set up to use the most dense character to represent black (@) and the most open character for white (space). If you use white type on a black background your image will look inverted. To overcome this you could invert the order of the characters in the density variable or invert your sample image (and use black type on a white background)

I see some outlined characters in your image and extreme variation in the spacing.
I suggest you use a more ascii like character like courier or some typewriter font…

You can’t seem to make out what is represented by the ascii art….
I had the same kind of results when I used a colour image.

I made a pre-comp with my video and boosted the contrast with the levels filter. I desaturated the video with the hue/saturation filter and to get a more predictable result I applied a posterize filter to bring it back to six levels of gray… in the main comp I inverted the colour of my pre-comp.

Did you get a chance to use my source file?

[Patrick Deen]

This is probably the easy way… download my source file and see what you did wrong. Please post your findings it might be helpfull to other users… remember “sharing is hapiness” 🙂

Download the source here:
https://rapidshare.com/files/67890829/ASCII_EXPERIMENT.aep

[Patrick Deen]

Copy pasting leads to stupid errors ;-{
I missed a backslash in my post (among other type errors but this one is crucial)

s += “\r”; // After a row is completed this adds a new line to the text until all rows are bu

[Patrick Deen]

You’ve probably set your character size too small if you only see the bounding boxes 😉

I’ve commented Dan’s expression for you. Hope it helps you to understand it 🙂

One other thing, you can make your own set of characters ranging from light to dark. I wasn’t really fond of the “@” as the darkest character so I’ve altered the desity string to suit my taste.

Here’s the commented expression;

density = ” .’`,^:” + ‘”;~-_+<>i!lI?/|()1{}[]rcvunxzjftLCJUYXZO0Qoahkbdpqwm*WMB8&%$#@’;

/* “density” is just a string ordered with characters from light to dark (” ” is white and “@” is black).You can access each character from this string as an array. “density[1]” would be “.” since array entries start counting by zero (desity[0] = ” “) */

target = thisComp.layer(index -1);

/* the target variable will hold the reference to the layer above the texts layer where you’ve added this expression */

cols = 80; //number of characters/columns that make up the width of the grid
rows = 60; //number of characters/rows that make up the height of the grid

w = thisComp.width/cols;
// dividing the width by the number of columns gives you the width of each “cell” in the grid

h = thisComp.height/rows;
// dividing the height by the number of columns gives you the height of each “cell” in the grid

s = “” // this declares an empty variable to hold the string that makes up your ascii art

// Next comes a nested loop that makes it all happen…

for (var i = 0; i < rows; i++){ // adding the rows /* the value of "i" is zero, repeat this action while "i" is smaller than the number of rows, increment "i" with one after each execution of the embedded script */ //the real nested loop for(var j = 0; j < cols; j++){ // adding the columns to the row /* the value of "j" is zero, repeat this action while "j" is smaller than the number of columns, increment "j" with one after each execution of the script */ center = [w/2 + j*w, h/2 + i*h]; // divide the width/height of the cell in half and add j times the width/height to that value results in the centre-point of each cell sample = target.sampleImage(center,[(w-1)/2,(h-1)/2]); // uses the "center" variable for the position and sets the size of the point to be sampled based on the size of your grid-cells. sample will hold an array of three numbers between 0 and 1 (1=white and 0=black) s += density[Math.round(linear(sample[0],0,1,0,density.length - 1))]; // the variable "s" is incremented with a character from the "desity" string. The expression between the straight brackets uses the first value of the sampled color in the sample variable to produce an integer/rounded number which is used to select the character to add to the string "s" } s += "r"; // After a row is completed this adds a new line to the text until all rows are built. } s // in the end the completed string is echoed by this simple notation and this is what shows up on the text layer.

[Patrick Deen]

Dan you make me sick with seemingly easy solutions you come up with!
I was looking for a way to do this before CS3 after seeing the “black tambourines” video by Beck. I long gave up on the idea that I could figure it out myself.

The only thing I would like to add is that when you’re experimenting with different video’s it’s more convenient to use the “layer(index)” attribute (just an other handy thing I learned from Dan)

Setting up the target as “target = thisComp.layer(index -1);”
Now you can just add the video you want to “ascciisize” to the layer above your scripted text layer.

To add a little more depth to my ascii video I made a second text layer with bold type and sampled the same video with crunched levels to limit the bold type to the darkest areas. You do need to adjust the letter-spacing to align the bold and normal type. Beware that adding a second scripted layer really shows that this is a processor intense expression.