Structure Tools

Tools for working with the Erogenous Tones Structure Eurorack video synthesis module.

Background

I've always loved 3D and thought it is magical — from Viewmasters to cross-eyed 3D-ification of repeating patterns (chainlink fence, tile floors) to scribbled stereoscopic sketches to the first Avatar (!) to Blade Runner 2049 (which I thought quite beautiful) to creating my own stereoscopic video and now to integrating it into my modular video synthesis pipeline.

This project sits at the intersection of two things: stereoscopic imagery and analog/digital video synthesis. The combination turns out to be more than the sum of its parts. Once your eyes accept they are viewing an image of depth, non-stereoscopic video synthesis elements — generated patterns, feedback, color manipulation — take on stereoscopic quality. Your visual system extends the 3D interpretation to everything in the frame.

Going the other direction is equally interesting: applying synthesis effects to stereoscopic footage sometimes violates the laws of parallax (e.g. zooming both eyes to center), but rather than breaking the illusion, it gives the video a physical texture — making it a sculptural medium rather than a photographic one.

The work produced with these tools is part of sublingualism.com, built from the sublinguist repo.

Project Structure

structure_tools/
  exporter/       Video clip exporter GUI (select ranges, export to Structure format)
  glsl/           GLSL shaders (mirrors Structure SD card layout)
    fx/           Effect shaders (process input video)
  monitoring/     OBS setup for monitoring Structure output on Viture glasses

exporter/

GUI application for selecting video ranges from 3D SBS segments and exporting clips to Structure's MJPEG format. Includes Syphon output for stereo glasses preview.

See exporter/README.md for details.

glsl/

Custom GLSL shaders for Structure. The directory layout mirrors the SD card (/Volumes/STRUCT_SD/glsl/) so shaders can be copied directly.

See glsl/README.md for the shader development workflow.

monitoring/

Capture Structure's composite SD output via Elgato and display as full SBS stereo on Viture XR glasses using OBS, with simultaneous passthrough to a 3D projector.

See monitoring/README.md for signal flow and OBS settings.

TODO

• Upload demo clips to Vimeo and link here
• Fix monitoring pillarbox aspect ratio (see monitoring TODO)
• Test stereo_displace and stereo_converge shaders on hardware
• Build remaining shader ideas (see glsl/README.md)
• Update sublingualism.com with new stereo synthesis work