Wanted to do a quick follow up to the previous blog post with some clips of parameters being updated on the psystem. The main level of control corresponds to the largest element in the cochlear structure. Which would resemble that of a logarithmic spiral (according to some research the analytical model that fits the cochlea uses a type of polynomial/polylogarithmic spiral, which may be closer to what I employed). Fittingly the name for the nervous structure in focus is the spiral ganglion. Although I set up the function for this both in Niagara & blueprint, there’s some advantages to generating the spline data in blueprint.
Here’s a couple clips of me tuning the radius, exponent, height, number of turns, neuron count.
In the radius modulation clip it’s apparent that there’s some amount of perturbation on the z-axis. To fit the rough/complex profile of spiral the height variable also gets multiplied by a float curve that can be tuned. This still needs refinement.
In the video below I have examples of me tuning a few of the shader parameters, as well as having a soundwave asset linked to the shader so that the frequency and amplitude map to the Z. The hair cells actually respond to the frequency spectrum respective to their location, from the base to apex. This is my first test; also in this video I had to overlay the track afterwards as I had recorded with a video-only software (timing is slightly off).
More to come