This page summarizes every scene currently available in Visualhandpan. It describes the visible result, the live data that drives it, and the controls available specifically for each scene.
Selecting a Scene
- Open Setup with the button at the top of the performance canvas.
- Open the Visuals tab.
- In Scene Settings, choose a scene from the Scene dropdown.
- Scene-specific controls appear directly below the scene dropdown.
Handpan layout is the default scene shown when Visualhandpan starts.
Shared Scene Behavior
- Scenes can receive tracked hand landmarks, FFT sound bands, recognized notes, recorded notes, note motifs, and recognized or manually selected handpan scales.
- Scene Calibration stores camera distance and X rotation independently for every scene.
- Mouse-wheel or trackpad scrolling and two-finger pinching adjust camera distance.
- Fog, post-processing, presets, and repository-image overlays are shared visual systems.
- Camera or microphone permission is only needed when the selected scene uses that input.
Quick Reference
| Scene | Main Visual | Primary Live Inputs | Scene Controls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand Pen Points | Deforming 64×64 field of warm metallic cubes | Hand landmarks and tracking energy | None |
| Bubbles | Soft bubbles emitted from tracked landmarks | Hand landmarks | None |
| Neon Graphics | Audio-reactive neon grid with propagated hand motion | Hands, movement, low/mid/high FFT | None |
| Falling Points | Landmark particles that detach, fall, and fade | Hands and movement | Ground-plane grid |
| Note Timeline | Raw, smoothed, and recorded notes on a timeline | Notes, motifs, and hands | None |
| Handpan Layout | Handpan layout with flashes and colored trails | Selected note signal and scale | Metal mode and highlight signal |
| Handpan 3D | Real handpan model with tone-field highlights | Notes, scale, and fingertip touch | Model material |
| Hand Skeletons | Hands as lines, shaded forms, or a network | All 21 landmarks and camera reflection capture | Hand display mode |
| Plastic Platonic | Reflective geometric solid for each hand | Hands and low/mid/high FFT | None |
| Steel Landmarks | Vertical metallic bars for all landmarks | Hands, spacing, and low/mid/high FFT | None |
Hand Pen Points
A 64×64 field of instanced cubes bends in depth around tracked hand landmarks. The sunset-colored grid uses separate warm tints around the left and right hands. Grid motion and tracking-derived energy affect cube size, color, and brightness.
Inputs: Hand landmarks, hand area and count, grid spacing, influence radius, and morph speed.
Bubbles
Every available hand landmark emits translucent blue and turquoise bubbles. The particles rise, drift, expand, and fade. A shader-based point cloud supports up to 18,000 particles.
Inputs: Hand landmarks. Microphone input is not required.
Neon Graphics
A 64×64 field of blue cubes reacts to landmark position, velocity, and handedness. Hand movement propagates rotation and displacement through the grid. Low, mid, and high FFT bands alter scale, color, and emitted light.
Inputs: Hand tracking and microphone FFT analysis.
Falling Points
Colored particles briefly attach to tracked landmarks, inherit hand velocity, then detach and fall under gravity. They expand and fade near the scene floor. Left and right hands use different blue and green colors.
Control: Show ground plane grid adds a reference grid at the particle fade floor.
Note Timeline
An eight-second timeline displays separate raw and smoothed pitch traces. Recorded notes appear as duration bars, with up to 24 recent events visible. A legend shows the current note, learned motif, and motif family.
When a stable note and tracked hands are available, motif-colored particles emerge around the hand landmarks. Their patterns respond to pitch, note activity, stability, and the current motif.
Handpan Layout
The default startup scene presents a centered handpan with one Ding and eight surrounding tone fields. Notes are ordered from the Ding through the south field and then upward in an alternating left/right pattern.
Recognized notes flash the matching field and generate scale-colored depth trails from red at the lowest note to violet at the highest. A 21-second welcome animation travels through the tone fields.
- Solid metal handpan: Switches between the flat layout and solid metal representation.
- Tone field highlight signal: Selects mapped note, raw FFT note, smoothed note, or recognized note.
Handpan 3D
A self-hosted 3D handpan model is displayed with scale-colored overlays aligned to its Ding and eight surrounding tone fields. Accepted notes illuminate the matching field with attack and decay behavior.
Tracked thumb and fingertip landmarks are projected onto the model, allowing touched fields to highlight independently of microphone recognition.
Materials: Soft ember steel, brushed amber steel, and dark metal.
Hand Skeletons
This scene uses all 21 available landmarks for up to two hands. Colors stay at full brightness, while landmark acceleration can affect geometric motion and size.
- Wireframe 3D lines: Anatomical connections rendered with native WebGL lines and requested width 8.0.
- Smooth shaded surfaces: Approximated palms, joints, and fingers. Selecting this mode captures one camera frame and uses it as a hidden reflection and diffuse-light environment. The camera image is not displayed or continuously updated.
- Abstract 3D network: Anatomical links, cross-finger structures, nodes, and motion rays rendered with requested WebGL line width 4.0.
Some browsers and GPU drivers may clamp native WebGL lines to one pixel.
Plastic Platonic
Each detected hand becomes a rotating reflective geometric solid. Position and size follow the hand, while the form responds to the available landmarks. Left and right hands use contrasting coral and blue materials.
Low, mid, and high FFT energy affects rotation, emitted light, roughness, and metalness.
Steel Landmarks
Each landmark becomes a metallic bar rising from a shared floor. Bar tops follow the hands while their lower ends fade away. Landmark order maps through a blue, violet, and deep-blue spectrum.
Hand spacing shifts the palette. FFT bands affect bar width, depth, rotation, brightness, and surface roughness.